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Title: Negroes and Negro "Slavery:" the first an inferior race: the latter its normal condition.
Author: Evrie, J. H. Van
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Negroes and Negro "Slavery:" the first an inferior race: the latter its normal condition." ***
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NEGROES
AND
NEGRO “SLAVERY:”
THE FIRST AN INFERIOR RACE:
THE LATTER ITS NORMAL CONDITION.
BY
J. H. VAN EVRIE, M.D.
“To our reproach it must be said, that, though for a century and a
half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men,
they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural
history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the
blacks, whether originally a different race, or made distinct by
time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments
both of mind and body.”—THOMAS JEFFERSON _in his “Notes on
Virginia.”_
NEW YORK:
VAN EVRIE, HORTON & CO.,
162 NASSAU STREET.
1861.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by
JOHN H. VAN EVRIE,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for
the
Southern District of New York.
STEREOTYPED BY
SMITH & MCDOUGAL,
82 & 84 Beekman-st.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
Since the first edition of this work was issued, startling and
deplorable events have occurred. The great “Anti-Slavery” delusion, that
originated with European monarchists more than fifty years ago, has
culminated in disunion and civil war, as its authors always predicted it
would. A party strongly imbued with the false theories and absurd
assumptions of British writers and abolition societies, is in possession
of the Federal Government, which it stands pledged to use to reduce its
assumptions to practice. It holds that the negro, except in color, is a
man like themselves, and naturally entitled to the same liberty—that to
deny him this liberty, is to enslave him—that, therefore, Southern
society is wrong, and should be revolutionized, and it avows it to be
its mission to accomplish this—to institute a policy that shall finally
abolish or destroy the supremacy of the white man, and secure “impartial
freedom” for negroes! To this the South replies, that this government
was created for white men alone, and _their_ posterity, as declared in
the preamble to the Constitution—that the Supreme Court has recently
declared the same great truth—that, seizing the government by a mere
sectional vote, and placing it in distinct conflict with the social
order of the South, with the avowed purpose of penning up its negro
population, in order to bring about some day the extinction or overthrow
of the existing condition, is, therefore, an overthrow of the
Constitution—that the object avowed necessarily involves their future
destruction, and to save themselves from the wild delusion and malignant
fanaticism of the North, they are forced, in self-defense, to withdraw
from the Union, hitherto, or until this hostile and dangerous party
entered the field, so beneficial to all sections of the country.
So stands the case between the sections. If the “anti-slavery” party was
based on truth—if the negro, except in color, was a man like
ourselves—if social subordination of this negro was wrong, and the four
millions of these people at the South entitled to the same liberty as
ourselves—and if the men who made this government designed it to include
the inferior races of this continent, and it were really beneficial to
equalize and fraternize with these negroes, then, though it may be
doubted, if using the common government to bring it about were proper,
the _end_ in view would be so beneficent, and such a transcendent act of
justice to these assumed slaves, that all honest, earnest, and patriotic
citizens should promptly sustain the party now striving to accomplish
it. But, on the contrary, if this party is based on a stupendous
falsehood—if the negro is a different and inferior being, and in his
normal condition at the South—and if the men who made this government,
designed it for white men alone—then the length and breadth and width
and depth of the “anti-slavery” delusion, and the crime of the
“anti-slavery” party, which has broken up the Union in a blind crusade
after negro freedom, will be fully comprehended by the American people.
The whole mighty question, therefore, with all its vast and boundless
consequences, hinges on the apparently simple question of _fact_—is the
negro, except in color, a man like ourselves, and therefore naturally
entitled to the same liberty?
It is absolutely certain that neither the liberty, the rights, nor the
interests of one single northern citizen is involved; nothing whatever
but a blind and foolish theory of “negro slavery” which is attempted to
be forced on the South. If the people of the two great sections of the
country could change places, the vast “anti-slavery” delusion would be
exploded in sixty days. But as this is impossible, the next best thing
is to explain the actual condition of things in the South to the
northern mind. This great work the author has undertaken, not to defend
an imaginary slavery, for it needs no defense, but to explain the social
order—to demonstrate to the senses, as well as the reason, that the
negro is a different and subordinate being, and in his normal condition
at the South; and thus to show the enormous and fathomless folly, crime,
and impiety wrapped up in the great “anti-slavery” delusion of the day.
The former edition of this work was put to press so hurriedly, that it
contained many errors, but the present one has been carefully revised;
and, moreover, the introductory chapter has been rewritten, in order to
present a more distinct history of the origin and progress of the great
British “anti-slavery” imposture which is now working out its legitimate
and designed purpose in the destruction of the American Union.
In conclusion, the author begs to say, that mere literary display or
fine writing is with him quite a subordinate consideration. He only
desires to be understood, and, that the grand and momentous truths
described in this book shall be clearly comprehended by the masses, with
the confident assurance that when they come to understand that their own
liberty, welfare, and prosperity are all hazarded in a blind crusade
after that which, could it be accomplished, would be the greatest
calamity ever inflicted on a civilized people, the causeless and
senseless, but frightful sectional conflict now raging will be speedily
terminated by the universal uprising of the northern masses in favor of
a government of WHITE MEN, and UNION with the South.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION.
Page
European Misconception of the Negro—Monarchical Hostility to
American Institutions—Imposture or Delusion of Wilberforce—False
Issue of a Single Human Race—Dictation of European
Writers—Subserviency of the American Mind 17
CHAPTER II.
LAWS OF ORGANIZATION.
Divisions of the Organic World—Each Form of Being an Independent
Creation—Harmony in the Economy of Animal Life—The Races
specifically different from each other—A Single Species
Impossible—Fallacies of Linnæus and other European
Naturalists—Ignorance of Educated Men on this Subject 34
CHAPTER III.
THE HUMAN CREATION.
Subdivisions of Mankind—The Different Races of Men—Characteristics
of each—The Caucasian—The Mongolian—The Malay—The Aboriginal
American—Caucasian Remains in Mexico—The Esquimaux—The Negro
Race; its Origin; Observations of Livingston, Garth, and
others—Hybrids confounded with the Typical Negro—The Dogma of a
Single Race—Mankind Created in Groups—The Bible Aspect of the
Question—Inconsistency of the Advocates of the Single Race
Theory 44
CHAPTER IV.
HISTORICAL OUTLINE.
Origin of the Caucasian Race—Bible Accounts—Invasion of Egypt by
the Master Race—The Caucasians in Assyria, Persia, and
Babylon—Origin of the Mongolians—The Use of the Term
“Barbarian”—The History of the Greeks—Not the Authors of
Political Liberty—Athens not a Democracy—The Roman Republic and
Empire—Citizenship a Privilege, not a Right—The Advent of
Christianity the Advent of Democracy—The Dark Ages—The Races
that Figured in that Era—The Crusades—The Asiatic Invasion—The
Carthaginians—The Arabs—The Downfall of the Roman Empire—The
Reformation—All the Numerous Varieties of the White Race
Subsiding into Three Well-known Families, the Celtic, the
Teutonic and Sclavonic—General Review—The Intellectual Powers of
the White Race the same in all Ages—Knowledge only
Progressive—The Inferior Races Incapable of Acquiring and
Transmitting Knowledge—The Chinese no Exception 63
CHAPTER V.
COLOR.
The Cause of Color Unknown—The Caucasian Color the Index of the
Character; the Contrary the Case with the Negro Race—The Black
Complexion a Sign of Inferiority—Misuse of the term “Colored
Man” 88
CHAPTER VI.
FIGURE.
Differences in Form—The Negro Incapable of Standing Upright—Other
Marks of Inferiority—The Relative Approximation of the
Ourang-Outang to the Negro and the Caucasian 92
CHAPTER VII.
THE HAIR.
The Hair of the Caucasian and Negro Contrasted—The Beard of the
Caucasian indicative of Superiority—The Negro and other Races
have not the Flowing Beard of the Caucasian 98
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FEATURES.
The Features the True Reflex of the Inner Nature—Variations of
Size, Outlines, Complexion, etc., of the Caucasian
Race—Resemblance of Negroes to each other in Size and
Appearance—Inability of the Negro Features to express the
Emotional Feelings peculiar to the Caucasian, etc., etc. 105
CHAPTER IX.
LANGUAGE.
Divided into two Portions—First Capacity of Expression—Second
Arrangement into Parts of Speech—All Beings have a Language,
each Specific and in Accordance with its Organism—The Vocal
Organs of the Negro—No Negro can Speak the Language of the White
Man Correctly—Negroes can be Distinguished by their Voices—A
Negro Musical Artist Unknown—Musical Genius Requires a Brain of
Corresponding Complexity—The Negro’s Love of Music merely
Sensuous, and Manifested by the Feet as much as by the Brain 109
CHAPTER X.
THE SENSES.
Organism of the Senses—Their Strength and Acuteness in Inferior
Races—The Cause of Negro Indolence Explained—The Necessity of
Governing the Negro—Incapacity of the “Free Negro” to Produce
Sufficient for his own Support—His Ultimate Extinction Simply a
Question of Time—Incapacity of the Negro for the Higher Branches
of Mechanism—Effect of Flogging on the Negro Senses, etc., etc. 115
CHAPTER XI.
THE BRAIN.
Erroneous Impressions Relative to the Brain—What Constitutes the
Brain—Its Size the True Test of Intelligence—General Uniformity
of the Negro Brain—Its Correspondence with the Body—Its Size,
when Compared with that of the White Man—The Folly and Impiety
of Attempting to Equalize those whom God has made Unequal, etc. 123
CHAPTER XII.
GENERAL SUMMARY.
Recapitulation and Review of the Outward Characteristics of the
Negro—Color, etc., seen to be only a Single Fact out of the
Millions of Facts separating Races—Inner Qualities necessarily
Correspondent with the Outward ones—Conclusion 132
PART II.
CHAPTER XIII.
HYBRIDISM.
The Laws of Interunion fully Explained—A fixed and well-defined
Limit to Mulattoism—Prostitution in the North, and Mulattoism in
the South—Amalgamation and its Consequences—The Physiological
Laws governing Mulattoism and Mongrelism—Condition of the Negro
in Jamaica, Hayti, etc.—The Negro, when Isolated, certain to
Relapse into his Original Barbarism—Intellectual Difference
between Negroes and Mulattoes—The Viciousness and Cowardice of
the Mongrel—His Low Grade of Vitality, etc., etc. 143
CHAPTER XIV.
THE “SLAVE TRADE,” OR THE IMPORTATION OF NEGROES.
General Review of the Subject—The Absurdity of Attempting to
Civilize Africa—The Adaptability of the Negro to Tropical
Labor—Las Casas and the Negroes and Indians—How the Spanish
Government conducted “the Slave Trade”—Its Inhumanity, as
practiced by the Dutch and English—The Benefits of the Original
“Slave Trade”—The Reason why England is so Anxious to Abolish
“Slavery,” etc., etc. 168
CHAPTER XV.
NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO.
The Law of Adaptation—The Natural Relation of Men to Animals, of
Parents to Offspring, of Men of the Same Species to Each
Other—American Institutions based on the Natural Relations, or
the Natural Equality of the Race—Political Equality the Normal
Order of the White Man—Disregard of the Natural Relations in
Europe—Repression of the Natural Order—Result of the Employment
of Force to Preserve the Existing Condition—Popular Ignorance of
the Relations of Races—Juxtaposition of White Men and
Negroes—Natural Inferiority and Social Subordination of the
latter—The Natural, or Uneducated Negro of Africa, compared with
the Civilized Negro of America—Free Negroism a Social
Disease—Social Subordination, with the Protection of the White
Man, the Normal Condition of the Negro 179
CHAPTER XVI.
CHATTELISM.
Historic Slavery—Its Origin—Its Character—All White People—Often
Highly Educated Men—Their Abject Dependence on the Will or
Caprice of the Owner—Their Incapacity to Propagate
Themselves—Their Restoration to Citizenship, etc.—Nothing
whatever in Common with the Social Subordination of Negroes in
our Time—The Industrial Capacity of the Negro all that the
Master owns—Care and Kindness of the Master—Rapid Increase of
the Negro Population when in their Normal Condition, etc. 204
CHAPTER XVII.
EDUCATION OF NEGROES.
The Education of the Negro should be in Harmony with his Wants and
Mental Capacity—The Folly of Attempting to Educate the Negro as
we do the Caucasian—The Negro always a Child in Intellect—The
Duty of the Master to set his “Slave” a Good Example—The
Imitative Faculty of the Negro mistaken for Intelligence, etc. 215
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS.
Love of the Caucasian Mother for her Offspring—Relative Capacity
of White and Black Children—The Negress, after a certain period,
loses all Love for, or Interest in, her Offspring—Affection for
his Master the Strongest Feeling of which the Negro is capable,
etc., etc. 223
CHAPTER XIX.
MARRIAGE.
The Idea that Marriage does not Exist among “Slaves” Repugnant to
the Northern Mind—Its Effect on Increasing the Anti-Slavery
Delusion—New England Women—Their Domestic Education
Admirable—Their Mistake as to the Facts of Marriage at the
South—Their Southern Sisters—What is Marriage?—Not Simply a
Civil Contract—A Natural Relation—The Love of Negroes Impulsive
and Capricious 233
CHAPTER XX.
CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION.
How the Earth is Divided—Its Fauna and Flora—All Organized Beings
have their Centres of Existence peculiar to Themselves—No such
thing as the Creation of the same Species in Different Centres
of Life—The more elevated the Organism, the less subject to
External Circumstances—Incapacity of the Negro to Live in
Northern Latitudes—Their Miserable Condition and Rapid
Extinction in Canada—Industrial Adaptation of the Caucasian to
Intemperate Latitudes—Why white Labor is worth more than that of
the Negro at the North—Industrial Adaptation of the Negro to
Tropical and Tropicoid Products—Absurdity of the Ordinance of
1787—The Acquisition of Southern Territory always saves the
North from so-called Negro Slavery—“Extension of Slavery” vital
to both White and Black—Absolute Necessity of Negro Labor in the
Tropics—Production, and therefore Civilization, otherwise
Impossible 245
CHAPTER XXI.
NORTH AND SOUTH—THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF GOVERNMENT.
The Progenitors of our so-called Slaves, though mainly Imported at
the North, ultimately found their way South—Difference between
the Early Colonists of both Sections of the Country—Virginia
Mainly Settled by the Cavaliers—The Southern Leaders the
Originators and Upholders of our Present System of
Government—The Presence of the Negro, in his Natural Condition,
conducive to the Equality of White Men—The Harmony of Southern
Society—The Interests of “Slaveholder” and “Non-Slaveholder,”
and of Master and “Slave” are Indivisible—The Presence of the
Negro in his Normal Condition the Happiest Event in Human
Affairs, etc. 270
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ALLIANCE OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS.
The Antagonism of Ideas after the Constitution was formed—The Two
Opposing Leaders, Hamilton and Jefferson, in Washington’s
Cabinet—Hamilton’s Financial Policy Wrong—The British System—The
Alien and Sedition Laws—British “Liberty”—Conflict of Labor and
Capital—The Producing Classes at the North without Leaders—The
Wealth and Power in the hands of the Federalists—At the South
the Slaveholders were Producers—Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration that
they were the Allies of the Northern Laborers True—The Kentucky
and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 the True Exposition of our
Federal System—Civil Revolution of 1800 293
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.
The Number of Negroes on this Continent—The “Free”
Negro—Impossibility of his Living out the Life of the White
Man—The “Free” Negroes of Virginia and Maryland—The Drawback of
the “Free” Negro Population—Its Dangerous Elements—Its Immoral
Character—Its Tax on the Laboring Classes—Its Ultimate
Extinction—Slavery in Brazil and Cuba—The White Man Degraded
there—Social Danger—Tropical Civilization—Intellect of the White
Man, and the Labor of the Negro Essential to it—The Condition of
Jamaica—White Blood being Extinguished—The Tendency of the
British System to Force Negroes to a Forbidden Level with White
Men—Negro Officials—Knighting a Negro—The Effect of Legal and
Social Equality—The Extinction of the White Race in the West
Indies only a Question of Time—The Negro Returning to
Savagism—Hayti—Terrible Results of the British Anti-Slavery
Policy—An African Heathenism in America 309
CHAPTER XXIV.
CONCLUSION.
Review of the Subject—Juxtaposition with the Subordinate Race has
Originated New Ideas in the Master Race, and Rendered Republican
Liberty Practicable—Beneficent Union of Capital and Labor in the
South—A Southern Majority and Northern Minority have Acquired
all the Territory, Fought all the Battles, and Conducted the
Nation in every Step of its Growth, since its Foundation to the
Present Time—The Acquisition of the Gulf States has Secured
Equal Rights to the Masses at the North—Final Acquisition of
Cuba, Central America, etc., Essential to the National
Development—Extension of so-called Slavery a Vital Law of
National Existence, and Absolutely Essential to American
Civilization 336
CHAPTER I.
CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION.
“American slavery,” though having no existence in fact, is a phrase
which, for the last forty years, has been oftener heard than _American
democracy_; yet the latter is one of the great powers of the earth, and
destined, in the course of time, to revolutionize the world. But in this
prominence of an _abstraction_, and indifference, or apparent
indifference, to the grandest _fact_ of modern times, is witnessed the
wide-spread and almost despotic influence of the European over the
American mind. What is here termed “American slavery,” is the _status_
of the negro in American society—the social relation of the negro to the
white man—which, being in accord with the natural relations of the
races, springs spontaneously from the necessities of human society. The
white citizen is superior, the negro inferior; and, therefore, whenever
or wherever they happen to be in juxtaposition, the human law should
accord, as it does accord in the South, with these relations thus
inherent in their organizations, and thus fixed forever by the hand of
God. And were America isolated from Europe—did that sea of fire, which
Mr. Jefferson once wished for, really divide the Old World and the New,
and thus separate us from the mental obliquities and moral perversities
of the former—then any other relation than that now common to the South,
would be an impossible conception to the American mind.
The words “slave” and “slavery” were scarcely heard a hundred years ago,
as indeed they will be unheard a hundred years hence; and prior to the
Revolution of 1776, the people of America were quite unconscious of that
mighty “evil,” now so oppressive to many otherwise sensible minds,
though this imaginary slavery then spread over the whole continent. All
new communities are distinguished by a certain advance in civilization
over the elder ones, however rude the former may appear in some
respects, or whatever may be the over-refinement, or seeming refinement,
of the latter. Truth lives forever—“the eternal years of God are hers;”
and all real knowledge, all true progress made by the race, is treasured
up, and carried with it in all its wanderings, whether from the Nile to
the Tiber, or from the Thames to the Hudson; while the errors, the
foolish traditions and vicious habits, mental and moral, that gather
about it, and weaken, and sometimes so overlie and conceal the truth as
to render it useless, are left behind. We see this even in our own
energetic and progressive society. The younger States are the most
enlightened States; and the West, whatever may be its wants, or supposed
wants among a certain class, is really more civilized than the East.
That community which is the most prosperous—where there is the greatest
amount of happiness—where there is relatively the greatest number of
independent citizens—is per se and of necessity the most civilized; for
the end of existence, the object of the All-wise and beneficent
Creator—happiness for His creatures—is here most fully accomplished.
And when we contemplate the history of this continent, and compare the
character of the early colonists, their history, and their influence
over the present condition of things, it will be found that they
remained stationary in exact proportion as they clung to the ideas and
habitudes of the Old World; or advanced towards a better and higher
condition just as they cast off these influences, and lived in natural
accord with the circumstances that surrounded them. The Spanish
conquerors were often the pets and favorites of the court, and always
the faithful sons of the Church, and brought with them the pomps and
vanities of the former, and the rigid ecclesiastical observances of the
latter. When Cortez and Pizzaro took possession of a province, they
pompously paraded the titles and dignities of the emperor before the
wondering savages, and added vast multitudes of “Christian converts” to
“Holy Church” with a zeal and fervor that the Beechers and Cheevers of
our times might envy, but surely could not equal. The English colonists,
on the contrary, were almost all disaffected, or at all events, were
charged with disaffection to the mother country. This, it is true, was
masked under religious beliefs and scruples of conscience, but was none
the less hostile to the political order under which they had been
persecuted and suffered so long. As soon, therefore, as they found
themselves in a New World, and relieved from the tyranny of the Old,
they abandoned, to a great extent, the forms, as they already had
abandoned many of the ideas, of the latter. They recognized the nominal
sovereignty of the mother country, or rather of the Crown; but from the
landing at Jamestown, as well as at Plymouth, all the British colonists
really governed themselves, made their own laws, provided for their own
safety, and, except the governor, and occasionally some subordinate
officials, elected their own rulers. The result was a corresponding
prosperity; for not only did the discipline of self-reliance strengthen
the character, and call out a higher phase of citizenship among the
English colonists, but in casting off the habitudes of the old
societies, and adopting those that were suited to the circumstances
surrounding them, they soon exhibited a striking contrast to those of
Spain and of other European powers, who clung to the ideas and habits of
Europe.
But this drawback on American progress—this clinging to the habitudes of
the Old World, which kept the Spanish and French colonies in abject
submission to the mother country, and which England, at a later period,
sought to force on her colonies—was not the sole embarrassment in the
progress of the colonists. They were confronted by wild and ferocious
savages, who disputed every step of the white European; and though,
previous to the independence of the colonies, the mother country united
with the latter against the former, from the breaking out of hostilities
in 1776 to the close of the War of 1812 the interests of monarchy and
savagism may be said to have been inseparable, and to have formed a
common barrier against the march of republicanism. Indeed, it is a
truth, attested by the whole history of the past, and equally so by the
circumstances of the present, that the subordinate races of this
continent—the Indian, Negro, Mongrel, etc.—constitute the material, the
very stock in trade, of European monarchists, to embarrass the progress
of American institutions; and in every instance where we have been
engaged in Indian wars, that portion of our people who, in their
ignorance and blindness, have condemned the course of their own
government, have been the unconscious instruments of the enemies of
their country, and in their sickly sentimentality and folly, they have
sought to obstruct the progress of American civilization. Monarchy
consists in artificial distinctions of kings, nobles, peasants, etc., or
it may be defined as the rule of classes of the same race, and, from the
inherent necessities of its organization, it is forced to make war on
the natural distinction of races. Prior to the breaking out of the
American Revolution, there was no necessity for calling in the aid of
the Negro or the Indian to crush out the liberty of the white man. The
colonists, as has been observed, were practical republicans, and
substantially governed themselves; but they had not questioned the
European system or theory of monarchism. When they did this, however, in
that grand Declaration of Mr. Jefferson, that all men (meaning, of
course, his own race) were created free and equal, the British
monarchists instinctively and, indeed necessarily, resorted to the means
at hand—to the subordinate races of America—to demoralize and break down
this immortal truth. An English judge, anticipating the coming rebellion
of the Americans, had already ruled that “slavery,” or social
subordination of the negro to the white man, was a result of municipal
law—a creature of the _lex loci_; and though this was in language that
led vast numbers of people into error, its technical as well as absolute
falsehood is apparent, when we remember that no such “law” has ever
existed, either now or at any other time, in American history, from the
Canadian Lakes to Cape Horn. But it served as a foundation and
stand-point for that wide-spread imposture and world-wide delusion which
has since so overshadowed the land, and, with the best intentions on
their part, so deluded Americans themselves into a blind warfare against
the progress, prosperity, and indeed the civilization, of their country
and continent. In the seven years’ war waged to crush out the rebellion
of the Colonies, England subsidized the savage Indian tribes wherever it
was possible to do so; and in the subsequent War of 1812, her agents
partially succeeded in combining all the savages on our western border,
under Tecumseh, with the design of shutting us out forever from the
country west of the Mississippi. The result of this monstrous alliance
of European monarchists and American savages to beat back the advancing
civilization of the New World, to hold in check, and, if possible, to
defeat and overthrow republicanism, has ended in the destruction and
almost utter annihilation of the North American Indians. General
Jackson’s campaigns in Florida, as well as those of Harrison in the
West, and, to a certain extent, even the later Seminole War, all had
their origin in the same causes, the open or secret intrigues of British
agents, stimulating the savages to resist the onward march of American
civilization. Nor was it anything like the former contests of the agents
of England and France to enlist the aid of the savages against each
other; for, repulsive and iniquitous as it may be for men of the same
race to employ subordinate races against their own blood, they were
struggling for possession of a continent, and all means, doubtless,
seemed legitimate that should give them victory. But in this case it was
a war against Americanism—against a new order of political
society—against a system based on a principle of utter antagonism to
monarchism, and which if permitted to develop its legitimate results, to
grow into a new and grander order of civilized society than the world
had ever yet witnessed, the rotten and worn-out systems of Europe were
doomed to certain and perhaps early overthrow. It is true, the agents
employed did not know this—indeed, their European masters were ignorant,
perhaps, of the principles involved; but the instinct of
self-preservation, the instinct inherent in hostile systems impelled
them forward, while the ends to be reached, or the consequences of
success, were always too apparent to be mistaken. But their savage
instruments were destroyed in the conflict, in the uses to which they
were applied by their European allies; and whatever may be the future
fate of the Aborigines in Spanish America, the North American Indian is
virtually annihilated. A few wild tribes of the West and South-west,
whose means for preserving existence are every day growing less, still
remain, and some remnants of semi-civilized tribes, which are perishing
even more rapidly than the former, are to be found on our Western
frontier; but the time is not distant, perhaps, when they will be wholly
and absolutely extinct.
What might have been, it is useless to conjecture; but the notion of a
certain class of sentimentalists among us, that we have done the Indian
great wrong, and that, had we treated him with kindness and justice, he
might have become civilized, and a part of our permanent population, of
course, is absurd; for it is founded on that foolish dogma of a single
race, which Europe has fastened on the American mind, and which supposes
the Indian, as the Negro, etc., to have the same nature as themselves.
Nor is the notion of others, that the Indian is incapable of
civilization, and therefore destined to give way before the advance of
the white man, worthy of any consideration; for this involves the
paradox of being created without a purpose, a supposition not to be
entertained a moment; for the most insignificant beings in the lowest
forms of organic life have their uses, and the human creature, surely,
was not created in vain. The simple truth is, that we need to know what
the Indian is in fact, his true nature and true relations to our own
race, and then, as we have done in the case of the Negro, adapt the
social and governmental machinery to the wants of both races. But this
employment and consequent destruction of the Indians of America by the
monarchists of Europe, though often inflicting great temporary evil on
our border settlements, did not retard our progress in the least, nor
did England, to any appreciable extent, succeed in her objects. The
theory or dogma of a single race, which her writers and publicists had
set up about the time of the Revolution, produced, however, immense
practical results both in Europe and America. The doctrines of the
American Revolution, as was foreseen by British statesmen, soon became
universally accepted in France, and threatened to overturn monarchy all
over the Continent, and indeed in England itself. Dr. Johnson,
Wilberforce, Pitt, and all the great writers and leaders of England,
naturally enough adopted the notion that Indians, Negroes, etc., were
men like themselves, except in color, cultivation, etc.; but they were
impelled, by the necessities of their system and the preservation of
monarchical institutions, to practicalize this theory to the utmost
extent in their power, and thus divert the attention of their own
oppressed white people from _their_ wrongs, by holding up before them
continually the _imaginary_ wrongs of “American slaves.” They said, “It
is true, you laborers of Yorkshire and operatives of Birmingham have a
hard life, a life of constant toil and privation; but you are free-born
Englishmen, and your own masters, and in all England there is not a
single slave; while in America, in that so-called land of freedom, where
there is no king, or noble, or law of primogeniture, and where, in
theory, it is declared that all men are created free and equal, one
sixth of the population are slaves, so abject and miserable that they
are sold in the public markets, like horses and oxen. What, then, are
your oppressions or your wrongs in comparison with those of American
slaves? or what are the evils or the injustice of monarchy when
contrasted with those dark and damning crimes of American democracy,
that thus, in these enlightened times, dooms one sixth of the population
to open and undisguised slavery?” Such was the argument of the British
writers, and it was unanswerable if it had rested on _fact_—if the
foundation were true, then the inference, of course, was unavoidable. If
the so-called American slave was created free and equal with his master,
then all that the British writers charged would have been true enough,
and American slavery, in comparison with British liberty—or what passed
for such in Yorkshire and Birmingham—would have been a wrong, so deep,
damning, and fathomless, that no words in our language would be able to
express its enormity. How was the poor, ignorant, and helpless laborer,
or even his defenders, Fox, Sheridan, and other liberal leaders of the
day, to answer this argument? They did not attempt it. They admitted
that “American slavery” was all that it was charged to be—that it was a
wrong and evil immeasurably greater and more atrocious than any of those
which the people of France had risen against, or that the masses in
England suffered under; but they hoped that the great principle of the
American Revolution was strong enough to overcome this wrong, and in the
process of time, to “abolish slavery,” and that liberty would become
universal among Americans. Indeed, some of those who had been the most
devoted believers in the great American doctrine, both in England and
France, were so painfully impressed by the seeming wrong done the negro,
that they lost their interest, to a great extent, in the real wrongs of
the white man, and devoted all their efforts to the former. Societies
were formed in London and Paris, funds contributed, books published,
tracts distributed, and extensive arrangements entered into, with the
sole purpose of relieving the “American slave” from the fancied wrongs
that were heaped on him; and their societies, these “_Amis des Noirs_,”
patronized by Robespierre and other leaders of the people, which were
formed in almost every town in France and England, popularized the
movement, and so identified the imaginary cause of the negro with that
of the European masses, that to this day they doubtless seem
inseparable. And even in our own times, we have witnessed the sorry
spectacle of English laborers contributing of their wretched pittance to
glorify some abolition hero or heroine of the “Uncle Tom” pattern, under
the deplorable misconception, of course, that these blind tools of the
enemies of liberty were faithful defenders of a common cause, when, in
truth, they were vastly more dangerous to that cause than the open and
avowed friends of despotism. But this very natural mistake of the
friends of freedom in Europe, this ignorance and misconception of the
negro nature and relations to the white man, which led Fox in England,
and Robespierre in France, to confound the cause of the oppressed
multitudes of their own race with the imaginary interests of negrodom,
extended and unfortunate as it was and still is, was surpassed by a
still more insidious and more extended influence. Wilberforce, who, more
than any other man, gave form and direction to the great “anti-slavery”
delusion of modern times, was eminently pious—as piety is accepted by a
large portion of the religious world. He was an Episcopalian in form,
but preeminently a Puritan in practice; and, while doubtless sincere in
his belief, and perfectly correct in his religious habits, he was one of
the most complete bigots, religious, political, and social, the world
ever saw. Belonging to the ruling class, and possessed of a considerable
fortune, he believed that his own _status_ was the stand-point, and
himself the model, for the government of society, and therefore was as
doggedly and bitterly opposed to any change in England, or to any reform
in English society, as he was earnest in his efforts to relieve the
“sufferings of the slave” in America. In a public career of some forty
years, as a member of Parliament, he never failed to record his vote
against any increase of popular freedom, or any change that tended to
ameliorate the condition of the white masses, and just as steadily and
uniformly labored to “elevate” the negro to the _status_ of the English
laborer, or, at all events, to favor that final “abolition of slavery,”
which he himself was not, however, destined to witness in the British
American possessions. But throughout he regarded the question rather as
a religious than a political one, and at an early period, in this
respect, impressed his own character on it. Identified with the Church,
all his notions those of the High Church party—substantially the notions
that Archbishop Laud entertained two centuries before—by birth and
association connected with the landed aristocracy, and yet distinguished
for practical piety, for a zeal and devotion to his religious duties
that the most zealous among the Dissenters and Evangelicals might
imitate but could not surpass, this was just the man to impress a great
movement with his own characteristics, and the “anti-slavery cause”
became the cause of religion as well as of liberty with the religious
world. Nor was it confined to the “American slave;” it embraced the
whole world of heathendom; and a religious crusade sprang up, that
finally became more extended, and, in some respects, more permanent,
than the great political movement inaugurated by Jefferson a few years
before. And if the Father of Lies, Lucifer himself, had plotted a plan
or scheme for concealing a great truth, and embarrassing a great cause,
he could have accomplished nothing more effective than the movement that
Wilberforce inaugurated for the professed benefit of the negro and other
subordinate races of mankind, which, masked under the form of religious
duty, and appealing to the conscience, the love of proselytism, the
enthusiasm, and even the bigotries of the religious world, has, for more
than half a century, held in thrall the conscience as well as the reason
of Christendom. Robespierre, and other patrons of the _Amis des Noirs_,
could only present a common cause, that “universal liberty” which they
declared to be the birthright of _all_ men, and which it were better
that every conceivable calamity should happen rather than this “great
principle” should perish; but when it became the duty of every Christian
man and woman, every follower of Christ and professor of religion, to
work and pray for “the deliverance of the slave,” then a power was
aroused that nothing could resist, for it became an immediate and sacred
duty to labor in this cause. Missionary societies were organized, money
contributed by millions both in Europe and America, enthusiastic men and
women offered their services, even children were taught to give their
pocket-money for a cause so holy as that of redeeming the “slave,” while
all this time innumerable multitudes of their own race, their own blood,
those whom God had created their equals, and endowed with like
capacities, instincts, and wants, and therefore designed for the same
happiness as themselves, were left to grovel in midnight darkness and
abject misery.
It is not intended to sneer at or to indulge in unkind criticism on
missionary efforts. On the contrary, it is frankly admitted that they
sprang from the sincerest conviction, and were generally pursued with an
utter disregard of selfish and mercenary considerations; but in not
understanding the diversity of races, these efforts were more likely to
do harm than good. A man’s first duties are to his own household; and no
amount or extent of benefits conferred on strangers, can excuse him for
neglecting the former; and even if the “heathen”—the Negro, Indian, and
Sandwich Islander—had been benefited by the efforts of Wilberforce and
his followers, the neglect of the ignorant, darkened, and miserable
millions of their own race, was a wrong that scarcely has a parallel in
history. But they did not benefit the subordinate races, but, on the
contrary, assuming them _to be beings like themselves_, when they were
widely different beings, they necessarily injured them; and when it is
reflected that they not only neglected the ignorant and degraded
multitudes of their own race, but got up a false issue, in order to
distract the attention and conceal the wrongs of their own people, then
an unequalled crime was committed.
The government of England, which is simply an embodiment of the class to
which Wilberforce belonged, acted in concert with these religious
efforts; and thus we see the leaders of the popular cause in the Old
World, Fox and Robespierre, the Church and Aristocracy, all acting
together in a common cause, and laboring, in fact, to retard the
progress and the liberation of millions upon millions of their own race,
under the pretence, and doubtless with many, in the belief, that they
were laboring for the benefit of the negro and other subordinate races.
The government expended about a thousand millions to crush out American
liberty in 1776; but it is quite likely that an almost equal sum,
expended for the professed benefit of the negro, has accomplished vastly
more than all other things together to protract the liberation of her
own masses. It has been estimated that six hundred millions have been
expended nominally to put down the slave trade, but in reality to
pervert the natural relations of races, and force the subordinate negro
to the _status_ of the British laborer. The interest on this enormous
sum is annually drawn from the sweat and toil of the English masses; and
every hut and cottage in the British Islands is forced to surrender a
portion of its daily food, or of the daily earnings of its owner, to pay
the interest on money squandered on the negro in America! The amount
thus paid, properly expended, would be amply sufficient to give a good
English education to the entire laboring class; but that would be an
overwhelming calamity to the governing class, who could not retain their
power for a single day after the masses were thus enlightened.
A few years since, famine and pestilence swept over Ireland, carrying
off some three millions of the Irish people, all of whom might have been
saved if the annual amount wasted on negroes in America had been applied
to this beneficent and legitimate purpose. Indeed, it is quite possible
that if the money wrung from the sweat and toil of Irishmen alone, for
the pretended benefit of the negro, had been appropriated to the relief
of the suffering multitudes of that unhappy people, few would really
have perished. The mortgage on the bodies and souls of future
generations of British laborers, for the avowed purpose of “doing good”
to the negro, enormous as the amount may be—and it has been estimated as
high as one thousand million dollars—is only a portion of the vast waste
and wholesale destruction of property involved in the British Free Negro
policy, or so-called schemes of philanthropy. Farms and plantations in
Jamaica and other islands, valued at fifty thousand pounds prior to the
“emancipation,” were afterward sold with difficulty at ten and even five
thousand pounds; and indeed extensive districts were abandoned by their
unfortunate owners. An infamous system of fraud and inhumanity,
practiced of late years on the ignorant and simple Chinese and other
Asiatics, has enabled some planters to recover and restore their wasted
and plundered estates; and the vile hypocrites who filled the world with
their doleful lamentations over the sorrows of Africa, not only wink at
this infinitely greater wrong practiced on Asiatics, but resort to the
_effects_ attending it, as a proof that emancipation has not ruined
these beautiful islands! Could audacity and hypocrisy surpass, or did
they ever surpass, this shameless fraud? But this new and vastly more
atrocious system of “man-stealing,” is transitional and temporary. The
Mongol or Asiatic is rapidly worked up and destroyed in the West Indies;
and, as no females are introduced, they can never become an essential or
permanent element of the population.
The negro, forced from his normal condition, and into unnatural relation
to the white man, must relapse into his African habits, just as fast as
the white element disappears; and as the latter is relatively feeble,
the time must soon come, unless we take possession and restore the
natural order, when civilization itself will utterly perish, and the
great heart of the continent be surrendered to African savagism! The
eternal and immovable laws fixed forever in the heart and organism of
things, can not be changed or modified by human folly, fraud, or power;
and therefore the climate, the soil, the products, and the _means_ that
the Almighty has ordained shall be used to make them tributary to human
welfare, have their fixed and everlasting relations since time began.
The brain of the white man and the muscles of the negro, the mind of the
superior and the body of the inferior race, in natural relation to each
other, are the vital principles of tropical civilization, without which
it is as impossible that civilization should exist in the great centre
of the continent, as that vegetation should spring from granite, or
animals exist without atmospheric air; and, therefore, thrusting the
negro from his natural sphere into unnatural relations with the white
man, necessarily destroys the latter, and drives the other into his
inherent and original Africanism.
The delusion, the folly, or the fraud of Wilberforce and his associates,
in presenting a false issue to their own wronged and oppressed millions,
and thus diverting their attention from their own oppressions to the
imaginary sufferings of negroes and other subordinate races, is so
transcendent, its magnitude so enormous, that we have no terms in our
language that can express it; but great and indeed awful as may be this
wrong on the white man, it is in some respects really surpassed by the
evils, if not the wrongs, inflicted on the negro. More than one million
of negroes are believed to have perished, through the means resorted to
to suppress the slave trade; and now it is admitted that those attempts
have not prevented the importation of one single negro! The world needed
the products of the tropics; the labor of a certain number of negroes
was needed to furnish these products; and therefore, when fifty thousand
were required in Cuba, eighty thousand were shipped on the African
coast, thus leaving a margin of thirty thousand to be destroyed by
interference with the laws of demand and supply. Who can contemplate
these frightful results without awe, and sorrow, and pity, not alone for
the victims, but for the authors of such wide-spread and boundless
calamity. The crusades of the middle ages are now recognized as utterly
baseless—simple human delusions, in which millions of lives were
sacrificed, not to an idea, but to a false assumption—an assumption that
the Holy Sepulchre could be recovered at Jerusalem. That crusade of
“humanity,” in behalf of the subordinate races, set up by Wilberforce
and his associates in modern times, is also a simple delusion, based on
a false assumption, the assumption that negroes are _black_-white men,
or men like ourselves, and though not so fatal to human life as the
former, its effects or influences on human welfare are vastly and
immeasurably more deplorable.
Such is the great “anti-slavery” delusion of our times. It is wholly
European and monarchical in its origin; and leaving out of view all
other considerations, its mere existence among us, or that any
considerable number of Americans could be so deluded and mentally so
degraded, as to embrace it, will astonish posterity to the latest
generations. We are in contact with the negro—we see he is a negro—a
different being from ourselves. We will not—even the most deluded
Abolitionist will not, in his own case or family, act on the assumption
that he is a being like himself, indeed, would rather see his child
carried to the grave than intermarried with a negro, however rich,
cultivated, and pious; and rather than thus live out his own professed
belief, he would prefer the death of his whole household. The European,
on the contrary, naturally enough supposes the negro to differ only in
color; and the monarchist—the enemy of Democracy—the man opposed to the
great principle of equality underlying our system—just as naturally
demands that we shall be consistent and apply it to negroes. But instead
of enlightening this European ignorance, and indignantly rejecting this
monarchical impudence, which proposes that we shall degrade our blood
and destroy our institutions, by including a subordinate race in our
political system, we have foolishly, wickedly, and abjectly assented to
the European assumption, and millions of Americans have based their
reasonings, and to a certain extent their actions, on this palpable,
fundamental, and monstrous falsehood. Those portions of the country most
directly under the mental dictation of the Old World, are those, of
course, most given up to the delusion, but nearly the whole northern
mind has adopted it as a mental habit. The time, however, has come when
it must be exploded, and the _reason_ of the people restored, or it will
drag after it consequences and calamities that one shudders to
contemplate. Eighty years ago it was an abstraction, universally
assented to, and just as universally rejected in practice; for all the
States save one then recognized the legal subordination of the negro as
a social necessity, whatever the speculative notions were on this
subject. They generally believed that, in some indefinite or mysterious
manner, it would—or rather that the negro would—become extinct; and as
the industrial powers of this element of the general population was not
specifically adapted to our then territory, all perhaps were willing to
hope that it should some day disappear. But the vast acquisition of
Southern territory, the discovery and opening up of new channels of
industry, and the extensive cultivation of those great staples so
essential to human welfare, which are only to be attained on this
continent by the labor of the negro when directed by the white man; and,
moreover, the rapid increase of this population, and the certainty that
it must remain forever an element of our population, demand that this
mighty delusion shall be exposed, as it is in fact the vilest and most
infamous fraud on the freedom, dignity, and welfare of the white
millions ever witnessed since the world began.
CHAPTER II.
GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION.
The organic world is separated into two great divisions, animal and
vegetable, or into animate and inanimate beings. In regard to the
vegetable kingdom, as it is termed, it is not necessary to say a word;
those desirous of obtaining a thorough knowledge of animal life,
however, had better begin their studies with the more elementary and
simple forms of vegetable being. Many persons suppose that the whole
animate existence is linked together by connecting or continuous
gradations. In a certain sense this may be said to be so; nevertheless,
absolutely considered, each family or form of being is a complete and
independent creation. There are resemblances and approximations as well
as gradations, yet each is perfect in itself, and makes up an entire
world of its own. The Almighty Creator, in His infinite wisdom, has
provided against chance, or accident, or human caprice, and placed each
and every one of His works in a position of such absolute independence,
that one of them, or more, perhaps, might utterly perish, and yet the
beauty and harmony of nature would remain unimpaired. It is certain that
some species of animals belonging to the existing order have utterly
disappeared, and it is quite probable that some species of men have
perished; but the grand economy of nature is unaffected by it. It is
thought that the aborigines of this continent will, in time, utterly
perish, and yet no one supposes that that event will disturb the
operations of nature or deface the fair form of creation. This shows
that there is no continuous or connecting link even among species of the
same family or form of being. If there were such—if all the forms of
life were continuous and connecting gradations—then it is evident that
the destruction of one of these connecting links would cast the whole
economy of being into utter confusion. In a watch, or any other
elaborate machinery of human contrivance, a single wheel, or cog, or
link, however minute, torn from its place, involves the disruption, if
not absolute destruction, of the whole machine. And so it is in the
economy of individual life, for, though one organ may be disabled,
another, to a certain extent, and for a given time, supplies its place;
yet the vital forces are enfeebled from the instant of such accident,
and life, if not interrupted, is always impaired. But a species, a
genus, a class, perhaps, a great number of these, might disappear,
utterly vanish from existence, and those remaining would preserve the
integrity and completeness the Creator had endowed them with at the
beginning. While each and every form of life is, therefore, perfect in
itself and independent of all others, there are resemblances and
approximations that must be regarded as of vital importance.
Naturalists have divided or separated the organic world into classes,
orders, genera, species and varieties. Classes are those like the
mammalia—that is, all animals where the female nourishes its offspring
by mammary glands. Orders are those like the quadrumana—all those having
four hands. A genus, or a family proper, is composed of species; and a
species includes varieties, or possible varieties, of the same being
under different circumstances. But these classifications are, to a
considerable extent, arbitrary; and though they serve the purpose of
facilitating our studies, they may also lead us astray, if too closely
followed. Genera, or families proper, in many cases at least, are,
however, susceptible of very exact definitions. So, too, are species.
For example:—The simiadæ, or monkey family, are so entirely distinct
that they will not be or need not be confounded with anything else. Some
ignorant or superficial persons, with the false notion of continuous and
connecting gradations, have supposed the negro something midway between
men and animals. But there is no such monstrosity in nature, for, as
already observed, each form of being is a complete and independent
creation in itself. A genus is composed of a given number of species,
all different from each other, and, it need not be repeated, independent
of each other. These genera are believed to be incapable of interunion
with other genera, though this has been questioned in some cases.
Species are capable of a limited interunion, though it may be doubted if
such interunion ever occurs in a wild or savage state. And as each
species is different in form and character from others, so the limited
capacity for interunion varies, or in other words, hybrids—the product
of different species—vary in their virility or power of reproduction.
The given number of species of which a genus is composed, ascends or
descends in the scale of being, that is, there is a head and base to the
generic column. The one next above the most inferior has all the
qualities of the latter, but these qualities have a fuller development,
that is, the organization is more elaborate and the corresponding
faculties are of a higher order. And indeed this is not confined to mere
species or genera even, but is true of widely separated beings. Thus,
the exalted and elegant Caucasian mother—the habitue of the Fifth avenue
or St. Germain—nourishes her offspring by the same process common to the
meanest of the mammalia. So, too, in the process of gestation, the
function of mastication, deglutition, digestion, the sense of taste, of
sight, etc.—the function is absolutely the same, but what a world of
difference in the mode of its manifestation, that distinguishes the
human being from the animal!
Investigations made by some French physiologists would seem to show that
the mysterious problem of animal life might be simplified, and clearly
grasped by the human intellect, by simply tracing this great fact to its
elementary sources. It is said that the embryo (Caucasian) fœtus passes
through all the forms of an innumerable number of lower gradations
before it reaches its own specific development. And be this as it may,
enough is seemingly established to demonstrate its truth in respect to a
genus or family, and especially is it demonstrated in the human
creation. At a certain stage of fœtal development there is the cranial
manifestation of the Negro, then the aboriginal American, the Malay, the
Mongolian, and finally the broad expansion and oval perfection of the
most perfect of all, the superior Caucasian. Nor can these
demonstrations be mistaken, for it is not a mere question of size but of
form. The negro brain is small and longitudinal—thus approximating to
the simiadæ and other animals. The aboriginal is larger and
quadrangular, almost square in its general outline. The Mongolian
pyramidal, and still larger than either of the others. Finally, at the
period of complete gestation, there is the full and complete oval
development, alone peculiar to the Caucasian. The force of these
distinctions may be easily grasped by the non-scientific reader by
bearing in mind that a female of either of these races or species could
no more give birth to a child with the cranial development of a race
different from her own, than she could to that of an inferior animal.
The distinctions of nature, or the boundaries which separate even
species from each other, are absolutely impassable; each has the hand of
the Eternal impressed upon it forever, which neither accident nor time
can modify in the slightest particular. They have, it is true, a limited
capacity for interunion, and we sometimes witness the disgusting
spectacle of a white woman with a so-called negro husband. But while the
offspring of this unnatural connection is limited in number, they
partake of the nature of both the parents, and thus the birth becomes
possible, though at the expense of great physical suffering to the
mother and perhaps in every case shortening her existence. In another
place this subject will be more especially discussed; it is only
referred to in this connection to show the perfect order and harmony in
the economy of animal life. The primal steps—the process of
reproduction—the starting-point of creation—being in complete harmony
with the laws governing the being, man or animal, after it has reached
its mature development.
The same eternal separation of all the forms of being and the same
eternal approximations, however varied the manifestations may be at
different periods, remain unaltered and unalterable. Linnæus ventured to
place “man” in the category or class mammalia, while at the same time he
separated the mammalia from birds and other forms of being—thus assuming
that the human creation had a closer union with pigs and dogs, than the
latter have with birds, etc. At this every Christian and believer in a
future state of being must revolt, for though there are certain
approximations that cannot be disregarded, nevertheless it is absolutely
certain that the human creation is separated by an interval wider than
that separating any of the forms of mere animal life, and therefore his
classification must be wrong.
It is not intended to make this a scientific work, but on the contrary,
to popularize for the general reading of the people, some few elementary
truths of zoology and physiology in order that they can better
comprehend the subject really to be discussed, viz.:—the specific
differences and specific relations of the white and black races. But the
author feels himself conscientiously impelled to dissent from the
classifications of Linnæus, and those modern naturalists who follow him,
not only as being untrue in point of fact, but pregnant with mighty
mischief. Linnæus placed “man” in the category mammalia, but made him an
order, a genus and species by himself. This is false as a matter of
fact, for in the entire world of animal existence there is no such fact
as a single species. All the forms of life are made up of groups or
families, properly genera, and each of these is composed of a certain
number of species. These species, as already observed, differ from each
other. They begin with the lowest, or simplest, or grossest formation,
and rise, one above the other, in the scale of being, until the group is
completed; so that they are all, not only specifically different from
each other, but absolutely unlike each other in every thing, in the
minutest particle of elementary matter as well as in those things
palpable to the sense. Generally considered, they resemble each other,
but specifically considered, they are absolutely distinct, and, it need
not be repeated, the distinctions in each case or each individual
species are also specific.
That Linnæus and other European naturalists, and especially the
ethnologists, should make such a mistake, and suppose that the human
creation is composed of a single species, is perhaps natural enough, for
they saw but one—the two hundred millions of Europe, except a few
thousand Laplanders, being all Caucasians. But then it is strange how
those so ready to class men with animals should so widely depart from
the spirit and order of their own classification. They must have known
that in the whole world of animate existence there was no such fact as a
single species, and therefore when assuming only a single human species,
that they directly contradicted or ignored the most constant, universal
and uniform fact in organic life, a fact underlying and forming the very
basis of all with which they were dealing. This mistake, or
misconception, or ignorance of European ethnologists, however, is of no
particular importance. They saw no other and therefore could know of no
other species of men except their own, and though its effect on
ourselves has been mischievous, the cause of their misconception is so
palpable to men’s common sense that it only needs to be pointed out to
be utterly rejected. It is about as respectable as the assumptions of
the northern Abolitionists, who, though not even venturing out of
Massachusetts, affect to know, and doubtless really believe that they do
know, more about the internal condition of South Carolina or Virginia
than the people of those States themselves. But facts are stubborn
things, and, as the Spanish proverb says, “seeing is believing.” It is
impossible that the northern Abolitionist who never ventured out of New
England can comprehend a condition of society that he has never seen.
So, too, the authority of European writers, necessarily ignorant of the
subject, will be rejected by those whose very senses assure them that
negroes are specifically different from white men. And that mental
dominion which, beginning with the early planting of European colonies
on this continent, has continued long after political independence has
been secured, only needs to be cast off altogether, to convince every
one of the utter absurdity of European teachings on the subject.
But there is an objection to the Linnæan classification infinitely more
important than this misconception in regard to species. He places his
one human species (Caucasian) in the class mammalia, and therefore
assumes that the human creation has a closer connection with a class of
animals, than these animals themselves have with some other forms of
animal life. For example: men (and white men, too) approximate more
closely to dogs and cats than the latter do to owls and eagles! It does
not help the matter to say that this is only in their animal structures,
for there is an invariable and imperishable unity between the material
organization and the external manifestations or faculties, which is
fixed forever, and the conclusion or inference from the Linnæan
assumption is unavoidable—if men approximate more closely to a class of
animals than these animals do to some other class, then it is absurd to
suppose the purposes assigned them by the Almighty are so widely
different as our reason and instinct alike impel us to believe. To hope
for or to believe in immortality, or in a destiny so transcendent, while
beings that closely resembled us perished with this life, in common with
those still farther separated from themselves, was such a contradiction
to reason, that men involuntarily shrunk from it, and the result has
been to repel vast numbers of people from the study and investigation of
this most essential element of all knowledge. The Materialists promptly
accepted it, and wielded it with tremendous effect in advancing their
gloomy and forbidding philosophy, while those impelled by that innate
and indescribable consciousness of the soul itself, which, in its
Godlike knowledge, rises high beyond the realms of reason and mere human
will, and assures them of a life immortal and everlasting, shrunk from
all study or investigation of the laws of physical life, as if it
involved consequences fatal to that higher life of the soul. The former
said, and said truly, if men have a closer union with the quadrumana
than the latter have with birds, etc., then it is all nonsense to
suppose that they have an eternity of life, while those separated by a
still wider interval are limited to the present. And the only reply to
their reasoning has been the refusal to investigate the subject or to
study the laws of God, and to admit, inferentially at least, that there
was a contradiction between the word and the works of the Almighty.
Nothing is more common than to find men of great intelligence on almost
every subject except this, the most vital, indeed the foundation and
starting-point of all real knowledge. Especially are clergymen ignorant,
and those who assume to be the interpreters of the laws of God are not
unfrequently the most ignorant of the most palpable and fundamental of
these laws. This should not be so, and in all reasonable probability
would not be so had it not been for the untruthful and unfortunate
classification of Linnæus. Instead of meeting the Materialists on their
own ground, and showing them that however approximating to certain forms
of animal life, the human creation was yet separated by an absolutely
boundless as well as impassable interval—for the distinctions between
them are utterly unlike those separating mere animal beings—they tacitly
admitted the truth of their assumptions, and met it by a blind and
foolish refusal to investigate the matter, indeed have generally cast
their influence on the side of ignorance, and advised against the study
of nature and the noblest works of God.
But there can be no contradiction; God cannot lie; and whatever seeming
conflict there may be at times between His word and His works, a further
search is alone needed to show their perfect uniformity. It is true that
the physical resemblances between men and beings of the class mammalia
seem closer than those of the latter and some other forms of life, but
while there is also an eternal correspondence between structure and
functions, it is rational and philosophical to suppose that the
difference in the qualities or external manifestations is the safest
standard of comparison. Or in other words, whatever may be the seeming
physical resemblances, the differences in the faculties show that the
former are not reliable. For example: in contemplating the intelligence
of certain quadrupeds and birds, can any one suppose or believe for a
moment that the difference between them in this respect equals or even
approaches to that separating both from human beings? And in the present
state of our knowledge, our ignorance of the elementary arrangement of
organic life, it is surely safer and more philosophical to be governed
by our reason rather than our senses—to accept the differences which
separate human intelligence from the animal world as boundless and
immeasurable when compared with the apparent physical approximations
which seem to unite us with a class of the latter.
In conclusion, it is scarcely necessary to repeat that there is a fixed,
uniform, and universal correspondence between structure and function, or
between organism and the purpose it is designed to fulfil. We do not
know nor need to know the cause of this or the nature of this unity. We
only know, and are only permitted to know, that it exists, and are not
bound to accept the dogma of the Materialists, that function is the
result of organism; nor that of their opponents, who still more falsely
imagine results without causes, or that there can be functions without,
organism. Truth, in this instance, lies between extremes:—functions or
faculties cannot exist without a given structure or organism, but they
are not a result of that organism. They exist together inseparably,
universally, eternally dependent on each other, but not a result of
either. To see there must be eyes; to hear, ears; to walk, the organism
of locomotion; to manifest a certain extent of intelligence there must
be a corresponding mental organism, but there is no such thing proper as
cause and effect, nothing but fact—the fact of mutual existence.
CHAPTER III.
THE HUMAN CREATION.
The human creation, like all other families or forms of being, is
composed of a genus, which includes some half dozen or more species. It
has been the fashion to call these permanent varieties, and almost every
writer on ethnology has made his own classification, or rather has
created what number he pleased of these “imaginary varieties.” Agassiz,
unquestionably the greatest of American naturalists, but unfortunately
not much of a physiologist, and therefore unprepared to deal with the
higher truths of ethnology, supposes several species of white men, and,
in regard to the subordinate races, would doubtless multiply them _ad
infinitum_. But at this time, or in the existing state of our knowledge,
the number actually known to exist cannot be assumed beyond that already
named. They are thus:—1st. The Caucasian. 2d. The Mongolian. 3d. The
Malay or Oceanic. 4th. The Aboriginal American. 5th. The Esquimaux; and
6th. The Negro or typical African.
The Caucasian can be confounded with no other, for though in some
localities, climate and perhaps other causes darken the skin, sometimes
with a deep olive tint, and extending, as with the Bedouins and the Jews
of the Malabar coast, to almost black, the flowing beard (more constant
than color), projecting forehead, oval features, erect posture and
lordly presence, stamp him the master man wherever found.
The Mongolian, though less distinctive, is, however, sufficiently so,
for his yellow skin, squat figure, beardless face, pyramidal head, and
almond eyes, can scarcely be confounded with any other form of man. The
Malay is less known, and therefore more difficult to describe. They are
darker than the Mongol, though in some islands of a bright copper color,
and indeed, vary from light olive to dark brown, and as in the case of
the Australians, to deep black, but with no other approximation to the
Negro.
The vast populations known under the term Papuan, and mainly Malay, are
doubtless extensively mixed with the Negro, for however remote the time,
or whatever the form or mode, real negro populations have resided in
tropical Asia, and left behind them these remains of their former
existence. In some islands, like New Zealand, etc., the ruling dynasties
or principal families have a considerable infusion of Caucasian blood,
which is shown in their tall, erect form, more or less beard, fair
complexion, and manly presence, and intellectually in their prompt and
often intelligent acceptance of Christianity.
The Indian, American, or Aboriginal, needs no description; suffice it to
say that, from the mouth of the Columbia River to Cape Horn, they are
the same species. It is quite possible, indeed probable, that some
species, formerly existing on this continent, have disappeared—utterly
perished. The investigations of Dr. Tschudi warrant this belief, though
his nice discriminations in regard to some of the bones of the head are
of little or no importance, as all this might be, and doubtless was, the
result of artificial causes. But crania discovered in Southern Mexico
and Yucatan, as well as in Peru and Brazil, are sufficient evidence to
warrant the belief that a still inferior race did once really inhabit
this continent, but whether aboriginal or brought here by some superior
race, may never be known. The remains of ancient structures in Yucatan,
in Peru, in Mexico, in Brazil, all over the southern portion of the
continent, show simply the traces of Caucasian intrusion. It has been
generally supposed that Columbus and his companions were the first white
men that ever visited this continent, but it may have been discovered,
and to a certain extent, occupied, at least certain localities occupied,
before even Europe itself, or before the period of authentic history.
Any one visiting Mexico, Puebla, or other cities of Spanish America, is
amazed and bewildered with the contrast between the vast and magnificent
structures that meet his eye, and the existing population. He
involuntarily asks himself, “Can these people be the authors of all this
art, this beauty, strength and magnificence? Can these miserable,
barefooted, blanketed, idle and stolid-looking creatures have built
these palaces, these churches, these bridges, these mighty structures,
which seem to have been built for eternity itself, so strong and secure
are their foundations?” Some years hence this contrast would be still
more palpable, and left to themselves, a time would come when it would
be obvious that the existing population had nothing to do with these
structures, for the mixed blood would have disappeared, and there would
be only the simple, unadulterated “native American,” as discovered by
the Spaniards three centuries ago. And we have only to apply this to the
antiquities of America to understand its history, at all events, to
understand the meaning of those half-buried monuments so frequently
found on its surface. Adventurers, often, doubtless, shipwrecked
mariners, were cast upon the coasts of America. Possibly in some cases
before Rome was founded, or Babylon itself was the mighty capital of a
still more mighty empire, these enterprising or unfortunate men found
themselves undisputed sovereigns of the New World. We know that Northmen
found their way here in the eighth century, and doubtless they were
preceded at intervals by numerous other Caucasians. Settling in some
localities they reigned undisputed masters, built cities, organized
governments, framed laws, and laid the foundations of a civilized
society. But intermarrying with the natives, they were swallowed up by
mongrelism, and, in obedience to an immutable law of physical life,
doomed to perish, and at a given period, the white blood extinct, there
remained nothing to denote its former existence, except the half-buried
palaces and ruined monuments yet to be traced over large portions of the
continent. The Toltecs, Aztecs, etc., are simply the remnants of these
extinct Caucasians, just as the present population, if left alone in
Mexico, the latest portion of it, with Caucasian blood, would be the
ruling force, and perhaps retain somewhat or some portion of the Spanish
habitudes.
The pure native mind is capable of a certain development, but that is
fixed and determinate, and beyond which it can no more progress than it
can alter the color of its skin or the form of its brain. Powhatan’s
empire in Virginia was undoubtedly aboriginal and probably called out
the utmost resources and reached the utmost limit of the Indian mind.
The Indian has, and does manifest to a certain extent, a capacity of
mental action, but this is too feeble and limited to make a permanent
impression on the physical agents that surround him, and therefore he
can have no history, for there are no materials—nothing to record. The
term, therefore, “Indian antiquities,” is a misnomer and the great
congressional enterprise under the editorship of Mr. Schoolcraft an
obvious absurdity.
The Polar or Esquimaux race has been least known of all, and prior to
the explorations of that true hero and true son of science, the late Dr.
Kane, was scarcely known except in name. It is both Asiatic and
American, but which continent is its birth-place is matter of doubt. The
facilities for passing from one continent to the other were doubtless
much greater at some former period than at present, and not only men but
animals may have done so with ease. Except a few well-known species of
animals and vegetables, which are essential to the well-being of the
Caucasian, and which have accompanied him in all his migrations, each
species has its own centre of existence, beyond or outside of which it
is limited to a determinate existence. The Arctic animals are quite
numerous, and differ widely from all others, but they are absolutely the
same in Asia as in America, and therefore must have passed from one to
the other, and man, however subordinate or inferior to other races
endowed by nature with ample powers of locomotion and migration, could
meet with only trifling obstacles in passing from one continent to the
other. This race, though thus far of little or no importance, is
doubtless superior to the Negro, for the necessities of its existence,
the terrible struggle for very life in those bleak and desolate regions,
infer the possession of powers superior to those of a race whose centre
of life is in the fertile and luxuriant tropics, where nature produces
spontaneously, and where the idle and sensual Negro only needs to gather
these products to exist and multiply his kind.
Finally, we have the Negro—last and least, the lowest in the scale but
possibly the first in the order of Creation, for there are many reasons
in the nature and structure of things that indicate, if they do not
altogether warrant, the inference that the Negro was first and the
Caucasian latest in the programme or order of Creation. The typical,
woolly-haired Negro may have been created in tropical Asia, and carried
thence to Africa, as in modern times he has been carried to tropical
America. Like other subordinate races, it never migrates, but the
extensive traces of its former existence in Asia show beyond doubt that
that was either its primal home, or that it had been carried there by
the Caucasian long anterior to the historic era. But it is now found in
its pure state or specific form in Africa alone, and even here large
portions of it have undergone extensive adulteration. Our knowledge of
Africa is very limited and consequently very imperfect. African
travelers, explorers, missionaries, etc., ignorant of the ethnology, of
the physiology, of the true nature of the Negro, and moreover, bitten by
modern philanthropy, a disease more loathsome and fatal to the moral
than small-pox or plague to the physical nature, have been bewildered,
and perverted, and rendered unfit for truthful observation or useful
discovery before they set foot on its soil or felt a single flush of its
burning sun. With the monstrous conception that the Negro was a being
like themselves, with the same instincts, wants, etc., and the same
(latent) mental capacities, all they saw, felt, or reasoned upon in
Africa was seen through this false medium, and therefore of little or no
value. Thus Barth and Livingston encountering a mongrel tribe or
community, with, of course, a certain degree or extent of
civilization—the result of Caucasian innervation, or perhaps the remains
of a former pure white population, note it down and spread it before the
world as evidence of Negro capacity, and an indication of the future
progress of the race! Myriads and countless myriads of white men have
lived and died on the soil of Africa; vast populations and entire
nations have emigrated to that continent. At one time there were half a
million of Christians (white) and forty thousand inmates of religious
houses in the valley of the Nile alone, while three hundred Christian
Bishops assembled at Carthage, and it will be a reasonable assumption to
say that since the Christian era, there have been five hundred millions
of whites in Africa. What has become of them? They have not
emigrated—have not been slaughtered in battle, nor destroyed by
pestilence, nor devoured by famine, and yet these countless hosts, these
innumerable millions, these Christian devotees and holy bishops have all
disappeared, as utterly perished as if the earth had opened and
swallowed them up. With the downfall of the Roman empire, civilization
receded from Africa, and the white population were gradually swallowed
up by mongrelism. The Negro, being the predominant element, absorbed, or
rather annihilated, the lesser one, and the result is now seen in
numerous, almost countless, mixed hybrid or mongrel tribes and
populations spread all over that continent. It is certainly possible,
indeed probable, that there are two or three, or more species of men,
closely approximating, it is true, nevertheless specifically different
from the woolly-haired or typical Negro. One of these (the Hottentots or
Bushmen) with the true negro features but of dirty yellow color, it
would seem almost certain must be a separate species; but until some one
better qualified to judge, than those hitherto relied on, has
investigated this subject, it is only safe to assume but a single
species, and that the other and numerous populations of Africa, however
resembling or approximating to the typical Negro, are hybrids and
mongrels, the effete and expiring remains of the mighty populations and
imposing civilizations that once flourished upon its soil. There may be
also other species besides the Mongol in Asia, and beside the Malay in
Oceanica, and it is quite probable that some species have totally
perished. But it is certain that those thus briefly discussed now exist;
that their location, their history, as far as they can be said to have a
history, their physical qualities and mental condition, in short, their
specific characters, are plainly marked and well understood.
Nevertheless, and though all this belongs to the domain of fact, and it
is as absurd to question it as it would be to question the existence of
diverse species in any of the genera or families of the animal creation,
the “world” generally holds to the notion of a single human race. It is
not designed to expressly argue this point, for, to the American mind,
it is so obvious, if not self-evident, that the Human Creation is
composed of diverse species, that argument is misplaced if not
absolutely absurd. The European people rarely see the Negro or other
species of men, and therefore the notion of a single human race or
species (with them) is natural enough, indeed a mental necessity.
Ethnologists—men of vast erudition, of noble intellect and honest and
conscientious intentions—have devoted their powers to this subject, and
volume upon volume has been published to demonstrate the assumption of a
single race. Buffon, Blumenbach, Tiedemann, Prichard, even Cuvier
himself, have given in their adherence to this dogma, or rather it
should be said have set out with the assumption of a single race and
collected a vast amount of material—of fact or presumed fact—to
demonstrate its supposed truth. Nor is it an easy matter to explode
their sophistries or to disprove their assumptions. With great and
admitted claims to scientific acquirement and powers of reasoning, they
combine undoubted honesty of intention and seemingly careful and patient
investigation, and the amount or extent of evidence adduced, the
elaborate and mighty array of fact, of learned and imposing authority
appealed to, and the fatiguing if not unwarrantable argument put
forward, made it, and still make it difficult to reply to them or to
disprove their assumptions. Any question, no matter what its nature, or
however deficient in the elements of truth, still admits of argument,
and falsehood may often lead astray the reason even when the judgment
itself is convinced to the contrary. And these European advocates of the
dogma of a single race have such a boundless field for discussion, can
so bewilder and fatigue the reason as well as pervert the imagination by
their plausible arguments, drawn from the analysis of animal life, that
it is not wonderful they should lead astray the popular mind; nor is it
surprising that those among us claiming to be men of science should bow
to their authority, for though common sense rejects their arguments,
there are few of sufficient mental independence to withstand that
authority, when backed up by such an imposing array of distinguished
names. But the strong common sense that distinguishes our people will
not be, indeed, cannot be, deceived on this subject. The American or the
Southern knows that the Negro is a Negro, and is not a Caucasian, just
as clearly, absolutely and unmistakably as he knows that black is black
and is not white, that a man is a man and is not a woman—that a pigeon
is a pigeon and is not a robin—or a shad a shad and not a salmon. He
sees negro parents have negro offspring; that Indians have Indian
offspring; and that whites have white offspring, “each after its kind,”
with the same regularity, uniformity and perfect certainty that is
witnessed in all other forms of existence. There is not a white man or
woman in the Union who, if told of such a thing as white parents with
negro offspring, or negroes with white offspring, would believe it, even
if sworn to by a million of witnesses. Such a belief or such a
conception would be as monstrous, and indeed impossible, as to suppose
that robins had begotten pigeons or horses asses. And the constant
witnessing of this—this undeviating and perpetual order in the economy
of animal life, demonstrates the specific character of the Negro beyond
doubt or possible mistake. Irishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, etc., come
here, settle down, become citizens, and their offspring born and raised
on American soil differ in no appreciable or perceptible manner from
other Americans. But Negroes may have been brought here three centuries
ago, and their offspring of to-day is exactly as it was then, as
absolutely and specifically unlike the American as when the race first
touched the soil and first breathed the air of the New World. It is not
intended, as already observed, to argue this matter, for it is a
palpable and unavoidable fact that Negroes are a separate species; and
though in succeeding chapters of this work the specific qualities are
examined in detail, these detailed demonstrations are merely designed to
present the physical differences in order to determine the moral
relations, and not by any means to demonstrate a fact always palpable to
the senses. Even those foolish people, disposed to pervert terms or play
upon words—to admit the fact, thus palpable, but ready to confound and
distort the reason by the application or use of false terms, cannot
avoid the inevitable conclusion of distinct species. To conceal or keep
out of sight this truth, some have thus admitted these every day seen
and unmistakable specific differences in dividing races, but a silly as
strange perversity has prompted them to use the term “permanent
varieties” instead of “species,” as if white and black were variations
and not specialties. It is a fact, an existing, unalterable,
demonstrable, and unmistakable fact, that the Negro is specifically
different from ourselves—a fact uniform and invariable, which has
accompanied each generation, and under every condition of circumstances,
of climate, social condition, education, time and accident, from the
landing at Jamestown to the present day. The Naturalist, reasoning alone
on this basis of fact, says, that which has been uniform and undeviating
for three hundred years, in all kinds of climate and under all kinds of
circumstances, in a state of “freedom” or condition of “slavery,” under
the burning Equator and amid the snows of Canada, without change or
symptom of change, must have been thus three thousand years ago. And he
reasons truly, for the excavations of Champolion and others demonstrate
the specific character of this race four thousand years ago, with as
absolute and unmistakable certainty as it is now actually demonstrated
to the external sense of the present generation. And the Naturalist,
reasoning still further on this basis of fact, says, “that which has
existed four thousand years, without the slightest change or
modification, which in all kinds of climate and under every condition of
circumstances preserves its integrity and transmits, in the regular and
normal order, to each succeeding generation the exact and complete type
of itself, must have been thus at the beginning, and when the existing
order was first called into being by the Almighty Creator.” And
contemplating the subject from this stand-point, and reasoning from
analogy, or exactly as we do in respect to other and all other forms of
existence, the conclusion is irresistible and unavoidable that the
several human races or species originally came into being exactly as
they now exist, as we know they have existed through all human
experience, and without a re-creation, must continue to exist so long as
the world itself lasts, or the existing order remains. But a large
portion of the “world” believe that the Bible teaches the descent of all
mankind from a single pair, and consequently that there must have been a
supernatural interposition at some subsequent period, which changed the
human creation into its actual and existing form of being. And if there
has been, at any time a special revelation made to man, and supernatural
interposition in regard to other things, then this alteration or
re-creation of separate species is no more irrational or improbable than
other things pertaining to that revelation, and which are universally
assented to by the religious world. A revelation is necessarily
supernatural—that is, in direct contradiction to the normal order; but
it may be said that the Creator is not the slave of His own laws, and in
His immaculate wisdom and boundless power might see fit to change the
order of the human creation; and certainly the same Almighty power which
took the Hebrews over the Red Sea on dry land, that saved a pair of all
living things in the ark of Noah, or dispersed the builders of Babel,
could, with equal ease, reform, or re-create human life, and in future
ordain that instead of one there should be several species of men. This
is a matter, however, in regard to which the author does not assume to
decide, to question, to venture an opinion, or even to hazard a
conjecture. It is clearly and absolutely beyond the reach of human
intelligence, and therefore not within the province of legitimate
enquiry. The Almighty has, in His infinite wisdom and boundless
beneficence, hidden from us many things, a knowledge of which would
doubtless injure us, and the origin of the human races belongs to this
catalogue. Men may labor to investigate it, to tear aside the veil the
Creator has drawn about it, to unlock the mystery in which He has
shrouded it, and after millions of years thus appropriated, come back to
the starting-point, the simple, palpable, unavoidable truth. They exist,
but why or wherefore, whither they came or whence they go, is beyond the
range of human intelligence. We only know, and are only permitted to
know, that the several species now known to exist have been exactly as
at present in their physical natures and intellectual capacities,
through all human experience and without a supernatural interposition or
re-creation, must continue thus through countless ages, and as long as
the existing order of creation itself continues. This we _know_ beyond
doubt or possible mistake, while, whether it was thus at the beginning,
or changed by a supernatural interposition at some subsequent period, is
now, and always must be, left to conjecture. Those who interpret the
Book of Genesis, or who believe that the Book of Genesis teaches the
origin of the human family from a single pair, will, of course believe
that the Creator subsequently changed them into their present form,
while those who do not thus interpret the Bible will believe, with equal
confidence perhaps, that they were created thus at the beginning. It is
not, nor could it be of the slightest benefit to us to really and truly
know the truth of this matter. All that is essential to our welfare we
already know, or may know, if we properly apply the faculties with which
the Creator has so beneficently endowed us. We only need to apply these
faculties—to investigate the question—to study the differences existing
among the general species of men, and compare their natures and
capabilities with our own, to understand our true relations with them,
and thus to secure our own happiness as well as their well-being, when
placed in juxtaposition with them. All this is so obvious, and the
remote and abstract question of origin so hypothetical and entirely
non-essential, that it seems impossible that intelligent and
conscientious men would ever seek to raise an issue on it, or that they
would overlook the great practical duties involved in the question and
engage in a visionary and unprofitable discussion about that of which
they neither do nor can know anything whatever. Nevertheless, some few
persons seem to be especially desirous to provoke an issue on this
matter, not only with science but with common sense, and a certain
reverend and rather distinguished gentleman has publicly and repeatedly
declared “that the doctrine of a single human race underlies the whole
fabric of religious belief, and if it is rejected, Christianity will be
lost to mankind!” What miserable folly, if nothing worse, is this! It is
a virtual declaration that we must believe or pretend to believe, what
we _know_ to be a _lie_, in order to preserve what we _believe_ to be a
truth. The existence of different species of men belongs to the category
of physical fact—a thing subject to the decision of the senses, and
belief neither has nor can have anything to do with the matter. It is
true, the reverend gentleman in question may shut _his_ eyes and remain
in utter ignorance of the fact, or rather of the laws governing the
fact, and while thus ignorant, may believe, or pretend to believe, that
widely different things constitute the same thing—that white and black
are identical—that white parents had at some remote time and in some
strange and unaccountable manner given birth to Negro offspring; but
what right has he to say, to those who are conscious of the fact of
different species, and who _know_, moreover, that negroes could no more
originate from white parentage than they could from dogs or cats, that
they shall stultify themselves and dishonestly pretend to believe
otherwise, on pain of eternal reprobation, or what he doubtless
considers such, the loss of Christianity to the world? It is not the
desire of the writer to either reconcile the merits of science with
those peculiar interpretations of the Bible, or to exhibit any
contradictions with those interpretations. An undoubting believer
himself in the great doctrines of Christianity, he finds no difficulty
whatever in this respect, and would desire to simply state the _facts_
or _what he knows to be truth_, and leave the reader to form his own
conclusions. But the seemingly predetermined design of some to make an
issue on this matter, to appeal to a supposed popular bigotry and
fanaticism in order to conceal the most vital and most stupendous truth
of modern times—a truth underlying all our sectional difficulties, and
which, truly apprehended by the mind of the masses, will instantly
explode those difficulties—renders it an imperative duty to expose the
folly and sophistry of those who strive to keep it out of sight. They
assume that the Bible teaches the origin of all mankind from a single
pair—that the Mongol, Indian, Negro, etc., with the same origin, have
the same nature as the white man, and consequently have the same natural
rights, and that we owe to them the same duties that we owe to ourselves
or to our own race. And, moreover, they proclaim a belief in this
assumption as essential to salvation, or, in other words, that if it be
rejected Christianity will disappear from the world. It need not be
repeated that the writer will not condescend to argue a self-evident,
actually existing, every-day palpable and unavoidable physical fact, or
insult the reader’s understanding by presenting proofs to show that the
Negro is specifically different from himself—that is a matter beyond the
province of rational discussion, and entirely within the domain of the
senses; yet, as already observed, in the subsequent chapters of this
work the _extent_ of these differences separating whites and blacks will
be demonstrated, their physical differences and approximations shown, in
order to determine their moral relations and social adaptations. But the
assumption that belief in the dogma of a single human race or species is
vital to the preservation of Christianity needs to be exposed, as it is
in reality as monstrous in morals as stupid and absurd in fact. We
cannot _believe_ that which we _know_ to be untrue, and to affect such
belief, however good the motive may seem, must necessarily debauch and
demoralize the whole moral structure. There are many things—such as the
belief in the doctrine of election, original sin, of justification by
faith, that admit of belief—honest, earnest, undoubting belief—for they
are abstractions and purely matters of faith that can never be brought
to the test of physical demonstration, or to the standard of material
fact, but the question of race—the fact of distinct races or rather the
existence of species of Caucasian, Mongols, Negroes, etc., are physical
facts, subject to the senses, and it is beyond the control of the will
to refuse assent to their actual presence. Can a man, by taking thought,
add a cubit to his stature? Can he believe himself something else—a
woman, a dog, or that he does not exist—that black is white, or that red
is yellow, or that the Negro is a white man? It is possible to deceive
and delude ourselves, and believe or think that we believe many things
which our interest, our prejudices, and our caprices prompt us to
believe, but they must be things of an abstract nature, where there are
no physical tests to embarrass us or to compel the will to bow to that
fixed and immutable standard of truth which the Eternal has planted in
the very heart of things, and which otherwise the laws of the mental
organism absolutely force us to recognize. But the existence of distinct
species of men does not belong to this category. It is fact, a palpable,
immediate, demonstrable and unescapable fact. We know, and we cannot
avoid knowing, that the negro is a negro and is not a white man, and
therefore we cannot believe, however much we may strive to do so, that
he is the same being that we are, or in other words, that all mankind
constitute a single race or species. All that is possible or permissible
is to make liars and hypocrites of ourselves—to pretend to believe in a
thing that we do not and cannot believe in—to force this hypocrisy and
pretended belief on others who may happen to have confidence in our
honesty and respect for our ability; and finally, as a salve for our
outraged conscience, to deceive ourselves with the notion that our
motives are good, and the end justifies the means.
But the advocates of the European theory of a single race are faced by
other difficulties, which are quite as unavoidable as those thus briefly
glanced at. They demand that the world shall believe in the dogma of a
single race, but not one among them will act upon it in practice, or
convince others of their sincerity by living up to their avowed belief.
If the Negro had descended from the same parentage, or, except in color
merely, was the same being as ourselves, then there could be no reason
for refusing to amalgamate with him as with the several branches of our
race. But on the contrary, the reverend and distinguished gentleman who
has ventured to declare that the belief that the Negro is a being like
ourselves, is essential to Christianity, would infinitely prefer the
death of his daughter to that of marriage with the most accomplished and
most pious Negro in existence! If he believed in his own assertions in
regard to this matter, then it would be his first and most imperative
duty, as a Christian minister, to set an example to others, to labor
night and day to elevate this (in that case) wronged and outraged
race—indeed, to suffer every personal inconvenience, even martyrdom
itself, in the performance of a duty so obvious and necessary. And when
this theory was at last reduced to practice, and all the existing
distinctions and “prejudices” against the Negro were obliterated, and
the four millions of Negroes amalgamated with the whites, society would
be rewarded by the increased morality and purity that would follow an
act of such transcendent justice. But will any one believe in such a
result—that, reducing to practice the belief, or pretended belief of a
single race, will or would benefit American society? No, indeed; on the
contrary, every one _knows_—even the wildest and most perverted
abolitionist _knows_—that to reduce this dogma to practice, to honestly
live out this pretended belief, to affiliate with these negroes, would
result in the absolute destruction of American society. Nothing,
therefore, can be more certain than the hypocrisy of those who pretend
to believe in this single-race doctrine, for it need not be repeated,
that they do not and cannot believe in it in reality. But why should
they deem this absurd doctrine essential to _their_ interpretation of
the Bible? That the Almighty Creator subsequently changed the order of
the human creation is in entire harmony with the universally received
history of the Christian Revelation. All the Christian sects of the day
admit the doctrine of miracles, or supernatural interposition, down to
the time of the Apostles, and the largest of all (the Roman Catholics)
credit this interposition at the present day, and therefore those ready
to recognize it in such numerous instances, many, too, of relatively
trifling importance, but, determined to reject it in this matter of
races, are only imitating their brethren of old, and straining at gnats
while swallowing camels with the greatest ease. To many persons the
great doctrines of the Christian faith carry with them innate and
irresistible proof of their divine origin, but the professional teachers
of theology depend mainly upon supernatural interposition to convince
the world of its truth, and yet by a strange and unaccountable
perversity, some of them would reject it in the most important, or, at
all events one of the most important instances in which it ever did or
ever could occur. But will the sensible and really conscientious
Christian priest or layman venture to persist in forcing this
assumption, this palpable, demonstrable, unmistakable falsehood, that
the single-race dogma is essential to the preservation of Christianity,
upon the public? If he does, and if it is accepted by those who look
upon him as a teacher, then it is certain that he will inflict infinite
mischief on the cause of Christianity. To assume that all mankind have
white skins, or straight hair, or any other specific feature of our own
race, involves no greater absurdity, indeed, involves the exact
absurdity, that the assumption of a single human species does. If it
were assumed that we must stultify ourselves, and believe, or pretend to
believe, that all mankind have white skins, or Christianity would be
lost to the world, there is not a single man in this Republic that would
not reject such an assumption with scorn and contempt. White and black
are, of course, specialties, but no more so than (as will hereafter be
shown) all the other things that constitute the negro being, and
therefore the assumption put forward substantially and indeed exactly,
is thus: We must believe that whites, Indians, Negroes, etc., have the
same color, or the whole fabric of Christianity will be overthrown and
lost to mankind!
But enough—all Americans know—for they cannot avoid knowing—that negroes
are negroes and specifically different from themselves; they know,
moreover, that they differed just as widely when first brought to this
continent, and all who understand the simplest laws of organization know
that they must always remain thus different from ourselves, and
therefore they know that they were made so by the act and will of the
Almighty Creator, while when, or how, or why they are thus, is beyond
the province of human enquiry, and of no manner of importance whatever.
CHAPTER IV.
HISTORICAL SUMMARY.
The white or Caucasian is the only historic race—the race which is alone
capable of those mental manifestations which, written or unwritten,
leave a permanent impression behind. What was its first or earliest
condition upon the earth? This, except the meagre account given by
Moses, is unknown, nor is it of much importance that it should be known,
for though it never was nor could be savage or barbarous, as these terms
are understood in modern times, still its intellectual acquisitions were
doubtless so limited that if really known to us, they would be of little
or no service. Moses scarcely attempts any description of social life
before the time of Abraham, and that then presented does not differ very
materially from what exists in the same locality at the present day. The
pastoral habitudes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the sale of Joseph to
the Ishmaelites by his brethren, his purchase in Egypt, and sudden
exaltation at the court of the Egyptian Monarch, is an almost exact
counterpart of scenes witnessed now, and with little varieties in the
same lands, for the last four thousand years. The starting-point—the
locality where the race first came into being, is equally hidden as the
time or period of its creation. Biblical writers have usually supposed
somewhere in Asia Minor, on the banks of the Euphrates, while
ethnologists are inclined to believe that the high table-lands of Thibet
and Hindoo Koosh may have been the cradle of the race. Nor is a
knowledge of this material, or indeed of the slightest consequence,
except as an aid in determining its true centre of existence—that is,
its physical adaptation or specific affinities for a certain locality.
But this is determined by experience; and it is demonstrated beyond
doubt that while the elaborate and relatively perfect structure of the
Caucasian Man enables him to resist all external agencies, and to exist
in all climates capable of supporting animal life, he can only till the
soil or perform manual labor in the temperate zones. It is, therefore,
immaterial when or where he first came into being, or what was the
starting-point of the race—its centre of existence is alike in all the
great temperate latitudes of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. The
history of the race may be said to be divided into three great cycles or
distinct periods; all, however, connecting with each other, and
doubtless mainly resembling each other in their essential nature,
however widely different in their external manifestation. The first
period, beginning with its actual existence on the earth, may be said to
terminate in the era of authentic history. The second, or historic era,
may be assumed as extending to the overthrow of the Roman Empire by the
so-called northern barbarians, or, perhaps, to what is usually termed
the dark ages. And finally, there is another grand cycle in human
destiny, which, beginning with the restoration of learning, comes down
to and includes our own times. In regard to the first, we actually know
little of it, for, leaving out of view the Sacred Scriptures, we have
only a few imperfect glimpses of the actual life of the countless
millions that preceded the historic period. What little knowledge we
have depends on tradition and mythology, sometimes, perhaps, true
enough, but the greater portion thus transmitted to our times we know is
false, because conditions are assumed that are in contradiction with the
laws that govern our animal being. If the race, however, was created in
Asia, we know that portions of it migrated to Africa, at a very remote
period; indeed, leaving the Bible out of view, the first knowledge we
have of its existence, or the earliest traces of its existence, is in
Africa. Caucasian tribes or communities entered the valley of the Nile
possibly before the delta of the lower country was sufficiently hardened
to admit of cultivation, as they evidently occupied localities
considerably removed from the outlet of that great river. These early
adventurers conquered the aboriginal population, subjected them to their
control, compelled them to labor for them, built magnificent cities,
temples, palaces, founded a mighty Empire and advanced, to a certain
extent, in civilization. But wealth and luxury, with their effeminate
consequences, probably, too, injustice and crime in the rulers, and
certainly, and worst of all, interunion and affiliation with the
conquered races, tempted purer and hardier branches of the race to
invade them, and indeed the delicious climate and fertile soil must have
always tempted Caucasian tribes into the Valley of the Nile, from the
earliest periods, and whenever they felt themselves strong enough to
attack the existing community. Of course we can only deal in conjecture,
in regard to this matter, but it is probable that numerous invasions
took place, each passing through much the same course as its
predecessors. First came conquest, then the erection of a mighty Empire,
followed by a grand civilization; then came effeminacy, affiliation with
the subject races, debauchment and debility inviting a new conquest by
pure Caucasians, and they, in their turn, going through the same round
of glory and decay, of conquest and degradation. Such seems to have been
the condition of Egypt when the Romans invaded it, and made it a
province of that great Empire. The effete remains of these Egyptian
populations afterward, became known to the Roman writers, and, to a
certain extent, may be said still to exist. The great Asiatic empires
were doubtless similar to the Egyptian, except in respect to the
debauchment of blood. The Assyrians, Persians, Chaldeans, Babylonians,
Hebrews, etc., each in their turn, were conquerors and conquered,
masters and slaves, but their downfall, in one essential respect,
differed widely from those of Africa. They were pure, unmixed
Caucasians, for at that time the Mongol element was unknown in that
portion of Asia, and the Negro, except a few household servants, never
existed on that continent. The Mongolian race was first known about five
hundred years anterior to the Christian Era, and whether originally it
existed in a more northern region, or had not reached a full development
as regards numbers, can not be known, on account of our limited
knowledge of the earth at that time. The old Caucasian populations of
Asia knew nothing of it, and had no admixture of Mongolic blood. But all
is conjecture, mystery, doubt and uncertainty, in regard to these
ancient and extinct Empires. We know that they existed—that they were
white men—beings like ourselves—our own ancestors, with the same wants,
the same instincts, in short, the same nature that we have, and
therefore, in the main, acted, as we do now. Of course we call them
heathens, pagans, savages, barbarians, etc., but were they thus?
In the modern times there are no white barbarians or heathens. In all
modern history, wherever found, white men are much the same; why, then,
should it not have been so always? The fanatic Jew called all others
gentiles, savages; the supercilious Greek called even their Roman
conquerors barbarians; even the manly and liberal Roman did not rise
above this foolish bigotry, and not only called the Gauls, Britons,
Germans, etc., barbarians, but reduced them to slavery, as if they were
inferior beings. We witness the same ignorance and folly in our own
enlightened times. The Englishman believes that the English are alone
truly Christian and civilized; the Frenchman honestly believes that _La
Belle_ France is at the head of modern civilization; even the advanced
and liberal American Democrat thinks, and perhaps correctly, that the
Americans alone are truly civilized; while some among us would exclude
all from the privilege of citizenship who happen to be born elsewhere,
as rigidly as the Jew did the uncircumcised Gentile or the Moslem the
dog of a Christian. Is not this notion of “outside barbarians,”
therefore, the result of ignorance, or foolish egotism, without sense or
reason? Some nations or communities were doubtless advanced more than
others in ancient times, as at present, but in the main the race must
have approximated to the same common standard we witness now. If it is
said that in early times the obstacles in the way of frequent
intercourse prevented this general approximation to a common standard of
enlightenment, it may be replied that the same obstacles would also
prevent a wide departure, and when we know that they had the same wants,
the same instincts, the same tendencies, etc., the conclusion seems
unavoidable that no nation or community could at any time in history
assume, with any justice, that others were barbarians, or that they
alone were civilized. The traditions and imperfect knowledge which we
have hitherto possessed in respect to these long-buried populations,
may, perhaps, be replaced by that which is almost or quite as reliable
as written history itself. Within a few years past a class of men have
sprung up who, excavating the dead remains of long forgotten empires,
promise revelations that will bring us face to face with the buried
generations that we now only know through the dim perspective of
uncertain tradition. Champolion, Belzoni, Rawlinson, Layard and their
companions have already made discoveries in Egypt and Nineveh that open
to our minds much of the social condition and daily life of those remote
times, and future explorations, it is probable, will give us nearly as
accurate a knowledge as we have of those embraced within the cycle of
authentic history.
The next great period in the history of the race—the historic era—is
supposed to be entirely within the province of real knowledge. It begins
with the history of the Greeks—not the symbolic but the real—that grand
and glowing intellectualism which, in many respects, may be said to
equal the intellectual development of our own times. The history of
Greece and Rome is in truth the history of the race, of the world, of
mankind. There were cotemporary nations of great power, extent and
cultivation, but the Greeks and Romans, and the subject or servile
populations that acknowledged their supremacy, made up the larger
portion of the race. It is true the Persians were then pure Caucasians,
and, in respect to numbers, largely surpassed the Greeks, but while they
did not differ much in their general character, they were on the decline
before the Greeks had reached their full national development. The
latter always referred to Egypt as the source of their civilization, but
it is more probable that they borrowed from Asia most of those things
supposed to be of foreign origin. It is, however, quite possible that
the earliest civilization was developed in Africa, that it receded from
thence to Asia, as we know it afterwards did from the latter to Europe,
and as we now witness it, passing to America. But what is civilization?
It is, or it may be defined as, the result of intellectual
manifestation. A nation or people who have most deeply studied and
understood the laws of nature or the nature of things, and applied their
knowledge to their own welfare, are the most civilized or we might say,
in a word, that the nation that has the most knowledge is the most
civilized. The Greeks, certainly, surpassed all cotemporary nations in
the most essential of all knowledge, yet even this seems to have been
rather a thing of chance than otherwise. Political intelligence, or a
knowledge of men’s social relations to each other, is the most vital
they can possess. The Greeks may be said both to have possessed this
knowledge and to have been entirely deficient in it. Athens, with thirty
thousand citizens all recognized as political equals, was a Democracy,
but this so-called Democracy, with, perhaps, a hundred thousand slaves,
was a burlesque on a democratic government. The Helots of Greece, the
servile and subject population of which history gives no account, except
to refer to them, were white men—men with all the natural capacities of
Socrates, Demosthenes, or Alcibiades, but the Greek orators and writers
of the day never even seemed to imagine that they had any rights
whatever. They had much the same relation to the Greeks that the Saxons
had to the Normans, that the Irish have to the English, and yet with all
their political enlightenment and high intellectual development, the
Greeks gave them no rights, and treated them as different and
subordinate beings. The notion, therefore, taught in our schools, that
the Greeks were the authors of political liberty, is unsound—they
neither practised nor understood liberty, and the external forms
mistaken for democracy had no necessary connection with it. Aristotle
could not form even a conception of a political system that did not rest
upon slavery, and this was doubtless the general condition of the Greek
mind. It was merely accidental that the Greek States assumed a
democratic form, or rather approximated to a democratic form; but while
they were utterly ignorant of individual relations they certainly had
clear views of the relations of states and the duties that independent
communities owe to each other. The Asiatic nations seem to have had no
conception whatever of these duties—conquest or slavery were the only
alternatives. A nation must conquer or be conquered—a dynasty must
destroy all others, or expect to fall itself—and the Asiatic character
still partakes largely of these habitudes. Except, therefore, in the
mere externals or outward arrangements of political society, the Greeks
can hardly be said to have done anything for political liberty or to
advance political science. The Romans did more—vastly more—but they had
little or no conception of democracy or of individual liberty. The proud
boast, “I am a Roman citizen,” unlike the idea of the American democrat,
partook of the spirit of a British aristocrat of our own days, claiming
the privileges of his order. The men who founded the city of Rome,
though doubtless fillibusters and adventurers, perhaps even outcasts of
the neighboring populations, were assumed to be superior to the later
emigrants, and their descendants especially claimed exclusive
privileges. And when Rome expanded into a mighty empire and ruled the
world, the senatorial order ruled the empire—at all events, until Cæsar
crossed the Rubicon and seized the supreme power. The change from a
republic to an empire had little or no bearing upon the question of
liberty, for the condition of the great body of the people remained the
same. Rome conquered all, or nearly all, the then known world, for,
except the Persians, and perhaps some few populations in the far North,
the whole Caucasian race recognized the Romans as their rulers. The
Parthians, so often waging desperate war with the Romans, were doubtless
a mixed people, something like the modern Turks, and very possibly their
ancestors. Following the rude code of early times, the Romans enslaved
the conquered populations. All the prisoners of war were deemed to have
forfeited their lives, and were parceled out among the Roman conquerors,
while the rural populations were compelled to pay tribute to the Roman
civil officers. It is quite probable that the Romans conquered some of
the inferior races, but except the Numidians, Lybians, Ethiopians, etc.,
of Africa, Roman writers are silent on the subject. It has been said
that the history of the Romans was the history of the Caucasian race,
and that was the history of the world. This is literally true, for
though we cannot suppose that the conquered populations were the
miserable barbarians that the Roman writers represent them to have been,
Rome was the most advanced portion of the race, and therefore the
embodiment of its civilization and intellectual life. At this moment
Paris represents all France; and the city of Rome bore a somewhat
similar relation to the populations that composed the empire, however
distant they may have been from the capital. It was not an unusual thing
for the same general that commanded in Britain or that had conquered in
Gaul, to administer the government of the African provinces or to
conduct a campaign against the Persians on the bank of the Euphrates.
And however much the vanity of Roman authors may have been gratified by
assuming that they alone were civilized, it is altogether irrational to
suppose that the conquered populations, with the same nature and same
capacities as themselves, and moreover, in frequent and often intimate
intercourse with themselves, could have differed widely or remained
barbarians, even if such when conquered. The Romans advanced far beyond
the Greeks in political knowledge, but with them also the state was
every thing and the individual nothing. As with the Greeks, the great
majority were slaves; and Roman citizenship, or the rights claimed by a
Roman citizen, was at best a special privilege; and prior to the advent
of Christianity, the idea of individual rights, of equality, of
democracy, seems never to have dawned upon the intellectual horizon of
the race. Nor did the primitive Christians (even) accept it in theory,
though they lived it out in practice. Their mental habits were formed
under the old social order, and though the spirit of the new doctrine
impelled them to live it out in practice, few, if any, ever adopted it
in theory. Christ had said, “love each other,” and “do unto others as
you would have them do unto you,” that is, “grant to others the rights
claimed for yourselves,” but while they often lived together, owning
things in common like the modern communists and socialists, perhaps not
one in a million ever thought of applying their doctrines to the state,
or even supposing for a moment that the artificial distinctions which
separated classes could ever be altered or modified. Even the forced and
unnatural relation of master and slave, which necessarily violated the
fundamental doctrine of their religion, was clung to and respected in
theory, and it needed several centuries of practice and faithful
obedience to the spirit of the new faith before this ancient barbarism
was finally obliterated from the Roman world. The conquest of Rome, by
the so-called northern barbarians, was followed by an eclipse of
learning—by a mental darkness in Western Europe at least, that is fitly
enough denominated the dark ages. Was this irruption of the northern
nations into Italy the true cause of this darkness? For several
centuries previous there had been an immense and almost continuous
emigration from Asia, not of individuals, as we witness in the present
day, to America, but of tribes, communities, whole nations. History is
indeed imperfect, if not altogether silent, in respect to the cause of
these mighty migrations which so long pressed upon Europe. But there can
be little doubt that the Mongolian race about this time changed, to a
considerable extent, its location, and pressing down on the old
Caucasian populations of Asia, impelled those vast masses to seek
shelter and safety, if not homes and happiness, in Europe. In the mighty
invasions of Italy in the fifth century by Attila, the truth of this is
certainly demonstrated. He himself was doubtless a white man, and so
were his chiefs; but the mighty populations he ruled over, and which
extended from the Danube to the frontiers of China, were mainly
Mongolian. But no Mongolians settled permanently in Europe—none but
Caucasians, and except the modern Turks, none but pure Caucasians—and,
being the same men as the Romans themselves, why should they be
barbarians? They were conquerors; a pretty good proof that, though not
so refined perhaps, certainly not so effeminate as the Romans had
become, they could not have been barbarians. Other things being equal,
the nation that has made the greatest advance in knowledge will be able
to conquer, because it has only to apply its knowledge to this object to
succeed. There can be no doubt that we ourselves surpass all the nations
of our times in knowledge, or in our capacity to apply our knowledge to
the purposes of material existence. Our railroads, canals, public works,
our ship-building, commerce, etc., prove this, and we have only to apply
this knowledge to purposes of offence or defence, to invade others or to
defend ourselves, to demonstrate our immense superiority. Nevertheless,
if we should conquer Spain, or any other ancient and effete empire,
doubtless their writers would take their revenge in calling us
barbarians, as indeed the poor, feeble, and adulterated hybrids of
Mexico actually did thus represent us when in possession of their
capital. Nothing, therefore, can be more improbable than the theory of
Gibbon and others, that the nations that conquered Rome were barbarians,
and that the dark ages were the result of that conquest. But there was a
cause for the subsequent darkness which so long spread over the European
world much more palpable. Christianity had become generally accepted,
and bad and ambitious men, in the then general ignorance of the masses
of the populations, might wield it with stupendous effect in advancing
their ambition and securing their own personal objects. The assumption
that Christ had delegated a power on earth to interpret the will of
Heaven, both as to temporal as well as religious interests, was enough;
of course all human investigation and mental activity terminated, and
was denounced as impiety.
The subordinate clergy were often, perhaps generally, faithful to the
great truths transmitted by the primitive Christians, but, dependent on
tradition, and subject to the rule of their sacerdotal superiors, they
in vain resisted these influences, and these truths became in time so
corrupted as scarcely to retain any resemblance to the original faith.
It is believed that, except in these “dark ages,” the Caucasian mind has
never retrograded or indeed remained stationary. Progress is the law,
the instinct, the necessity of the Caucasian mind, and however much some
branches or some nations may decline, there is always some portion,
nationality, or community, that embodies the wants of the race, and that
moves forward in pursuit of that indefinite perfectability which is its
specific and distinguishing characteristic. But it is easily understood
how this might have suffered an eclipse under the circumstances then
existing. A great proportion of the so-called barbarian conquerors of
Rome were ignorant of Christianity, and when they became the converts of
the conquered Romans, they naturally exalted their teachers as beings
almost superhuman in their superior knowledge; and the general ignorance
of the times favored any pretension of the priests, however absurd it
might be. In fact a body of men claiming to be, and universally believed
to be, the interpreters of the will of the Almighty, necessarily
interrupted all inquiry into the laws of nature (the real laws of God),
and though some monks themselves, immured in their cells, continued to
think, to experiment, to acquire knowledge, as well as in many instances
to preserve that already acquired by others, the great mass of the
people as well as the great body of the clergy looked upon everything of
the kind as wicked, impious, and heretical. And we have only to suppose
an intellectual activity and freedom corresponding with our own times
throughout these dark centuries, to realize the stupendous evil
inflicted on the world by this priestly arrogance and ambition.
The races, so-called, that figured most prominently during the period
beginning with authentic history and terminating in the dark ages, are
first, the Semitic, which included the Egyptians, Carthaginians,
Persians, Syrians, Hebrews or Jews, Saracens, Arabians, etc., indeed
under the term Semitic may be included all the Orientals, except the
Parthians, who were doubtless a mixed people, and those northern tribes,
historically known as Scythians, afterwards the conquerors of Egypt and
the progenitors of that extraordinary military autocracy known in modern
times by the name of Mamelukes. The second great branch was the
Pelasgian, which included the Macedonians, the Romans, the Hellenic
tribes, Dorians, Thracians, etc., and of which the Romans were for
nearly two thousand years the main representatives. Between these great
branches of the Caucasian—for they were both doubtless, typical
Caucasians, though Agassiz thinks that the Semitic constituted a
separate species—there was almost constant war, from the very beginning
of history to the capture of Constantinople. The Greek and Trojan war
was doubtless a collision of this kind—and so were the wars of the
Greeks and Persians—the conquests of Alexander, which, for a time,
almost annihilated the Persian empire—the terrible life-and-death
struggle of the Romans and Carthaginians, and finally the invasion and
conquest of Spain by the Arabians, with their ultimate defeat by the
Franks under Charles Martel. Indeed, coming down to more modern times,
we find the Crusades, when nearly all Europe, in a fit of uncontrollable
phrensy, precipitated itself on Asia; and in the collapse which
followed, Asiatic hordes, though not exactly Semitic, again seeking to
penetrate into Europe, and actually conquering the remains of the old
Roman empire, in the eastern capital of which they are now firmly
established. Historians are wont to magnify the results of these
contests, especially the defeat of Hannibal and the overthrow of the
Carthaginians by the Romans, and the defeat of the Arabians by the
Franks, as of vital importance to the world and the best interests of
mankind; but it is quite possible that they over-estimate these things,
especially the victory of the Romans over the Carthaginians. They were
both of the same species of men, both branches of the Caucasian, with
the same nature, the same tendencies, and, under the same circumstances,
the same beings. The Carthaginians were, for the time, highly civilized.
They were the heirs of the Egyptian and Asiatic civilizations, as Rome
was of that of the Greeks. They were a great commercial people, with
boundless wealth, science, arts, manufactures, everything but a warlike
spirit; while Rome, at the time without commerce, poor and torn by
factions, was a mere military aristocracy, and the capital itself little
more than a military encampment. Why, then, should the defeat of the
former have been beneficial to the progress of the race, or to the
general interests of mankind?
In regard to the defeat of the Arabians by the Franks, the case is
altogether different. They were the same species, and doubtless, at that
time, more advanced than the Europeans, but they were Mohammedans, and
in the full flush of enthusiasm for their faith, which they invariably
propagated by the sword. And if they had overrun Europe as they did
Asia, somewhat similar results would doubtless have followed, for though
it is altogether improbable, indeed, in view of its Divine origin,
impossible, that they could have exterminated the Christian religion,
they would have done it and the general cause of civilization
incalculable injury. But both of these great branches of the race have
long since disappeared from history. The Semitic element can scarcely be
said to exist at all. In Africa it is adulterated by the blood of the
Negro, and perhaps the blood of some race or races not so low in the
scale as the Negro. In Asia it is mixed with the Mongolian blood, and
though the Arab and Persian populations of our day are mainly white,
there is more or less taint pervading all the Asiatic communities. The
great Pelasgian branch has long since disappeared and been swallowed up
in the more modern branches of the race, and though the modern Italian
claims to be, and doubtless is, the lineal descendant of the ancient
Roman, no portions of the race are wider apart than the ancient Roman
and his modern descendant, a striking proof that accidental
consanguinity does not affect the universality of the race.
The last great cycle of history, commencing with the Reformation, comes
down to and includes our own times. It is quite unnecessary to dwell
upon it, as all intelligent persons have much the same view of it. With
the downfall of the Roman empire, however, new varieties of the
Caucasian, or, as historians have termed them, new races, have emerged
into view, and in their turn struggled for the empire of the world. The
hordes that, under Alaric and other leaders, overran Italy, were
generally known as Goths, a generic term that is applied to great
numbers of very different people, though, of course, all were white men,
and therefore of the same race or species. But after varying fortunes,
and passing through numerous mutations, all these races have subsided
into several well-marked and well-known divisions or families now
existing. There are—_First_. The Celts—including a large portion of the
French, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, and the remains of the primitive
people of the British Islands. _Second._ The Teutonic or German,
including the Germans of all kinds, the Swiss, the mythical Anglo-Saxon
and perhaps the Danes, the Scandinavians, etc. _Third._ The Sclavonians,
embracing the Russians, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, etc. There
are some few populations that, either in language or historical facts,
have little or no connection with those enumerated. These are the modern
Hungarians, the European Turks, the Circassians, etc. They are, however,
Caucasians: even the Turks and Circassians are, in our times, pure or
mainly pure Caucasians. Finally there remain our own people, the
offspring of every country and of every variety of the race, and as the
more the blood is crossed the more energetic and healthy the product or
progeny, the American people should become, as it doubtless will become,
the most powerful and the most civilized people in existence.
Such, briefly considered, is an imperfect summary or outline of the
history of our race, the only race that has a history or that is capable
of those mental manifestations whose record constitutes history. It is a
favorite theory of most historians to represent the mental development
of the race as divided into distinct categories, not as the author has
ventured, into historic periods, but into different phases of
intellectual manifestation. They have supposed that men (white men) were
first hunters and lived wholly by the chase—that after a while they
became shepherds, and lived on their herds or flocks—that then they made
another advance and became cultivators, and finally artisans, merchants,
etc. Each of these conditions, it has been supposed, were dependent on,
or were associated with, a corresponding mental development. The hunter
had intellect enough to run down the stag or wit sufficient to entrap
the game necessary for his support, but had not sufficient capacity to
take care of his flocks or sense sufficient to till the earth! This
notion has doubtless arisen from observing the habits of the subordinate
races of men, though it is quite possible that our own race has passed
through some such stages as those suggested. But there has never been
any variations in its actual intellectual powers. The mental capacities
given it in the morning of creation were just what they are now, and
what they will be millions of years hence. Thus is explained the (to
many persons) seeming anomaly that in the very dawn of history there
were men like Homer, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, and others, with a
breadth and depth of intellect corresponding to the most intellectual
men of our own times. Mental power, like physical strength, remains
always the same through all ages and mutations of human society, while
knowledge, or the uses made of the intellectual forces, is constantly
varying from age to age, and changing from one country to another. The
miserable Italian organ-grinder under our window, it is somewhat
difficult to suppose, embodies the high intellect and powerful will,
which two thousand years ago, made his ancestors masters of the world,
but such is the fact, however latent, unknown or unfelt by himself may
be these powers. The amount or extent or degrees of knowledge, the
perceptions of external things, their relations, the laws that govern
them, their uses, their influences on our well-being or the contrary, in
short, our capacities for acquiring knowledge, for comprehending
ourselves and the things about us, are limitless, and therefore progress
and indefinite perfectibility are the specific attributes of the
Caucasian. Each generation applies its capabilities and acquires a
certain amount of knowledge which the succeeding one is heir to, and
which, in turn, transmits its acquisition to those following; thus its
march is ever onward, and except during the “dark ages” it is believed
that the great law of progress which God has imposed on the race as a
duty as well as given it as a blessing, has never been interrupted.
But the inferior races of mankind present a very different aspect in
this respect. The Negro, isolated by himself, seems utterly incapable of
transmitting anything whatever to the succeeding generation, and the
Aboriginal American, Malay, etc., doubtless approximate to him in these
respects. The Aztecs and Peruvians, at the time of the Spanish conquest,
however, had advanced to the grade of cultivators, and were therefore,
doubtless, capable of a limited or imperfect transmission of their
knowledge. The Malay is probably capable of still greater development in
these respects; but its limitations are too decided to be mistaken. The
Mongolian, on the contrary, approximates much closer to ourselves, and
while it cannot be said to have a history in any proper sense, it is
doubtless capable of transmitting its knowledge to future generations to
a much greater extent than others, but it, too, is at an immeasurable
distance from the Caucasian in this respect. The Chinese, it is true,
pretend to trace back their history to a period long anterior to our
own, but this claim is itself sufficient proof of its own worthlessness.
No one will suppose that the individual Chinaman has a larger brain or
greater breadth of intellect than the individual Caucasian, and if not,
what folly to suppose that the aggregate Chinese mind was capable of
doing that which is impossible to the aggregate Caucasian intellect! The
truth is, what is supposed to be Chinese history is a mere collection of
fables and nonsensical impossibilities, and it may be doubted if they
can trace back their annals even five hundred years with any certainty
or with sufficient accuracy to merit a claim to historic dignity. There
can be no doubt, however, that at some remote period, a considerable
portion of the Chinese population was Caucasian, as indeed a portion is
still Caucasian, and it is perhaps certain that Confucius and other
renowned names known to the modern Chinese, were white men, and what
shadowy and uncertain historical data they now possess are therefore
likely to have originated from these sources. The Mongolian race was in
fact unknown to ancient writers, though there has doubtless been contact
with these races from a very early period.
It is supposed by Hamilton Smith and others, that the Mongolian formally
existed much further North than at present, and that its immense
development in regard to numbers finally pressed so heavily on the
Caucasian populations of Central Asia, that it displaced them, and hence
that those mighty migrations into Europe, a short time after the
beginning of the Christian era, were the results of this pressure in
their rear. Be this as it may, it is certain that those vast inundations
which at times swept over the Asiatic world, and also threatened Europe
with their terrible results, were mainly composed of Mongolic elements.
Attila was of pure Caucasian blood, and his chiefs were doubtless also
white men or of a predominating Caucasian innervation; but it is equally
certain that the larger portion of his terrible hordes were Mongolians.
His seat of empire was on the Danube and somewhere near the modern Buda,
from which he threatened France as well as Rome and the Italian
Peninsula, while his dominion extended to the frontiers of China, and
embraced the vast regions and almost countless populations intervening
between these widely separated points. His invasion of France, and his
repulse if not defeat at Chalons, is one of those transcendent events
that, for good or evil, change the order of history, and for centuries
affect the fortunes of mankind. Had this not happened—had his march been
uninterrupted—had his terrible legions swept over Western as they
already had over Eastern Europe, and a vast Mongolian population become
permanently settled there, the destinies of mankind would have been
widely different. But his repulse—his desperate retreat and his
subsequent death, which occurred soon after—changed the current of
events, and his desolating hordes instead of effecting a permanent
lodgement in the heart of Europe, vanished so utterly that, except a few
thousand Laplanders, they have left no trace or evidence of their
terrible invasion of the European world.
Genghis Khan, in the twelfth century, was the next great conqueror and
mighty leader of those vast Mongolic hordes which, at various times,
have inundated the ancient world, and in their desolating march swept
away numerous empires and extinguished whole populations. Genghis Khan,
though of predominating Caucasian blood, was mixed with Mongolian, but
his successors for several centuries after were mainly Caucasians or the
children of Caucasian mothers. Finally, the last and the greatest of
these terrible conquerors, Tamerlane, in the sixteenth century, made a
conquest of nearly the whole of Asia, penetrating even into Africa and
conquering Egypt, while his defeat of Bajazet, the Emperor of the Turks,
then at the zenith of their power, opened Europe to the march of his
desolating hordes, and could his life have been extended a few years
longer, it is quite possible that he would have accomplished what seems
to have been the object of Attila, and subjected the European as well as
the Asiatic world to his terrible sway. As it was, he invaded and
conquered India as well as Egypt, and the master of, or wearer of
twenty-eight crowns, he reigned over the whole of Asia to the borders of
China, except the Turkish dominions, and even here he was the recognized
master though he gave back the empire to the sons of Bajazet. The
character of his conquests—the death and desolation that marked his
path—was the most terrible as well as the most extensive ever witnessed
before or since, and many of the largest and most powerful empires of
Asia were as utterly blotted from the earth as if it had opened and
swallowed them up. He himself was of pure Caucasian extraction, and
doubtless his generals and chiefs were the same, and the Caucasian
Tartars formed a very considerable portion of his forces. There was
doubtless also a large mixed or mongrel element, for of the throngs of
female captives taken in these Mongolian invasions, few ever returned to
their homes, but becoming the wives of Mongolian chiefs, those numerous
and often powerful dynasties which have ruled over the Asiatic
populations had their origin. Nevertheless a vast majority of these
almost countless hordes led by Tamerlane were unmixed Mongolian, and,
therefore, though the leader was himself a Caucasian or white man, the
bloody and desolating character of his conquests were stamped by the
cruelty and ferocity of that race. Perhaps no better illustration of the
Caucasian and Mongolian character could be presented than the contrast
between Alexander’s invasion of Persia and India and similar invasions
of Tamerlane. The first, though a “Pagan” several centuries before the
Christian era, was humane and merciful to the conquered, and except in
battle shed no blood, while the latter not content with the enforcement
of the Moslem rule of tribute or death or the religion of the Prophet,
slaughtered whole populations after the battle was over, and for the
gratification of his ferocious hordes. His conquest of Bagdad and his
pyramid of ninety thousand heads is one of those terrible things that
historians are generally puzzled with, for not only is there nothing
resembling it in history, but there seems to be no motive or sufficient
cause for it. It was the result, the offspring of Mongol ferocity and
apathetic cruelty, such as we now witness in India and China, and
springs as much, perhaps, from a low grade of sensibility or incapacity
to feel or sympathize with suffering, as from a sentiment of cruelty.
The Hindoos or East Indians, like the Chinese, also pretend to trace
back their history to a time long anterior to our own historic era.
Their claim, in this respect, is doubtless better founded than that of
the former, but it, too, is absurd and valueless. The Hindoos were
originally Caucasian, who, at some remote period, invaded and conquered
India, and stamped their civilization and religion on the whole
peninsula. It is quite likely, indeed it is certain, that India had been
invaded and conquered by numerous nations or tribes of Caucasians long
anterior to the Hindoo conquest. There are in our day too many traces of
this, too many evidences of the former existence of the great master
race of mankind in India, to permit us to doubt. The vast debris spread
all over India, indeed the sixty or seventy dialects of Sanscrit proves
that India must have been long subject to the dominion of the Caucasian.
It is believed by many that _Hindoo Koosh_, or the high tableland of
Thibet, was the cradle of the race, and it is rational to suppose that
long anterior to our own historic era white men may have formed the
principal portion of the Indian population. They doubtless thus spread
themselves over the peninsula; or if that was the birth-place of the
Mongolian, then it is certain that restless and energetic Caucasian
tribes at a very early day invaded and conquered the country. Even now
there is a large Caucasian element in India. The Afghans are pure
Caucasian, while the Sikhs, the Rajpoots, and a large portion of the
people of Oude are doubtless of predominating Caucasian blood. That
caste which English writers have so much to say about, and the good
people of Exeter Hall desire so much to “abolish,” is, to a great
extent, mere mongrelism, and that which is not mongrelism is simply what
England itself suffers from to a greater extent than any other country
or people. The Normans invaded the latter country, took possession of
their lands, and reduced the conquered Anglo-Saxons to slavery, where
they have remained, ever since, and though the Norman blood has long
since disappeared, the theory or system remains, for a few cunning and
adroit “Anglo-Saxons,” claiming to be the descendants of Norman
Conquerors, _now_ monopolize the land and rule the great body of the
people as absolutely as the real Normans did in their day. The early
invaders of India grasped everything, as did the Normans in England, but
they amalgamated with the conquered, and thus enfeebling themselves,
fell a victim to fresh invasions of pure Caucasians. They, in their
turn, underwent the same fate, and thus, from time immemorial there grew
up those multitudinous dynasties, each of which had its own character,
and which became a caste, often, doubtless, as a means for governing the
people, and preserved by the conquerors as carefully as that which they
in their turn imposed on the country. The Normans and Saxons were of the
same race, and the greater the admixture of blood, the more energetic
the population, while the admixture of the conquering Caucasian with the
conquered Mongolian, has rendered the modern Hindoo powerless and
contemptible in comparison with the English or European invader of our
times. The general subject of the human races has been so little
studied, and our actual knowledge of these great Asiatic populations is
so limited and so imperfect, that it is difficult to determine their
present character, let alone their former history, and it is quite
possible that the present native of India is specifically different from
the Chinese. It has been the custom of writers on this subject to assume
that the Caucasian and Mongolian, with their often extensive
affiliations, constitute the sole population of the Asiatic continent,
and that the differences which are actually presented are those produced
alone by climate and external influences. The writer has adopted this
view, but without assenting to it in fact, for the actual differences
between Nena Sahib or an Indian prince, and the true Mongol of the
Chinese model, are certainly as distinct as those separating the former
from a modern Englishman, and therefore he thinks it quite probable that
further investigation will show a race or species of men, mainly to be
found in India, that are yet to be known and to take their place in the
great human family, midway between the Caucasian and Mongolian. Be this
as it may, however, it is certain that our own race alone has a history
or is capable of those mental manifestations which constitute the
materials of history. The Mongolic element, though often invading and
temporarily conquering large portions of territory occupied by Caucasian
populations, has receded almost as rapidly as it advanced, and therefore
their actual centre of existence remains substantially the same at all
times. There is, however, a trace of Mongolian blood now found outside
of its own proper centre, but probably there is a much larger Caucasian
element among Mongolic nations. The Caucasian Tartars invaded and
conquered China a few centuries ago, and though doubtless mixed up with
and mainly Mongol at this time, they are the ruling dynasty. The
instincts of this race naturally impelled it to escape from contact or
collision with the superior race; thus, the great wall of China was a
vain attempt to keep out a race it fears and hates, and which its
instincts assure it must rule over itself wherever they exist in
juxtaposition. Many persons fancy that our treaties with Japan and China
will bring these vast populations within the circle of modern
civilization, and open up to ourselves a fancied Asiatic commerce,
which, through California and a Pacific railroad, we shall mainly
monopolize. Of course these notions originate in utter ignorance of what
China is in reality, and except in degree do not differ from that of the
Abolitionists in respect to negroes and negro “slavery.” The Mongol
never will, as indeed he never can, become an element in the modern or
Christian civilization of our times and of our race, and though there
may be a certain trade carried on between us and China, it is not likely
to vary to any considerable extent from that existing now, while any
attempt to establish a diplomatic intercourse or equality is simply
absurd, and must end in nothing.
This, then, is the history of the Mongolian race—the race nearest our
own—all the history we have of it, and indeed all the history there is
of it, for however brief or imperfect our own knowledge of the race, it
is doubtless better and more reliable than is its own pretended history
of itself. As has been said, unlike the Negro, whose capacities cannot
go beyond the living or actual generation, and with whom millions of
generations are the same as a single one, the Mongolian mind may
perhaps, with more or less correctness, grasp the life of a few
generations, but in no proper sense is it capable of acting, and
consequently of writing history.
CHAPTER V.
COLOR.
Anatomists and physiologists have labored very earnestly to account for
or to show the “cause” of color, not of the Negro alone, but in the case
of our own race. They have generally supposed that the pigmentum nigrum,
a substance lying immediately beneath the outward skin, or cuticle,
constituted that cause, and therefore the complexion was fair or dark,
blonde or brunette, just as the “coloring” matter might happen to be
dark or otherwise. This, in a sense, is doubtless true, but to speak of
it as a cause is an abuse of terms, for it is simply a fact, and no more
a cause than it is an effect. Cause and causes in natural phenomena are
known only to Omnipotence, and why the Caucasian color is white or the
Mongol yellow, or the Negro black, is as absolutely hidden from us as
the cause of their existence at all—as wholly beyond the scope of human
intelligence, and therefore of rational inquiry, as the cause of the
return of the seasons, or why men and animals at a certain time arrive
at maturity or finally decay and die. The divine wisdom and perfect
fitness of the fact itself, however, are clearly appreciable, and we are
able to see, not only its transcendent importance, but the utter
impossibility of its being otherwise. There is in all the works of God
perfect harmony, as well as perfect wisdom, and, therefore, such a
monstrosity as a “colored man”—or a being like ourselves in all except
the color of the negro—is not merely absurd, but as impossible in fact,
though not so palpable to a superficial intelligence, as a white body
with a negro head on its shoulders, or indeed as a dog with the head of
any other animal or form of being.
The face of the Caucasian reflects the character, the emotions, the
instincts, to a certain extent the intellectual forces, and even the
acquired habits, the virtues or vices of the individual. This, to a
certain extent, depends on the mobility of the facial muscles, and the
general anatomical structure and outline of the features; but without
our color, the expression would be very imperfect, and the face wholly
incapable of expressing the inner nature and specific character of the
race. For example: What is there at the same time so charming and so
indicative of inner purity and innocence as the blush of maiden modesty?
For an instant the face is scarlet, then, perhaps, paler than ever in
its delicate transparency; and these physical changes, beautiful as they
may be to the eye, are rendered a thousand times more so by our
consciousness that they reflect moral emotions infinitely more
beautiful. Can any one suppose such a thing possible to a black face?
that these sudden and startling alternations of color, which reflect the
moral perceptions and elevated nature of the white woman, are possible
to the negress? And if the latter cannot reflect these things in her
face—if her features are utterly incapable of expressing emotions so
elevated and beautiful, is it not certain that she is without them—that
they have no existence in her inner being, are no portion of her moral
nature? To suppose otherwise is not only absurd, but impious; it is to
suppose that the Almighty Creator would endow a being with moral wants
and capacities that could have no development—with an inner nature
denied any external reflection or manifestation of its wants or of
itself. Of course, it is not intended to say that the negress has not a
moral nature; it is only intended to demonstrate the fact that she has
not _the_ moral nature of the white woman; and, therefore, those who
would endow her inner nature with these qualities, must necessarily
charge the Creator with the gross injustice of withholding from her any
expression of qualities so essential to her own happiness, as well as to
our conception of the dignity and beauty of womanhood. This same
illustration is extensively diversified in regard to the other sex. It
is seen every day in our social life, and confronts us at every step.
The white man is flushed with anger, or livid with fear, or pale with
grief. He is at one moment so charged with the darker passions as to be
almost black, and the next so softened by sorrow or stricken by grief
that the face is bloodless and absolutely white. All these outward
manifestations of the inner nature—of the moral being with which God has
endowed us—are familiar to every one. They form a portion of our daily
experience, and constitute an essential part of our social life.
There are great differences among our people in regard to the general
expression of the features. Some reflect in their faces all the emotions
by which they are moved, while others are so stolid, or they have
acquired such a control over themselves in these respects, as to appear
impenetrable. But this has no connection with color, or any relation to
that great fundamental and specific fact by which and through which the
Almighty has adapted the character and revealed the relative conditions
of the several human races. Like all the other great facts involved,
color is the standard and exact admeasurement of the specific character.
The Caucasian is white, the Negro is black; the first is the most
superior, the latter the most inferior—and between these extremes of
humanity are the intermediate races, approximating to the former or
approaching the latter, just as the Almighty, in His boundless wisdom
and ineffable beneficence, has seen fit to order it. Color is no more
radical or universal, or no more a difference between white men and
negroes, than any other fact out of the countless millions of facts that
separate them. It is more palpable to the sense, more unavoidable, but
no more universal or invariable than the difference in the hair, the
voice, the features, the form of the limbs, the single globule of blood,
or the myriads and millions of things that constitute the Negro being.
It would seem that the Almighty Creator, when stamping this palpable
distinction on the very surface, had designed to guard His work from any
possible desecration, and therefore had marked it so legibly, that human
ignorance, fraud, folly, or wickedness, could by no possibility mistake
it. And indeed it is not mistaken, for those perverse creatures among us
who clamor so loudly for negro equality, or that the negro shall be
treated as if he were a white man, only desire to force their hideous
theories on others, and would rather have their own families utterly
perish from the earth than to practice or live up to their doctrine in
this respect. The term “colored man,” or “colored person,” though
natural enough to Europeans, or to those who had never seen negroes, or
different races from themselves, could never have originated in a
community having negroes in its midst, for it is not only a misnomer but
an absurdity as gross as to say a colored fish or a colored bird.
Finally, as color is the standard and the test of the specific
character, revealing the inner nature and actual capabilities of the
race, so, too, is it the test and standard of the normal physical
condition of the individual. The highest health of the white man is
distinguished by a pure and transparent skin, and exactly as he departs
from this, his color is clouded and sallow; while that of the negro is
marked by perfect blackness, and the departure from this is to dirty
brown, almost ash-color—thus, as in everything else, revealing the
eternal truth that life and well-being, social as well as individual,
are identical with an exact recognition of these extremes, and that it
is only when disease and unnatural conditions prevail, that a certain
approximation to color or to equality become possible.
CHAPTER VI.
FIGURE.
To consider and properly contrast the attitude or the general outline of
the negro form with that of the Caucasian, needs a large space to do the
subject justice. But a few brief points are sufficient to grasp its
essential features and enable every one to add or to fill up the details
from his own experience. Cuvier, the great French zoologist, it is said
might pick up a bone of any kind, however minute, in the deserts of
Arabia, and from this alone determine the species, genus, and class to
which it belonged. This at first seems almost incredible, but a moment’s
reflection shows not only its practicability, but the ease and certainty
with which it may be accomplished. Indeed we have recently witnessed a
still more remarkable instance of this tracing the life and defining the
relations of organized beings from a minute and remote point. Agassiz
has been able, from a single scale of a fish, to determine the specific
character of fishes, and those, too, which he had never before seen! A
bone is picked up at random by the zoologist; he soon discovers that it
is a bone of the thigh of some animal, and this necessarily leads to the
fact that it belonged to a quadruped, and it, in its turn, leads to
other facts equally connected and dependent on each other, for that
great fundamental and eternal law of harmony or adaptation which God has
stamped on the organic and material universe permits of no incongruities
or contradictions to mar its beauty or deface its grandeur. Thus an
anatomist, who had given a certain amount of attention to the subject,
might select the smallest bone, a carpal or bone of the finger, for
example, and determine from among millions of similar ones, whether it
was that of a white man or of a negro, with perfect certainty and the
greatest ease. He would know that such bone formed part of a hand with a
limited flexibility—that the bony structure was in accord with the
tendons and muscles that moved it, and gave it, compared with that of
the Caucasian, a restricted capacity of action, of susceptibility, etc.,
and he would necessarily connect this hand with an arm of corresponding
structure, and going on multiplying the connections and relations, he
would be led to the final result, and without possibility of mistake,
that the bone in question belonged to a negro. But while the analysis of
a single bone or of a single feature of the negro being is thus
sufficient to demonstrate the specific character or to show the
diversity of race, that great fact is still more obviously and with
equal certainty revealed in the form, attitude, and other external
qualities. The negro is incapable of an erect or direct perpendicular
posture. The general structure of his limbs, the form of the pelvis, the
spine, the way the head is set on the shoulders, in short, the _tout
ensemble_ of the anatomical formation, forbids an erect position. But
while the whole structure is thus adapted to a slightly stooping
posture, the head would seem to be the most important agency, for with
any other head or the head of any other race, it would be impossible to
retain an upright position at all.
The form or figure of the Caucasian is perfectly erect, with the eyes on
a plane with the horizon, and the broad forehead, distinct features and
full and flowing beard, stamp him with a superiority and even majesty
denied to all other creatures, and relatively to all other races of men.
On the contrary, the narrow and longitudinal head of the negro
projecting posteriorly, places his eyes at an angle with the horizon,
and thus alone enables him to approximate to an erect position. Of
course, we are not to speculate on what is impossible or to suggest what
might happen if the negro head had resembled that of the Caucasian, for
the slightest change of an elementary atom in the negro structure would
render him an impossible monstrosity. But with the broad forehead and
small cerebellum of the white man, it is perfectly obvious that the
negro would no longer possess a centre of gravity, and therefore those
philanthropic people who would “educate” him into intellectual equality
or change the mental organism of the negro, would simply render him
incapable of standing on his feet or of an upright position on any
terms. Every one must have remarked this peculiarity in the form and
attitude of the negro. His head is thrown upwards and backwards, showing
a certain though remote approximation to the quadruped both in its
actual formation and the manner in which it is set on his shoulders. The
narrow forehead and small cerebrum—the centre of the intellectual
powers—and the projection of the posterior portion—the centre of the
animal functions—render the negro head radically and widely different
from that of the white man. This every one knows, because every one sees
it every day, and the universal and all pervading law of adaptation
which God has eternally stamped upon the structure of all His creatures
enables the negro to thus preserve a centre of gravity and comparatively
an upright posture. But were it true that men can make themselves, can
push aside the Almighty Creator Himself, as taught by certain
“reformers” of the day, and vastly improve the “breed” and, as the
“friends of humanity” hold, that the negro can be made to conform in his
intellectual qualities to those of the white man, then it is certain
that their difficulties would become greater than ever. That the
cerebrum or anterior portion of the brain is the centre, the seat, the
organism, in fact, of the intellectual nature, is as certain as that the
eye is the organ of sight, and that in proportion to its size relatively
with the cerebellum—the centre of the animal instincts—is there mental
capacity, however latent it may be in the case of individuals, is
equally certain. And should these would-be reformers of the work of the
Almighty change the intellectual nature of the negro, they would
necessarily change the organism through which, and by which, that nature
is manifested, and thus enlarging the anterior and diminishing the
posterior portion of the brain into correspondence with their own, it is
perfectly evident that they would destroy the harmony which exists
between the negro head and the negro body, and instead of a black-white
man, or a being with the same intellectual nature as ours, they would
render him as utterly incapable of locomotion or of an upright position
at all as if they had cut off his head, instead of re-creating it on the
model of their own! The whole anatomical structure, the feet, the hands,
the limbs, the size and form of the head, the features, the hair, the
color, the _tout ensemble_ of the negro being, as it is revealed to the
sense, embodies the negro inferiority when compared with other races;
and as regards the white man or Caucasian, it presents a contrast so
striking and an interval so broad and unmistakable that it seems
impossible any one’s senses could be so blunted, or his perceptions so
perverted as to be rendered incapable of perceiving it. The flexible
grace of the limbs, the straight lines of the figure, the expressive
features, the broad forehead and transparent color, and flowing beard,
all combine to give a grace and majesty to the Caucasian that stamps him
undisputed master of all living beings, and even the creatures of the
animal world perceive and acknowledge this supremacy. It is not an
uncommon thing in India for a tiger, rendered desperate by hunger, to
suddenly leap into a crowd and to carry off a man, but instead of a
European he invariably selects a native, and while such a thing as the
seizure of a white man is unknown, the negroes in Sierra Leone are
frequently carried off and eaten by lions. The instinct of the animal
leads it to attack the inferior, and therefore feebler being, as even
our domestic animals are far more likely to attack children than adults.
The negro actually has nothing in common with the animal world that
other races have not, but those things common to men and animals are
much more prominent in him. Thus, while there is an impassable and
perpetual chasm between them, there is a certain resemblance between the
negro and the ourang-outang. The latter is the most advanced species of
the simiadæ or ape family, while the negro is the lowest in the scale of
the human creation, and the approximation to each other, though of
course eternally incomplete, is certainly striking. As stated elsewhere,
the author does not belong to that gloomy and forbidding school of
materialism which would make the faculties and even our moral emotions
the mere result of organism. But there is an inseparable connection
which necessarily renders them the exact admeasurement of each other,
and though neither cause nor result, and their ultimate relation
eternally hidden from the finite mind, they are, in this existence at
least, inextricably bound up together. The approximation, therefore, of
the negro to the ourang-outang, while there is a boundless space within
the circle of which there can be no resemblance—for the negro is
absolutely and entirely human—and within which it is not proposed to
enter, is exactly revealed in the outward form and attitude. The negro,
from the structure of his limbs, his head, etc., has a decided
inclination to the quadruped posture, while the ourang-outang has an
equal tendency to the upright human form. The latter often walks
partially erect, and sometimes even carries a club, while the typical
negro in Africa or Cuba, or anywhere in his natural state, is quite as
likely to squat on his hams as to stand on his feet. Thus, an anatomist
with the negro and ourang-outang before him, after a careful comparison,
would say, perhaps, that nature herself had been puzzled where to place
them, and had finally compromised the matter by giving them an exactly
equal inclination to the form and attitude of each other.
CHAPTER VII.
THE HAIR.
Next to color, there is nothing so palpable to the sense as the hair, or
nothing that reveals the specific difference of race so unmistakably as
the natural covering of the head. The hair of the Caucasian is a
graceful and imposing feature or quality, of course in perfect harmony
with everything else, but sometimes, and especially in the case of
females, it is an attribute of physical beauty more striking and
attractive than any other. Its color, golden or sunny brown, and the
dazzling hues of black, purple, and auburn tresses, has been the theme
of poets from time immemorial, while its luxuriance, and silky softness,
and graceful length will continue to be the pride of one sex and the
admiration of the other as long as the perception of beauty remains.
In the Mongol, Malay, or Indian, as well as the Negro, it remains the
same through all the stages of life, and it is only in extreme old age
that it becomes gray or silvery white, or even falls off from any
portion of the head. The coarse, stiff, black hair of the Indian child
is that also of its parents—and a gray-headed or bald-headed Indian,
except in some cases of extreme old age, is as rare perhaps as that of a
bald-headed negro. But the child of the Caucasian, with perfectly white
or flaxen hair, expands into the maiden with clustering ringlets of
auburn or perhaps raven black, to be threaded with silver, in middle
life perhaps, and though less common than with the other sex, a few
years later it becomes again, as in early childhood, perfectly white.
But there are no exceptions to the uniform color of the hair in other
races. Such a thing as a flaxen-haired or a light-haired negro child
never existed. There may be sometimes a slight approximation in this
respect among Mongols, but the hair of the negro, except in some cases
of extreme old age, remains absolutely the same at all periods, from the
cradle to the grave. The elementary structure as shown by the elaborate
microscopical observations of Mr. Peter A. Browne, of Philadelphia,
differs as widely as the external or superficial modifications. The
popular notion that it is wool instead of hair that covers the negro
head is like many others, founded on a mere external resemblance,
without any actual correspondence. It is hair, but _sui generis_, or
rather specific and common to the negro alone, and however widely
different from that of white people, it is no more so than any other
quality or feature of the negro nature. The variations of this feature
in the white race are almost unlimited. Hair dressing even has been
elevated to the respectability of an art, if not to the dignity of a
science. For many generations the kings of France kept _artistes_ of
this character, who often received a salary equal to the ministers of
the crown, and one of them, Oliver Le Dain, became in fact, if not in
form, the actual ruler of the kingdom. But it was the princesses and
ladies of the court that exalted this “art” to its highest pitch of
extravagance and display. Marie Antoinette—one of the most unhappy women
that ever lived—made it an important part of every day’s employment, and
exacted the same labor from her attendants. Even in our own more
sensible times, the Empress Eugenie changes the fashions in this respect
almost every month, and the styles or modes of dressing their hair is an
extravagant though amiable weakness of our own fair countrywomen. There
is in fact no mere physical quality of the female so attractive, or that
is capable of being rendered so charming, as the hair, and the elaborate
dressings, the time and labor spent on its decoration, proceed as much
perhaps from that delicate perception of the beautiful innate in woman
as it does from female vanity or the love of display. But with this
“wealth of beauty” of the Caucasian woman, what an immeasurable interval
separates her from the negress! Is it possible for any who sees the
latter, with her short, stiff, uncombable fleece of seeming wool, to
endow her with the attribute of beauty or comeliness? And though
somewhat less palpable in the other sex, the hair is an essential
element of manly beauty as well as dignity, and the “love locks” of the
cavaliers and even the “soap locks” of more modern times, are identified
with certain conceptions of manly grace. Can any one form such
conceptions in respect to the hair of the negro? Can he identify any of
these things with the crisp, stiff, seeming wool that covers the head of
that race? Can the sentiment of beauty, grace or dignity, or indeed any
idea whatever—except as a necessary provision of nature for covering the
negro head—attach to the hair of the negro? This is all that is possible
to the mind of a white person in actual juxtaposition with the negro,
and therefore while the European Abolitionist may fancy his head adorned
by “ambrosial curls,” our own native Abolitionists are wholly unable to
conceive of any use or purpose whatever for that dense mat of wiry and
twisted hair which covers the negro head, except as a provision of
nature for its protection. The protection of the head, or rather of the
brain, is the purpose or the function of the hair in all races, but
while that, in our race, is identified with elevated and striking
qualities, it is the sole purpose in the case of the negro. The short,
crisp, dense mass that covers the negro head, like every other quality
or attribute of the negro nature, is in perfect harmony with the
climatic and external circumstances with which God has surrounded him.
The popular notion that the negro skull is much thicker than that of the
white man originated from this peculiarity of the covering of the negro
head. The hair is so dense, so curled and twisted together, and forms
such a complete mat or net work as to be wholly impenetrable to the rays
of a vertical sun, and to furnish a vastly better protection for the
brain than the thickest felt hat does to that of the white man. Thus,
though negroes on our southern plantations, with the imitative instincts
of their race, copy after the whites and wear hats, it is merely a
“fashionable folly,” and dictated by no natural want, nor in the
slightest degree adds to their happiness. And beside the protection from
the fierce heats of the tropics, the hair of the negro protects his head
in other respects. It is so hard and wiry, and in fact triangular in
form, that a blow from the hand of a master would doubtless injure the
latter vastly more than it would the head of the negro, and the common
practice among them of butting each other with their heads, though
knocking them off their feet, and the concussion heard at considerable
distances, never results in injury, for the dense mat of semi-wool that
covers the head protects it from mischief. The negro hair is then
designed solely for the protection of the negro head, and not only
differs widely from that of the Caucasian, but from that of all other
races, for the negro is a tropical race, and the hair, like all other
attributes of the negro being, physical and moral, is adapted to a
tropical clime, and in perfect accord with the physical wants and moral
necessities of the race.
But the mere covering of the head, or the mere protection of the brain,
is not all that distinguishes the different races in these respects. The
beard is equally radical and universal, though not so palpable a
specialty as color, and in some respects it may be said to be a more
important one. The Caucasian alone has a beard, for though all others
approximate to it in this respect, it is the only bearded race, and some
writers on ethnology have been so impressed with this imposing and
striking distinction that they have sought to make it the basis of a
classification of races. And there certainly is no physical or outward
quality that so imposingly impresses itself on the senses as a mark of
superiority, or evidence of supremacy, as a full and flowing beard.
Color, when in repose, or when it does not give expression to the inner
nature, does not, in reality, constitute a distinction at all, but the
beard is an evidence of superiority, that, however varied the action or
whatever the circumstances, is equally distinct and universal as an
attribute of supremacy. This is sufficiently illustrated in our own race
and our every day experience. The youth is beardless, and _pari passu_
as he approaches to the maturity of manhood there is a corresponding
development of beard. The intellect—the mental strength—the moral
beauty, all the qualities of the inner being, as well as those outward
attributes tangible to the sense, harmonize perfectly with the growth of
the beard, and when that has reached its full development, it is both
the signal and the proof of mature manhood—an exact admeasurement and
absolute proof of the maturity of the individual as well as the type and
standard of the race. This is equally true when applied to different
races. The Caucasian is the only bearded race, but all others
approximate in this respect, and the negro is furthest removed of all,
for the tropical woolly-haired African or negro, except a little tuft on
the chin and sometimes on the upper lip, has nothing that can be
confounded with a beard. People sometimes see negroes with considerable
hair on their faces, and hence conclude that they are as likely to have
beards as white men; but they forget that all in our society who are not
whites are considered negroes, and therefore those bearded negroes have
a large infusion, and doubtless sometimes a vastly predominating
infusion of Caucasian blood. The beard symbolizes our highest
conceptions of manhood—it is the outward evidence of mature
development—of complete growth, mental as well as physical—of strength,
wisdom and manly grace, and the full, flowing, and majestic beard of the
Caucasian, in contrast with the negro or other subordinate races, is as
striking and imposing as the mane of the lion when compared with the
meaner beasts of the animal world. Like color or any other of the great
fundamental facts separating races, the beard is sufficient to determine
their specific character and their specific relations to each other, and
we have only to apply our every day experience as regards this outward
symbol of inner manhood to measure the relative inferiority of the
negro. The Abolitionists demand that the “equal manhood” of the negro
shall be recognized, and complain bitterly of a government that refuses
to respond to their wishes in this respect, but if this “equal manhood”
was actually revealed to them in the person of the negro as it is in the
persons of white men, and as God has alone provided and ordained or
permitted it to be revealed, they would be overwhelmed with astonishment
or convulsed with laughter. A negro with a full and flowing beard, with
this symbol of perfect manhood or with this outward manifestation of the
inner (Caucasian) being, would be a ludicrous monstrosity, as
impossible, of course, as the Caliban of Shakespeare; but if such a
supernatural being should suddenly make his appearance in an Abolition
conventicle, the “friends of humanity” would be as much astonished as if
an inhabitant of another world had come among them. A youth, with the
majestic and flowing beard of adult life, if the monstrosity did not
shock and disgust us, would be irresistibly comical, and equally so in
the case of the childish and romping negro. Thus, were the leaders of
the “anti-slavery enterprise” busily engaged in discussing the “equal
manhood” of the negro, and in earnestly denouncing those who, unable to
see it, decline to admit such a thing, and a negro should enter the room
with the actual proof of its existence—with the full, flowing beard of
the Caucasian, and therefore the outward symbol of an “equal manhood,”
as the hand of the Eternal has revealed it in the person of the
former—the whole Abolition congregation, if not paralyzed with horror,
would burst into uncontrollable laughter. The wrongs of the “slave,” the
cruelties of the master, the “hopes of humanity,” the most doleful
stories and the saddest tales of the suffering “bondmen,” would be
interrupted by screams of laughter at such a ludicrous spectacle as a
negro with the majestic and flowing beard of the white man. This outward
symbol of complete manhood, or this external indication which typifies
the high nature and lofty qualities of the Caucasian, is no more
impossible, however, to the negro than that “equal manhood” which is
demanded for him, and therefore were the “friends of humanity” to vary
their programme and demand an “equal” beard, or that we shall grant the
negro the full and flowing beard of the Caucasian, they would render
their performances more interesting without giving up any of their
“principles,” as the absurdity is exactly the same in either case.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FEATURES.
The features reflect the inner nature, the faculties or specific
qualities, and they are distinct or indistinct, developed or
undeveloped, as we ascend or descend in the scale of being. In the
simpler forms of animal existence, there is close resemblance to
vegetable life in this respect; but ascending to the vertebrata, and
especially the mammalia, there is a broad distinction between the head
and body, and instead of an undefined uniformity pervading the whole
exterior surface, the face becomes a centre in which the essential
character of the creature is written by the hand of Nature. It is true,
that the general form of the body is significant of the grosser
qualities. The muscular and motive forces of the horse are evidently
designed for swiftness; those of the lion, and the felinæ generally, are
designed both for strength and swiftness; while that of the ox and other
mammalia is adapted to a negative kind of strength which results from a
combination of all the physical forces, and not, as in the former case,
from an excessive muscular development. But the higher qualities, even
in animals, are legibly written in the face or features. In the human
creation, of course, this external reflection of the inner nature in the
features becomes vastly more distinct and real, and in our own race not
unfrequently does the face become a very window of the soul, where may
be read the sweetest and most exquisite emotions of a sensitive and
delicate nature, or, as sometimes happens, the gross and sensual
thoughts of a depraved and perverted one. There are, indeed, countless
and innumerable variations in our own race in this respect. The white or
Caucasian men of Asia, of Africa, Europe, and America, are so modified
by climate, habits, government, religion, etc., that those ethnologists
who are not anatomists have sometimes confounded them, and classed them
as distinct species. Even on the same continent, in the same country,
sometimes the same family, these variations are so marked that they
always seem to belong to different species. The globular head, broad
forehead, oval cheeks, straight nose, and distinct, well-defined lips
and mouth, however, whatever may be the expression, always remain the
same, and can never be confounded with any other race of men. And these
modifications in the Caucasian are not confined to the face, but pervade
the whole surface. White, black, and red hair, white skin and brown
ones, blondes and brunettes, are often found in the same family. It is
even so in regard to size—some are short and others tall—some pigmies
while others are giants—and not unfrequently in the same household,
while the same nation exhibits every possible variety in this respect.
The Caucasian race alone presents these variations—the other races great
uniformity; and the negro, lowest in the scale, presents an almost
absolute resemblance to each other. Of all the millions that have
existed on the earth, their hair not only in color but in form has been
absolutely the same, and such a being as a different-colored or
straight-haired, or long-haired negro never existed. On visiting a
plantation at the South, one sees a thousand negroes so nearly alike,
that except where wide differences of age exist, they are all alike, and
even in size rarely depart from that standard uniformity that nature has
stamped upon the race. The entire external surface, as well as his
interior organism, differs radically from the Caucasian. His muscles,
the form of the limbs, his feet, hands, pelvis, skeleton, all the organs
of locomotion, give him an outward attitude that, while radically
different from the Caucasian, approaches an almost absolute uniformity
of character in the negro. His longitudinal head, narrow and receding
forehead, flat nose, enormous lips and protuberant jaws, in short, his
flat, shapeless and indistinct features strikingly approximate to the
animal creation, and they are as utterly incapable of reflecting certain
emotions as so much flesh and blood of any other portion of his body.
The Almighty and All-Wise Creator has made all things perfect, and
adapted the negro features, as well as those of the white man, to the
inner nature, but if it were true that the negro had certain qualities
with which ignorance and delusion would endow him, then it would be
quite evident that the Almighty Creator had made a fatal blunder in this
case, for it is clearly a matter of physical demonstration that the
negro features cannot reflect these qualities. The features of the
animal are made to express its wants, to reflect the nature God has
given it. We witness this every day among our domestic animals—the cat,
the dog, the horse, all exhibit their qualities, their wants, their
moods, at different times their anger, suffering, and affection, all
that their natures are capable of, are reflected in their faces, and we
understand them. In our own race, the transparent skin, the deeply cut
and distinct features become often a perfect mirror of the inner nature,
and reflect the nicest shades of feeling as well as the deepest emotions
of the soul. Envy, anger, pride, shame, scowling hate and malignant
fear, as well as gentle affection and the most exalted love, are written
as legibly in the face as if they were things of physical form, and
their innumerable modifications and variations are witnessed all about
us, and every day of our lives. How grandly this is displayed in the
case of the orator! This must have been apparent to those who heard Mr.
Clay in the Senate, and saw those wonderful changes of feature—one
moment convulsed with anger, then lit up with genius, or with pride and
pomp of conscious power, and in another reflecting, perhaps, all a
woman’s sweetness or a child’s gentleness. Color, of course, is
essential to this, for a display of the passions and emotions on the
dark ground-work of the negro skin would be as impossible as a rainbow
at midnight, but without the deeply cut and distinctly marked features
of the Caucasian, color would be comparatively useless in reflecting the
grander emotions of the soul. Any one referring to his own experience
for a moment will see how impossible, as a mere physical matter, that
the negro face can reflect the qualities attributed to him by those who
are ignorant of his real nature. The narrow and receding forehead, the
shallow eyes, flat nose, almost on a level with the cheeks, the
protruding and enormous lips,—the only thing that really can be said to
be distinct in the negro face,—the _tout ensemble_ without form or
meaning when contrasted with the white man, is, in connection with the
color, the dark ground of the negro skin, clearly incapable of
reflecting certain qualities of our own race. The negro has, of course,
moral emotions, as have all human creatures, and his face, like that of
the Caucasian, is capable of reflecting all _his_ wants, his likes and
dislikes, his hopes and fears, but every one who has seen him must
_know_ that the higher qualities of the Caucasian cannot find expression
in the negro features, and therefore he does not possess those
qualities, or, as has been said, the All-Wise and Almighty Creator of
all has committed a fatal mistake, and unjustly endowed him with
qualities which he is forever forbidden to express!
CHAPTER IX.
LANGUAGE.
A few years since, an eminent historian, in a public lecture, discussed
the probabilities of a universal language as an instrument of universal
history, and as means for the universal civilization of mankind! Another
public lecturer discussing this subject, and on a professedly scientific
basis, held that language had a miraculous origin, though the period
when this supernatural gift was conferred on man was left wholly to the
imagination of his audience. Others, and among them Buffon, Pritchard,
and even several ethnologists, have scarcely risen above this nonsense,
while their uses or application of this faculty have been vastly more
injurious to science than even their original misconceptions on the
general subject.
Language is naturally divided into two distinct and widely separated
portions, having no necessary connection, though at certain points or
stages uniting and combining together. First, is that universal capacity
of expressing itself—its wants, its sufferings, and its enjoyments—which
God has given to all His creatures, from the insect at our feet to the
Caucasian man standing at the head of this vast and innumerable host of
living beings. In the second place, in its structure and arrangement
into parts or portions of speech; in short, its grammatical
construction. With the former it is alone or mainly proposed to deal in
this place, though it will be necessary occasionally to refer to the
latter. As has been said, all living or rather all animal beings have
the faculty of expressing their wants, and they have a vocal organism in
exact correspondence with these wants and the purposes for which they
are designed by the common Creator of all. Except to a few laborious and
enthusiastic students of natural history, the vast world of insect life
is a _terra incognita_, but each one of these myriad of beings is
adapted to some specific purpose and beneficently designed by the
Almighty Master of Life for the same universal enjoyment which is so
distinctly revealed as the end of their existence in the more
elaborately organized and higher endowed classes of animal being. And
millions of these minute and often unseen creatures are daily and hourly
singing praises to the Almighty Creator for His infinite goodness,
rendering the fields and forests vocal with the music of their gratitude
and the exuberance of their enjoyment. As we ascend in the scale of
animated existence, the vocal faculty or language becomes still more
distinctly revealed, with a vocal apparatus or organism in exact
correspondence with the function or faculty that God has given to the
being in question. The pigeon, of course, cannot give us the notes of
the canary bird, nor the owl sing the songs of the nightingale. The
serpent cannot exchange his hiss for the growl of the tiger, nor the ass
abandon its uncouth utterances for the mighty roar or the majestic voice
of the lion. Each is permitted to express its wants, its sufferings, and
its joys, and each is provided with a vocal organism specific and
peculiar to itself and to its kind, and in accord with the universal law
of adaptation which inseparably unites organism with function. This,
then, in its elementary form, is language—a faculty common to the animal
world, and a necessity of animal existence. It differs in no essential
respect in regard to human beings, or it varies no more from that of the
animal world than other functions or faculties of the human being. There
is, it is true, a point of departure or divergence where the analogies
of the animal world are no longer applicable to human beings, or where
animal beings cannot furnish parallels for those endowed with a moral
nature and destined for immortality; but a vocal organism with its
corresponding faculty or function is essentially the same thing in both,
and differs only in form and degree among the innumerable beings that
compose or are comprised within the vast world of animated existence.
While language, therefore, the voice or faculty by which animals as well
as human beings express their wants, is universal and only varied as the
structure and nature are varied, and while the vocal organism is in
exact harmony with the faculty or function in all cases and in every
phase of animated existence, there is also, and of necessity, a specific
modification of this faculty in the case of the several human races or
species. The vocal organs of the negro differ widely from those of the
white man, and of course there is a corresponding difference in the
language. The specific or the most essential feature of the negro nature
is his imitative instincts, or his capacity for imitating the qualities
and for acquiring the habitudes of the white man. This, of course, is
limited to his actual juxtaposition with the superior race, for aside
from that organic necessity which utterly forbids its being otherwise,
there is no historical fact better attested than that which shows him
invariably relapsing into savageism whenever he is left without the
restraining support of the former. But for wise and beneficent purposes,
God has endowed him with a capacity of imitation, and he is enabled to
apply it to such an extent that those ignorant of the negro nature
actually offer it as a proof of his equal capacity! But with all his
power to thus imitate the habits and to copy the language of the white
man, it is not possible that a single example can be furnished of his
success in regard to the latter. With us, and especially at the North,
all are negroes who are tainted with negro blood, and thus many persons
will imagine that they have seen negroes who were as competent to speak
our language as white men themselves. But no actual or typical negro
will be able—no matter what pains have been taken to “educate” him—to
speak the language of the white man with absolute correctness. European
ethnologists have, notwithstanding, sought to make language the means
for tracing the history and determining the character of races, the
worthlessness and indeed the absurdity of which only needs a single
illustration to expose it. The negroes of Hayti have imitated or copied
the language of their former masters, the French, therefore they are of
the same race, and the future ethnologists would pronounce them
Frenchmen! As the negro cannot preserve anything that he copies from the
Caucasian beyond a certain period, the negroes of that island are
rapidly losing all that they obtained from their former masters, and
though the educated portion on the coasts, and especially the mongrels,
yet retain the French language, those in the interior are rapidly
relapsing into their native African tongue. And a century or two hence,
when the French is entirely extinct and the existing negro population
speak an African dialect, or what is far more probable, speak our own,
the ethnological enquirer would decide that those led by Touissant and
Christophe in the war of “Independence” were Frenchmen instead of
Negroes, because, forsooth, the public documents of the time showed they
spoke the French language! Thus, while language is an important means
for tracing nationalities or varieties of our own race, as, for example,
the modern Spanish, French, Italian, etc., in connection with the great
Latin family of southern Europe, it is simply absurd to apply it to
distinct species like Caucasians and negroes. Each race or each species,
as each and every other form of life, is in perfect harmony with itself,
and therefore the voice of the negro, both in its tones and its
structure, varies just as widely from that of the white man as any other
feature or faculty of the negro being. Any one accustomed to negroes
would distinguish the negro voice at night among any number of those of
white men by its tones alone, and without regard to his peculiar
utterances. Tones or mere sounds are of course indescribable, and
therefore no comparison in this respect is possible, but all those
familiar with the tones of the negro voice know that it is never musical
or capable of those soft and sweet inflections or modulations common to
our own race. Music is to the negro an impossible art, and therefore
such a thing as a negro singer is unknown. It is true that, a few years
since, certain amiable people, both at the North and in England,
believed for a time that they had secured a prodigy of this kind in the
person of the “Black Swan,” but after a careful and patient trial, it
was found to be a mistake. She was not even a negress, though perhaps of
predominating negro blood, and was aided and encouraged by every
possible means, especially in England, where she was actually placed
under the care of Queen Victoria’s music master, but without
avail—Nature was superior to art—the laws of God more potent than those
of human invention—and the “Black Swan” finally disappeared from public
view. The negro is fond of music, as are all other beings, and indeed
all animal beings of the more elevated classes, but music is to him
merely a thing of the senses. With the white race music is perceived as
well as felt—an intellectual as well as sensuous thing—and though it by
no means follows that intellectual persons, with minds above the common
average, should also have musical powers, that sensitive and exquisite
organization which is necessary to a musical genius must be united with
a brain of corresponding complexity. The brain and the nerves constitute
a whole—a system—however widely portions of the latter may diverge in
their especial functions, and it is as impossible that the musical
temperament, or that the elaborate and exquisitely sensuous system of
the Caucasian could be united with the brain of the negro, as it would
be to unite the color of the former with the negro structure. The negro,
therefore, neither perceives nor can he give expression to music—he has
neither the brain nor the delicacy of nerve nor the vocal organism that
is essential to this faculty—all that is possible to him is a certain
approximation through his wonderful powers of imitation, but which is
less available to him in this respect perhaps than any other. His brain
is much smaller, but his nerves are much larger, and his senses are
consequently much more acute, and here is the cause of that “musical
power” with which ignorant and mistaken persons have endowed him. Music
is felt by the nerves rather than perceived by the brain, in his feet as
much as in his head, and with an intensity unknown and unfelt by whites.
His imitative instinct enables him to rapidly acquire the language of
his master, but he also loses it with similar rapidity. The negroes
imported to the West India Islands, though living on large plantations,
soon acquired the language of the few whites, so far as words were
concerned, but an organic necessity compelled them to retain the
structure of their original tongue. Thus, those in British islands spoke
English, in French islands, French, etc., but the general structure
remained the same in all, and now, when the external force applied by
the several European governments has removed the control and guidance of
the superior race, they are rapidly losing the words of their former
masters, and in this as well as every other respect returning to their
native Africanism. In Hayti, where the imitative capacity has little or
nothing to stimulate it, this process is very rapid indeed, and could
they be entirely isolated, the utter extinction of the French language
would doubtless occur within the present century.
CHAPTER X.
THE SENSES.
The senses are those special organisms that connect us with the outer
world through which external impressions are received and transmitted to
the brain—the great sensorium or centre of the nervous system. They are
popularly designated as sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste, each
having its own peculiar organism; some, as sight, exceedingly elaborate,
and others, like taste, quite simple, being little more than a delicate
expansion of nervous matter spread upon the tongue and lining the inner
surface of the mouth. The nervous system includes the brain and the
nerves, but is, in fact, an indivisible whole, of which the brain forms
the centre, and the nerves the circumference, in exact proportion as we
ascend in the scale of being. The centre of the nervous system is
increased and the circumference diminished as the brain becomes larger
and the nerves smaller. Among quadrupeds—the horse, for example—the
nerves are enormously large in comparison with the brain of that animal;
and this holds good throughout, so that an intelligent physiologist
might determine the possible capabilities of any of the higher order of
animals by a simple comparison of the brain and nerves. And in the human
creation a single skull of a Mongol, or Malay, or Negro, and especially
of the latter, should be quite sufficient to enable a physiologist to
comprehend the essential character of the race to which it belonged.
True, he might, as has often happened, mistake it for an abnormal
specimen of the Caucasian, and thus display a vast amount of learned
nonsense of the Gall-Spurzheim order, but if he knew it to be an actual
negro skull, and then compared it with that of the Caucasian, he should
be able not only to determine the intellectual inferiority, but the
vastly preponderating sensualism of the former. He would see that the
relatively small cerebrum, and the large cerebellum, must be united with
a corresponding development of the senses, and a comparatively
dominating sensualism. The mere organism of the senses, of sight,
hearing, etc., though of course differing widely from those of the
Caucasian, it is not necessary to describe, for even in animals of the
higher class there is a certain resemblance, and the student of anatomy
studies the mechanism of the eye in the ox or horse as satisfactorily as
in that of the human creature.
The organisms while thus, in a sense, similar—of the eye, for example—in
whites and negroes, is more elaborately and delicately constituted in
the case of the former, and therefore it is also vastly more liable to
disease, to congenital defects, to strabismus, etc., and especially
short-sightedness. The negro, on the contrary, rarely suffers from these
things, or even from inflammation of the eyes, so common among white
people, and though, in keeping with the imitative instinct of the race,
the negro “preacher” dons spectacles as well as white neck-cloth, it may
be doubted if there ever was a case of near-sightedness in the typical
negro. Though in extreme old age they doubtless lose the power of vision
common to their youth, it is rare that negroes need spectacles at any
age. The organism is supplied with a larger portion of nervous matter
than in the case of the whites, and the function or sense is thus
endowed with a strength and acuteness vastly greater than are the senses
of the Caucasian. Travelers and others mingling among savages, Indians,
negroes, etc., have observed the extraordinary power and acuteness of
the external senses, and have supposed that this was a result of their
savage condition, which, calling for a constant exercise of these
faculties, gave them an extraordinary development. And Pritchard,
carrying this theory or notion to an extreme, inferred that men were
originally created negroes, for the exigencies of savage life demanded,
as he supposed, a black color as well as acuteness of the senses!
Doubtless the civilized negro of America ordinarily displays less
strength and acuteness of sense than his wild brother of Africa, but he
is born with the same faculties, and were the surrounding circumstances
changed so as to call them into more active exercise, he would exhibit
similar characteristics.
The Almighty Creator, with infinite wisdom, has adapted all His
creatures to the ends or purposes of their creation. The Caucasian or
white man, with his large brain and elevated reasoning powers, is thus
provided with all that is necessary to guard his safety and to increase
his happiness. Inferior races, with smaller brains and feebler mental
powers are endowed with strength and acuteness of the external senses
which enable them to contend specifically with surrounding circumstances
and to provide for their safety. This is strikingly manifest in the
North American Indian who marks or makes a trail in the forest which he
follows with unerring confidence, though the eye of the white man sees
nothing whatever. The descriptions of Indian character in Cooper’s
novels are in these respects perfectly correct and true to nature, as
are all those of the Indianized white man, Leather-Stocking, Hawkeye,
etc. The one depends upon his senses—his sight, hearing, etc., the other
on his powers of reasoning or reflection, which in the end enable him to
“sarcumvent” his Huron enemies and to win the victory. Each, according
to his “gifts,” is able to fulfil the purposes of his creation, and
while the superior intelligence of the Caucasian is spreading that race,
with its benign and civilizing consequences, over the whole northern
continent, the strength and acuteness of his senses have enabled the
Indian to resist to a degree all these mighty forces for three hundred
years.
Some historians have advanced the notion that Rome was overrun by
northern barbarians, similar to our North American Indians, but if the
mighty hordes led by Alaric and Genseric to the conquest of Italy, had
been Indians, not one would have escaped to tell the tale of their
destruction. A high civilization, rotten at heart, falls an easy
conquest to ruder and more simple communities of the same race—thus, the
effete and corrupt Roman aristocracy fell before the simple and rude
populations of Northern Europe, as the polished and scholastic Greeks
had succumbed to the Romans, when the latter practised the simple and
hardy virtues of their earlier history. In our own times we have seen
Spain, long ruled over by an effete and worn-out aristocracy, sink from
a first class to a fourth rate power, while France, relieved from the
dead weight of “nobility,” has in half a century become the leading
power of the world. And if the English masses have not sufficient
vitality to cast off the mighty pressure of a diseased and effete
aristocracy by an internal reform like that which the French passed
through in 1789, then it is certain that, at no distant day, the nation
will fall a conquest to some external power that has greater vitality
than itself, however deficient it may be in wealth and learning, and
those refinements that pass for high civilization. But while nations
ruled over by privileged classes thus carry within them the seeds of
their own destruction, and sooner or later fall a conquest to ruder and
simpler societies, the intellectual superiority of the white man always
enables him to conquer inferior races, whatever may be the disparity of
numbers, and Clive with three thousand Europeans, attacking the Hindoo
horde of one hundred thousand, or Cortez invading Mexico with five
hundred followers, amply illustrates the natural supremacy of the
Caucasian race. But, on the contrary, if the Aztecs had had the
intellectual capacity of the Caucasian superadded to their own specific
qualities—the strength and acuteness of the senses—common to the native
race, not alone would Cortez have failed to conquer them, but it may be
doubted if all Europe, combined together for that purpose, could have
accomplished it.
There are no examples for testing the capabilities of negroes in these
respects, for there is no instance in history where they have contested
the supremacy of the white man, the insurrection in Hayti having been
the work of the “colored people” and mulattoes, and the negroes only
forced into it by their fears after the outbreak was complete. But we
have the actual physical facts as well as our every-day experience of
the negro qualities, and therefore can arrive at positive truth when
comparing him with the superior race. The large distribution of nervous
matter to the organs of sense and consequent dominating sensualism (not
mere animalism), is the direct cause of that extreme sloth and indolence
universal with the race. The small brain and limited reasoning power of
the negro render him incapable of comprehending the wants of the future,
while the sloth dependent on the dominating sensualism, together with
strong animal appetites impelling him always to gross self-indulgence,
render a master guide or protector essential to his own welfare. Indeed
it may be matter of doubt which is the paramount cause of the negro’s
inability to provide for future necessities—his limited reasoning power
or his indolence—his small brain or his dominating sensualism. It is a
statistical _fact_ that “free” negroes do not produce sufficient for
their support, and consequently that they tend perpetually to
extinction, and when it is remembered that the small brain and feeble
intellectual power render them incapable of reasoning on the future
rewards of self-denial, and that the large distribution of nervous
matter in the organs of sense, and the consequent sensualism impels them
to gross indulgence of the present, and moreover that they are in
juxtaposition, and must contend with white people, then it is plain
enough to see that it could not be otherwise, and that the total
extinction of these unfortunate beings is necessarily a question of time
alone.
But it is not the mere predominance of the senses, or the strength and
acuteness of the sense which so broadly and radically separates whites
and negroes. They are entirely different in the manifestations of these
qualities. As has been observed, there are few if any near-sighted
negroes, or negroes with other defects of vision, and the sense of smell
in negroes permits them to discriminate and to indicate the presence of
the rattle snake, or other venomous serpents. And in respect to the
sense of touch or feeling, the peculiarity of the negro nature is
perhaps most remarkable of all. This sense in the white person, though
universal of course, is mainly located in the hand and fingers. Sir
Charles Bell, an eminent English surgeon, has written an interesting
work—one of the Bridgewater treatises—on the flexibility and adaptation
of the human hand, and other volumes might be given to the world without
exhausting the subject. The universal law of adaptation, indeed, demands
that the sense of touch, the flexibility of the hand, the delicacy of
the fingers, should be in accord with the large brain and commanding
intellect, otherwise the world itself would long since have come to a
stand-still, and human invention ended with the antediluvians. It is
true the structure—the arrangement of the bones, muscles, tendons, etc.,
in short, the mere mechanism of the hand, is essential, but without the
sense of feeling, or that delicacy of touch found only in the fingers of
the Caucasian, the mechanical perfections of the hand would be
comparatively useless.
All the nice manipulations in surgery, in the arts, in painting,
statuary, and the thousands of delicate fabrics seen every day and all
about us, demand both intellect and delicacy of hand, and these, too, in
that complete perfection found alone in the Caucasian. The sense of
touch, on the contrary, in the negro is not in the hand or fingers, or
only partially so, but spreads all over the surface and envelops the
entire person. The hand itself, in its mere mechanism, is incompatible
with delicate manipulation. The coarse, blunt, webbed fingers of the
negress, for example, even if we could imagine delicacy of touch and
intellect to direct, could not in any length of time or millions of
years be brought to produce those delicate fabrics or work those
exquisite embroideries which constitute the pursuits or make up the
amusements of the Caucasian female. The mechanism of the negro hand, the
absence or rather the obtuseness of the sense of touch in the fingers,
and the limited negro intellect, therefore, utterly forbid that negroes
shall be mechanics, except it be in those grosser trades, such as
coopers, blacksmiths, etc., which need little more than muscular
strength and industry to practice them. But the sense of touch, though
feeble in the hand or fingers, is none the less largely developed as are
the other senses of the negro, and spreads over the whole surface of the
body. This is witnessed every day at the South, where whipping, as with
Northern children, is the ordinary punishment of negroes. As in all
other foolish notions that spring from the one great misconception—that
negroes have the same nature as white people, the “anti-slavery” people
of the North and of Europe labor under a ludicrous mistake in respect to
this matter. They take their notions of flogging from the practice of
the British army and the Russian knout, where strong men are cut to
pieces by the “cat” or beaten to death by clubs, and they suppose that
precisely similar barbarity is practiced on the “poor slave.” And the
runaway negro has doubtless added to these notions, perhaps, without
meaning it. At Abolition conventicles he is expected, of course, to
horrify the crowd with awful tales of his sufferings, but having always
had plenty to eat and never overworked, he has really nothing to fall
back on but the “cruel whippings,” which the imaginations of the former
readily transform into their own notions, but which, in fact, correspond
to that which they deal out to their own children without a moment’s
compunction. The sensibility of the negro skin closely resembles that of
childhood, and while there are doubtless cases of great barbarity in
these respects, as we all know there are in cases of children, the
ordinary flogging of negroes is much the same as that which parents,
guardians, teachers, etc., deal out to white children, and the “terrible
lash” so dolefully gloated over by the ignorant and deluded usually
dwindles down into a petty switch in reality. But it is painful to the
negro, perhaps more so than hanging would be, for while the local
susceptibility of the skin makes him feel the slightest punishment in
this respect, the obtuse sensibility of the brain and nervous system
generally would enable him, as is often manifest, to bear hanging very
well. Those who can remember being flogged in childhood will also
remember the great pain that it gave them, though now in their adult age
they would laugh at such a thing. The negro is a child forever, a child
in many respects in his physical as well as his mental nature, and the
flogging of the negro of fifty does not differ much, if any, from the
flogging of a child of ten, and while the British soldier or Russian
would receive his three hundred lashes without wincing, the big burly
negro will yell more furiously than a school-boy when he receives a
dozen cuts with an ordinary switch.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BRAIN.
The brain is the seat or the centre of the intellect, in short, the
mental organism. The “school men” believed that mind, intellect, the
reasoning faculty, whatever we may term it, had no locality or organism,
but, on the contrary, was some impalpable, shadowy, unfixed principle
that existed as much in the feet or hands as in any other portion of the
body. And even Locke and Bacon, while they promulgated the great truths
of inductive philosophy, were not sufficiently grounded in its
elementary principles to understand clearly the foundation of their own
doctrines. Nor did Dugald Stuart, Dr. Brown, or even the great Kant, of
more modern times, understand any better the fixed truths on which rest
the vast and imperfect systems of philosophy which they labored so
assiduously to build up in their day. It remained for Gall, Spurzheim,
and their followers to do this—to demonstrate certain great elementary
truths which form a foundation, eternal as time itself—for the mental
phenomena to rest upon, and whatever advance may be made hereafter in
the study of these phenomena, its basis is immovable. Metaphysicians
were wont to shut themselves up in their libraries and to analyze their
own emotions, etc., which when noted down, became afterwards the
material for ponderous lectures or the still more ponderous volumes
inflicted on society. Rarely, perhaps, were these speculations connected
with the brain—indeed it is a rare thing to find a physiologist
indulging in metaphysical speculation, while the most famous among the
“philosophers” were profoundly ignorant of that organ, though they
fancied they knew all about its functions! The man that should undertake
to write a treatise on respiration, and at the same time was utterly
ignorant of the structure of the lungs, or to give a lecture on the
circulation, while he knew nothing of the blood vessels, would certainly
be laughed at, and yet innumerable volumes have been written, and
continue to be written, on the functions of the brain or on “moral and
mental philosophy,” by men who never saw a human brain in all their
lives! Gall and Spurzheim did, therefore, a great good to the world when
they began their investigations of the laws of the mind, by the study of
the brain itself as the first and absolutely essential step to be taken
in these investigations. It is true, they, and especially their
followers, sought to set up a fancy science under the name of
Phrenology, and the former thus, to a great extent, neutralized a
reputation which otherwise would have secured the respect of the
scientific world. And it is also true that others before them had
recognized the same truths with more or less distinctness, but it is
certain that Gall and Spurzheim demonstrated and placed beyond doubt the
great, vital, and essential truth that the brain is the organ of the
mind, and that the mental capacity, other things being equal, is in
exact proportion to the size of the brain relatively with the body. This
truth holds good throughout the animal world, and the intelligence of
any given animal or species of animal, is always in keeping with the
size of the brain when compared with the size of the body.
The brain is composed of anterior and posterior portions—of the cerebrum
and the cerebellum—the first the centre of intelligence, the latter of
sensation, or the first the seat of the intellect, and the latter of the
animal instincts, and the proportions they bear to each other determines
the character. As the anterior portion is enlarged and the posterior
diminished the creature ascends, or as the anterior portion is
diminished and the posterior portion enlarged it descends, in the scale
of being. These are the general laws governing men and animals. There is
intelligence in proportion to the size of the brain compared with that
of the body, and in the former there is intellectual capacity—latent or
real—in proportion to the enlarged cerebrum and diminished cerebellum.
It is true we see every day seeming contradictions to the laws in
question, but they are not so, not even exceptions, for they are not
general but universal. Every day we meet people with small heads and
great intelligence, with large heads and large stupidities, but a closer
examination may disclose the truth that the seemingly small head is all
brain, all cerebrum, all in front of the ears, while the large one is
all behind, and only reveals a largely developed animalism. And even
when this is not sufficient to explain the seeming anomaly, there is a
vast and inexhaustible field for conjecture—of accident—where misapplied
or undeveloped powers have been the sport of circumstances. A man may
have a large brain, great natural powers, in truth, genius of the most
glorious kind, and the world remain in total ignorance of the fact, and
among the countless millions of Europe doomed generation after
generation to a profound animalism, there doubtless have been many “mute
inglorious Miltons,” who have lived and died and made no sign of the
Divinity within. On the contrary, there have been men of much
distinction—of great usefulness to their fellows and to the generations
after them, who, naturally considered, were on the dead level of the
race, but by their industry, perseverance, and energy have left undying
names to posterity. Then, again, circumstances have made men great. An
epoch in the annals of a nation—great and stirring events in the life of
a people—stimulate and call into exercise qualities and capacities that
make men famous, who otherwise would not be heard of. Our own great
revolutionary period furnished examples of this, and still later, we
have Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and their senatorial
cotemporaries, who many doubtless think will never be equalled, though
their equals in fact are in the senate now, and only need similar
circumstances to manifest that equality.
The organism of the race—the species—whether human or animal, never
changes or varies from that eternal type fixed from the beginning by the
hand of God; and men, therefore, are now, in their natural capacities
what they always have been and always will be, whatever the external
circumstances that may control or modify the development of these
capacities. And the brain being the organ or organism of the mind, as
the eye is of the sight or the ear of the sense of hearing, it may be
measured and tested, and its capabilities determined, with as entire
accuracy as any other function or faculty. Not, it is true, as the
phrenologists or craniologists contend, that the brain reveals the
character of individuals of the same species, but the character of the
species itself, and its relative capabilities when contrasted with other
races or species of men. This is beyond doubt or question, or will be
beyond doubt or question with all those who understand it, and taking
the Caucasian as the standard or test, the capabilities of the Mongol,
the Malay, the Aboriginal American, or negro, may be determined with as
absolute certainty as the color of their skins or any other mere
physical quality. The brain of the Caucasian averages ninety-two cubic
inches, that of the negro seventy-five to eighty-five inches, while the
bodily proportions can scarcely be said to vary. There are great
variations among whites as to size—there are giants as well as dwarfs,
and quite as great variety in the form,—from the “lean and hungry
Cassius,” to the rounded proportions of a Falstaff or Daniel Lambert.
But on a Southern plantation of a thousand negroes, sex and age are the
only difference or the principal difference that one sees, and a
stranger would find some trouble to recognize any other, or at all
events to distinguish faces. The brain of the negro corresponds in this
respect with the body, and though there are doubtless cases where there
is some slight difference, there seems to be none of those wide
departures witnessed in these respects among whites.
The material, the fibre or texture of the brain itself is little
understood, and though it is quite likely that what we call genius is
attended by a corresponding delicacy or fineness of texture in the
nervous mass, and future exploration in this abstruse matter may reveal
to us important truths, at this time little is known in regard to the
brain except the great fundamental and universal law that, in proportion
to its size relatively with that of the body is there intellectual
power, actual or latent. Many, doubtless, fancy that there are immense
differences in men in this respect—that a Webster, or Clay, or Bonaparte
are vastly superior to common men—but they have only to remember that
the brain is the organ of the intellect, to see its fallacy. The notion
has sprung from the habitudes of European society, where a man clothed
in the pomp and parade of high rank is supposed to be vastly and
immeasurably superior to his fellows, while, in truth, most of these,
or, at all events many of these are absolutely (naturally) inferior to
the base multitudes that prostrate themselves in the dust at their feet.
Nevertheless, there are striking differences in these respects; not more
so, however, than in strength of body, beauty of features, difference of
hair, complexion, etc. But in the case of the negro there is an eternal
sameness, a perpetual oneness, the same color, the same hair, the same
features, same size of the body, and the same volume of brain. All the
physical and moral facts that make up the negro being irresistibly lead
to the conclusion that the Almighty Creator designed him for
juxtaposition with the superior white man, and therefore such a thing as
a negro genius—a poet, inventor, or one having any originality of any
kind whatever—is totally unnecessary, as they are totally unknown in the
experience of mankind. Some, with more or less white blood, have
exhibited more or less talent, possibly even have shown eccentric
indications of genius, but among a million of adult typical negroes,
there probably would not be a single brain that would vary from the
others sufficiently to be detected by the eye, and therefore not an
individual negro whose natural capacities were so much greater than
those of his fellows as to be recognized by the reason.
Such are briefly the leading and fundamental facts that constitute the
mental organism and distinguish the intellectual character of races,
that separate white men and negroes by an interval broader and deeper
than in any other forms of humanity, and render an attempted social
equality not merely a great folly but a gross impiety. As has been
stated, in exact proportion to the volume of brain, relatively with the
size of body in men and animals, there is intelligence, and as the
cerebrum or anterior portion predominates over the cerebellum or
posterior portion, there is a corresponding predominance of
intellectualism over animalism in the human races. The negro brain in
its totality is ten to fifteen per cent. less than that of the
Caucasian, while in its relations—the relatively large cerebellum and
small cerebrum—the inferiority of the mental organism is still more
decided; thus, while in mere volume, and therefore in the sum total of
mental power, the negro is vastly inferior to the white man, the
relative proportion of the brain and of the animal and intellectual
natures adds still more to the Caucasian superiority, while it opens up
before us abundant explanations of the diversified forms in which that
superiority is continually manifested. There are no terms or mere words
that enable us to express the absolute scientific superiority of the
white man. We can only measure it, or indeed comprehend it, by
comparison, but this will be sufficiently intelligible when it is said
that the past history and present condition of both races correspond
exactly with the size and form of the brain in each. The science, the
literature, the progress, enlightenment and intellectual grandeur of the
Caucasian from the beginning of authentic history to this moment, and
which have accompanied him from the banks of the Nile to those of the
Mississippi, are all fitting revelations of the Caucasian brain, while
the utter absence of all these things—the long night of darkness that
enshrouds the negro being, and which is only broken in upon when in
juxtaposition and permitted to imitate his master, is the result or
necessity of his mental organism.
There being nothing superior to the Caucasian, it may be said that he is
endowed with unlimited powers; that is, while the mental organism
remains the same, his powers of acquisition and the increase of his
knowledge have no limit. A generation in the exercise of its faculties
acquires a certain amount of knowledge; this is transmitted to the next;
it, in turn, adds its proportion, and so on, each generation in its turn
accepting the knowledge of its progenitors and transmitting with its own
acquisitions the sum total to its successors. This is called
civilization, and we can suppose no limit to it, except it be in the
destruction of the existing order and a new creation. On the contrary,
the negro brain is incapable of grasping ideas, or what we call abstract
truths, as absolutely so as the white child, indeed as necessarily
incapable of such a thing as for a person to see without eyes, or hear
without ears. In contact with, and permitted to imitate the white man,
the negro learns to read, to write, to make speeches, to preach, to edit
newspapers, etc., but all this is like that of the boy of ten or twelve
who debates _à la_ Webster or declaims from Demosthenes. People ignorant
of the negro mistake this borrowed for real knowledge, as one ignorant
of metals may have a brass watch imposed on him for a golden one. The
negro is therefore incapable of progress, a single generation being
capable of all that millions of generations are, and those populations
in Africa isolated from white men are exactly now as they were when the
Hebrews escaped from Egypt, and where they must be millions of years
hence, if left to themselves. Of course this is no mere opinion or
conjecture of the author. It is a necessity of the negro being—a
consequence of the negro structure—a fixed and eternally inseparable
result of the mental organism, which without a re-creation—another
brain—could no more be otherwise than water could run up hill, or a
reversal of the law of gravitation in any respect could be possible. But
people, ignorant of the elementary principles of science as well as of
the nature of the negro, fancy that this is quite possible; that,
however inferior the organism of the negro in these respects, it is the
result of many centuries of savagery and “slavery,” and therefore if he
were made “free,” given the same rights with the same chances for mental
cultivation, that the brain might gradually alter and become like that
of the white man! This involves gross impiety, if it were not the
offspring of ignorance and folly, for it supposes that chance and human
forces are more potent than the Almighty Creator, whose work is thus the
sport of circumstances. They would seek by stimulating the mind to add
ten per cent. to the negro brain—then to add to the cerebrum while they
diminished the cerebellum—certainly a work of much greater magnitude
than changing the color of the negro skin; but even the most ignorant or
the most impious among these people would scarcely undertake the latter
operation. If reason could at all enter into the matter, it would surely
be more reasonable to suppose that mind might be changed by acting on
matter, rather than the reverse, and therefore it would be better to
change the color of the skin, as the first, as it would also be the most
practicable, step to be taken in this grand undertaking of setting aside
the Creator and re-creating the negro. But, after all, their labors
would fail—after they had changed the color, after they had increased
the volume of the brain and duly modified its relations as well as
altered its texture—in short, when they had turned him into a white man,
then all would be in vain, for such a brain could no more be born of a
negress than an elephant could be!
CHAPTER XII.
GENERAL SUMMARY.
In the several preceding chapters, those outward characteristics that
specifically distinguish the negro have been briefly considered. It
has been shown that color, the hair, the figure, the brain, etc., are
simply facts out of many millions of facts that separate the races;
that each and all of them are original, invariable, and everlasting,
and the exception, or the absence of any of them, or of any of the
associated facts not enumerated, at any time, in the case of a single
individual or any generation, or under any possible circumstances of
time, climate, or external agencies whatever, is, or would be,
necessarily impossible. Nature is always true to herself, and even in
those abnormal specimens sometimes presented to our observation—those
so-called monstrosities—there is, properly speaking, no departure from
her original designs, or from those fixed and eternal laws that govern
organic life. We sometimes see Albinos, but except a certain tinge to
the color, itself totally unlike any color in other races, the
absolute negro, that is the millions of facts that constitute the
negro being, are untouched. We witness all kinds of abnormal
development in our own race, in animals, in the vegetable world, in
all the innumerable beings and things that surround us. For
example—let any one spend an autumn day in the forest, and turn his
attention to the strange and often ludicrous sights that surround him.
It often seems as if nature delighted herself in creating odd and
uncouth shapes, as if intended for relaxation and relief from her
graver and grander labors. But even here there is no violation of the
higher law—the order of nature though very often interrupted by
accident, is never contradicted—the abnormal development, the most
uncouth and monstrous consequences are still pervaded by the eternal
decree stamped upon the whole universe, that forbids forever any
change in the minutest atom of this mighty mass of life. The Albino,
the deformed or monstrous Negro, the seemingly wide departure from the
normal standard, still obeys the higher law. All the peculiarities
that distinguish him from his race are _sui generis_, without any
approximation or resemblance to the white man. So, too, with the
latter, and so, too, with all monstrosities in the lower animals. The
things that constitute the monstrosity, that separate the creature, or
seem to do so, from his own kind, separate him also from other
species, whether of men or animals. The eternal gulf, the impassable
barrier, the decreed limits fixed by the Creator himself, are never
passed. A negro, with the color, or the hair, or the language, or the
brain, or the sense of touch, or taste, or sight of the Caucasian,
would not be a monstrosity but an impossibility. He might differ very
widely from his own race in any one of these things, as we actually
witness in the case of Albinos, in fact might retain scarcely any
outward resemblance to his kind, and yet exist; but none has ever had,
or ever will have, an existence that has any thing in common with the
white man, for that would contradict the universal order of God
himself.
Such being the fact, all that is external or tangible to the sense being
thus widely, immeasurably, and indestructibly different from the
Caucasian or white man, it is obvious that, in all beyond the outer
surface, the same relative differences must exist. It was originally
intended to demonstrate this in detail—to show the actual anatomical
facts and structural differences in the organs, the tissues, the
systems, down to the minutest atom of the bodily structure. It was
designed to present the reader with numerous plates, showing all
this—the minutest particle, the single globule of blood, even, painted
after the employment of the microscope, being sufficiently palpable to
the sense, to show that the primordial atoms of the negro structure are
as specifically, and relatively as widely, different from the white
man’s as the color, the hair, or any of those outward qualities that
confront us daily in the streets. But this would have added so much to
the expense of the work, as to often place it out of the reach of the
day laborer and working man, those who alone, or mainly, need to
understand the great “anti-slavery” imposture of our times, and the
world-wide conspiracy against their freedom, manhood and happiness,
which has so long held them in abject submission to its clamorous
pretences of philanthropy and humanity. Nor is it at all essential. A
moment’s reflection or consideration is quite sufficient to convince any
rational mind that the outward differences must have their counterpart
in the entire structure. Of course any thing exceptional—a blemish, a
congenital deformity on the surface—has no corresponding relation with
the interior, but that which is specific, uniform, and invariable, as
the color, the hair, the features, etc., must of necessity pervade the
_tout ensemble_ of being, whether human, animal, or vegetable. The
apple, pear, peach, etc., have their own specific features externally,
and their corresponding qualities internally. The shad differs from the
salmon in its absolute structure equally with its outward appearance.
The whole anatomical arrangement of the horse differs as widely from
that of the ass as the outward features vary. And the entire bodily
structure of the negro, down to the minutest atom of elementary matter,
differs just as widely, of course, as the color of the skin or other
external qualities, from those of the white man. It is equally palpable
to the reason that the nature of the negro, his instincts, all the
faculties of his mind, and all the functions of his body, are pervaded
by the same or by relative differences from those of the Caucasian. To
suppose otherwise is not to suppose a monstrosity, for, as has been
remarked, monstrosities, however wide the departure from the normal
standard, are _sui generis_, without any approximation to different
beings—but such things are simply impossible. As it is plainly
impossible that any being could exist half like or half unlike any other
creature, so, too, it is obvious that beings with different structures
could not possess the same qualities or manifest the same nature. Can
any one imagine an apple with the qualities of the pear or peach, or
even of another apple that differed from it in its material structure?
Can it be supposed that a lion could ever have the nature of the tiger,
or panther, or cat, or of any of the felinæ? Can it be believed that a
bull-dog ever manifested the nature of a hound, or that the mastiff or
spaniel could be made to exhibit the specific qualities of either? No,
indeed. Nature makes no mistakes, nor does the Almighty Master of life
permit His creatures to violate or transcend His eternal decrees.
It being, therefore, an invariable, indestructible, and eternal law,
that the outward qualities are exactly harmonized with the interior
structure down to the minutest atom of elementary particles and equally
invariable and everlasting that the organism is in harmonious
correspondence with the functions, the instincts, in a word, the nature,
we are able to understand, with absolute certainty, the _specific_
qualities, and to approach with tolerable certainty the relative
differences and actual interval that separate the white and black races.
The figures of the plate in the opening of this work indicate these
vital and all-important truths.
The first figure exhibits the typical Caucasian, not the cultivated man
of our time, but the “barbarian,” the Oriental—the cotemporary with
David, Solomon, Cyrus, and others of remote antiquity. The second figure
is the Negro of the same period, as found on the monuments, and, at the
present time, in all those portions of Africa where the negro is
isolated, and there are no _débris_ of other races existing among them.
By himself he never changes in his outward manifestations. One
generation is as a million of generations, and therefore the thousands
now annually imported into Cuba are seen to be just as this figure
represents him four thousand years ago.
Nor is the figure of the Caucasian changed, for though the American of
to-day is at an immeasurable distance in knowledge, the actual physical
and intellectual man remains the same as this figure represents him four
thousand years ago. Both figures have the same color, and yet the
_specific_ differences are none the less palpable—the Caucasian and
Negro type being equally distinct and widely different.
The third figure is an American—a white man of to-day—whose intellectual
development, refinement of mind and manners, costume and habitudes are
widely different; nevertheless, the physical qualities and specific
capabilities are the same as those of his Oriental ancestors of by-gone
generations.
The fourth figure is an American Negro, but a typical Negro without
taint or admixture with other races. His features, moulded and softened
by juxtaposition with the Caucasian, present a great improvement,
certainly, over the isolated or African type, but the organism, the
actual physical and mental nature remains the same.
The white man is least and the negro most affected by external agents,
such as climate, time, systems of government, etc. The fourth figure in
contrast with the isolated negro of Africa, exhibits a certain degree of
improvement, progress, or advance that illustrates the actual
capabilities of the race when placed under circumstances favorable to
its development. The size of the brain, the actual organism and absolute
nature, of course, remains unaltered, just as all these things remain
unchanged and unchangeable in the uneducated white laborer of our own
times; but the negro, in juxtaposition with the superior race, becomes
educated, and all his latent capabilities fully developed. Thus, while
the color, the hair, the entire organism is just what it was thousands
of years ago, and what it must be forever, or as long as the present
order of creation continues, there is a certain modification in the
features and still greater changes in the expression. The uncouth and
uneducated European laborer contrasted with the educated classes, or
with the generality of Americans, exhibits a wide difference, not so
much in the features as in the expression; and though the negro in
Africa is in a far more natural position, relatively considered, than
the European laborer, the negro in our midst exhibits, perhaps, even a
greater difference over his isolated brother. And if we suppose, for a
moment, that the masses of English laborers were educated, fed on the
same fare, and subject to the same circumstances as the English nobles,
then we may form a reasonable estimate of the relative advance of the
American over the African negro. The former would differ in no respect
whatever from the privileged and educated class, and if all the negroes
of Africa were brought here or were placed in juxtaposition and natural
relation with the superior race, they would exhibit the same
characteristics common to our so-called slaves, and the fourth figure in
this plate would doubtless present a typical illustration of them. A
good many people, ignorant of the laws of organism, suppose that our
negro population have made a great advance over the wild and barbarous
tribes of Africa, and, as shown by the second and fourth figures in the
plate, this is so, but it is only in the outward expression, while the
essential nature is ever the same. The negro infant, for example,
brought from Africa and placed under existing circumstances in
Mississippi, would be represented by the fourth figure, while the infant
born here and carried to Africa to grow up with the wild tribes of the
interior, would, on the contrary, be illustrated by the second figure of
the plate.
There are a multitude of moral considerations involved, of course, and
that cannot be measured or tested by material illustrations, but we may
form a reasonable estimate of the superiority of condition and of the
greater happiness of the negro over his African brethren, by a simple
comparison of these figures. As has been observed, it corresponds with
the difference between the educated and non-educated white man, but it
is greater, for the negro is more affected by external circumstances,
and therefore while the actual size and relations of the negro brain and
the specific nature of the negro are unalterable, the outward form of
his head as well as the expression of his face is strikingly improved
over that of the typical African.
In general terms, it may be said, that the “American slave” is educated
and the isolated African negro is not; that the former is civilized and
the latter a barbarian; that, though in a sense in a natural position
(for he multiplies in Africa), he is in his normal condition only when
in juxtaposition and natural relation to the superior white man. It is
sometimes supposed that the negro is incapable of progress, and so, of
course, he is when isolated from the superior race, but when placed in
his normal condition, and his imitative capacities called into action,
he is capable of progress to a certain extent. God, while endowing him
with widely different and vastly inferior faculties, has gifted him with
imitative capacities so admirable, that those who are ignorant of his
real nature mistake them for those of the white man. Like children, like
the inferior animals, and like all other inferior races, he naturally
imitates the superior being; but beyond this general tendency common to
all subordinate creatures, there is a peculiar capacity in the negro in
this respect, which, more than anything else, warrants us in terming it
the _specific_ feature of the race. Placed in his normal condition, he
becomes intelligent, civilized, pious, industrious, and if his master is
a man of refined mind and dainty habits, the negro becomes so, even more
than children who imitate the habitudes of their parents. Thus, it will
be seen on Southern plantations generally, that they correspond with
their masters, and if the habits and practices of the former are moral
and Christian-like, the negroes approximate to the same standard. On the
contrary, if they are under the guidance of coarse and brutal masters,
or are left with nothing to imitate but the habits of a gross and
tyrannical overseer, then they become idle, vicious, and thieving; and
take every chance that offers to run away from their homes.
In speaking of negro education, of course no such meaning as that
applied to white people is intended. Reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.,
have no relation or connection with the development of the negro powers.
He simply needs to be in a position where the imitative capacity with
which God has so beneficently endowed him is most completely called into
action, and, as has been observed, he then becomes an industrious,
moral, and well-behaved creature, or he is idle, sensual, vicious and
worthless, just as the master or overseer pleases to make him. There are
doubtless exceptional instances, but with all the wide-spread and
boundless effort of the ignorant and deluded people in England and
America to seduce them from their homes, there are probably but few
negroes—real negroes—who ever abandoned their masters, unless their
education had been neglected. The instinct of the negro is obedience to
his master, and the strongest affection of his nature—far above that for
his wife or offspring—is for the master who feeds, guides, and cares for
him, indeed is his Providence; and his utter horror of migration, unless
it be with his master, these qualities, so dominant in the negro, would
be or might be made a barrier of protection against outside seductions,
were they properly understood and appreciated by those having them in
charge. This negro education, civilization, progress in fact, which the
negro is capable of when in his normal condition, and his imitative
capacities are permitted a healthy development, of course is rapidly
lost when isolated from the white man. If the four millions now in our
midst were suddenly left to themselves, but a few years—probably within
fifty—everything that now distinguishes them—that is, all that they have
imitated from the superior race—would become extinct.
Leaving out of the consideration mulattoes and mongrels, and taking into
view simply the negro—the four millions of negroes of untainted blood
which now exist in our midst—it is reasonable to say that, fifty years
hence, there would not be one that would speak his present language,
that would be a Christian, that would retain his name, or any other
thing whatever which he now possesses and has imitated from his masters.
This may seem a startling declaration to many who live in daily contact
with these people, while by those ignorant and deplorably deluded
parties who fancy that they are engaged in a work of humanity when
seeking to undo the work of the Almighty Creator, by turning black into
white and the negro into a Caucasian, it will scarcely be understood;
but it involves a truth that may be easily and plainly illustrated. A
very large portion of our negroes are the children and grandchildren of
those brought from Africa, and not a few, perhaps, were themselves
brought in by the “slave trade,” which it will be remembered was
continued down to 1808.
Now of all these there probably is not one that can speak the language
of his progenitors, not one that retains his African religion or the
slightest relic of African history or tradition, not one with even an
African name, and if they have thus rapidly lost all that they possessed
of their own, that was original and specific, of course, if isolated
from their masters, they would still more rapidly lose that which they
have imitated from a superior race.
Such, then, is the negro—the lowest in the scale as the Caucasian is the
most elevated in the human creation—a creature not degraded—for none of
God’s creatures are degraded—but that is widely different and vastly
subordinate to the elaborately organized and highly endowed white man.
The _specific_ qualities are not matters of opinion but of fact, that
appeal to our senses at every step, but the specific differences and
actual intervals that separate races, though often susceptible of
successful illustrations, must to a great extent be determined by
experience. The author has attempted to define these differences in some
essential respects, and believes he has succeeded with sufficient
exactitude to warrant correct conclusions in respect to the almost
innumerable things that could not be discussed nor even alluded to in a
work of this kind. We have this race among us—they or their descendants
must remain an element of our population forever. It is doubtless the
design of the Almighty that the Caucasian and negro, under certain
circumstances which will be considered elsewhere, should exist in
juxtaposition, and therefore a specific knowledge of this race, and its
true relations to our own, is the most vital and indeed transcendent
question or consideration that was ever presented to a civilized and
Christian people. Nor can this be delayed or pushed aside, for even now
the nation is rapidly drifting into serious difficulties and possibly
terrible calamities, in consequence of that wide-spread ignorance and
misconception prevalent in regard to the negro’s nature and his true
relations to the white man. The blind and stupid warfare waged so long
upon the domestic institutions of the South, has doubtless thus far
injured the negro most, and it may be demonstrated with ease that the
worst and most brutal master ever known could not inflict so much misery
on the negro as the so-called friend of freedom, who, in utter ignorance
of the negro nature, would force him to live out the life of a widely
different being. But the time has come when this ignorance and delusion
threatens to involve the whole framework of American society, and
nothing but the simple truth—the recognition of the actual and
unchangeable facts fixed eternally by the hand of God, can save the
nation from dire calamities.
PART II.
CHAPTER XIII.
MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM.
All the generic and specific forms of life are governed by their own
peculiar laws of interunion, and hybridism or hybridity is therefore a
phenomenon of varying character, having, it is true, certain
resemblances in those instances which approach each other, but
absolutely different in all cases. Naturalists have sometimes made great
blunders in this respect, for they have assumed that hybridism was
governed by the same laws in all cases, and therefore sought its
application or inferred its presence in instances the most remote and
contradictory. The most extraordinary, and, indeed, inexcusable instance
of the kind has been seen in the efforts made to confound the
distinctions of race, and to pervert truth into the most shameful and
what would seem to be the most palpable falsehoods. It has been assumed
by naturalists of high character that different genera never produce
offspring, that the _offspring_ of different species are incapable of
reproduction, and that varieties are unlimited in their powers of
virility. If, therefore, there were doubt in respect to the character of
certain (supposed) genera, and it was found that offspring followed a
conjunction of sexes, in this particular instance, it was inferred that
they were merely different species. And if the product or progeny of
these _species_ were found to be equally virile, then it was inferred
that they were all originally of the same species, and nothing but
varieties. This test, so simple that it can hardly be mistaken, serves
with sufficient accuracy to determine the real character, and when the
naturalist properly applies the laws of hybridity, that is, admits a
modification of these laws in all cases or in all the different genera
subjected to his examination, then he is armed with sufficient data to
render his labors accurate and effective. But however pains-taking or
correct in other particulars, when he assumes that hybridity is a unit,
and rigidly applies this in all cases, or to families widely remote in
other respects, his labors, from this defect, must be comparatively
valueless.
The instance already referred to, where hybridity was thus presented,
was as follows:—The mule, as is well-known, is the offspring of the
horse and ass. It does not, in its turn, reproduce itself, therefore the
horse and ass were different species. Prichard and others applied this
test, or marked this test, in the case of human beings, of whites and
negroes, and proved by it that they were of the same species. It was
seen that white men cohabited with negro women, and the offspring in
turn, reproduced itself, and consequently that the parents were of the
same species. Or, as this has passed as current coin hitherto, and
seemed perfectly satisfactory, indeed wholly unanswerable to naturalists
and men of science as well as others, it is best, perhaps, to place it
in distinct and categorical terms before the reader. 1st. It is
universally admitted by naturalists that incapacity in the offspring to
reproduce itself demonstrates the different species of the progenitors,
while, on the contrary, a capacity in the offspring to beget offspring
in its turn demonstrates similarity of species in the progenitors. 2d.
The mule, or the offspring of the horse and ass, does not reproduce
itself, therefore the horse and ass are different species. 3d. The
mulatto offspring of the white man and negro woman does beget offspring,
therefore the white man and negro woman are of the same species.
This was the assumption and the reasoning of Prichard and other European
ethnologists, and if hybridity were a unit, or principle of rigid and
uniform character in all cases, in human beings as in animals and
vegetables, in the case of the white man and negress, exactly as in that
of the horse and ass—then, indeed, would the inference seem unavoidable
that whites and negroes constituted in fact a single species. But they
were guilty of two fundamental errors in this matter—an error of fact,
and an error of reasoning, or perhaps it would be more correct to say
that both were errors of fact. At all events, _facts_ that demonstrate
difference of species in whites and negroes beyond possibility of doubt
were distorted into proofs which seemed to demonstrate sameness or
similarity of species with equal certainty.
Hybridity, as has been said, is not a unit, is not a fixed, uniform law
or principle. A moment’s consideration is sufficient to convince any
intelligent mind of this truth. Each form of life has necessarily its
own character, its own specific qualities, and the laws governing its
reproductive powers must be in correspondence, and just as differently
manifested as any of its specific qualities. To suppose that the laws of
the phenomena governing the reproductive functions of the horse and ass
are exactly similar to those manifested in the case of human beings, is
as absurd as to suppose that the term of gestation, the length of life,
the mode of their locomotion, or any other qualities—should be exactly
the same in both cases. But nothing more need be said. It is perfectly
obvious that the laws of reproduction must be radically different in the
human creatures, and therefore the inference of Pritchard and others,
that whites and negroes were of the same species, because the mulatto,
unlike the mule, did reproduce itself, is simply absurd. But they were
still further and still more vitally mistaken in respect to their
assumptions of fact. The mulatto, literally speaking, or in the ordinary
sense, does beget offspring, but mulattoism is as positively sterile as
muleism. The phenomenon of hybridity is manifested, as has been stated,
in conformity with the nature of the beings concerned, and as the human
creatures are separated by an almost measureless as well as impassable
distance from the horse and ass, the laws of hybridity are, of course,
correspondingly different. Instead of a single generation, as in the
animals referred to, sterility in the human creatures is embraced within
four generations, where a boundary is arrived at as absolutely fixed and
impassable as the single generation in the case of the former.
But in order to understand the matter clearly, it is proposed to present
the reader with the preliminary principles or facts, and inductive
facts, that lead to this vital and all-important conclusion. It is
all-important, not as demonstrating beyond doubt the vital and
fundamental truth of distinct species, for that is a self-evident and
indeed unavoidable truth that meets us at every step, and confronts our
senses almost every hour or day of our lives. But mulattoism is a
subject of stupendous importance in itself, and as the public are
generally, and the “anti-slavery” writers especially, profoundly
ignorant of it, and of all the laws that govern it, it is proposed to
present the elementary principles or basis on which the whole subject
rests.[1]
Footnote 1:
The author has devoted much time and labor to this interesting
subject, and, together with his own and the observations of friends
and correspondents, covering several thousand cases of the mixed
blood, is able to deduce the general laws as stated in the text, and
with entire confidence in their essential accuracy.
1st. In the case of the white man cohabiting with the negress, or
“married” to a negro female, there will be a more limited progeny than
if she were married to one of her own race.
2d. The mulatto offspring of this connection intermarrying with other
hybrids, will exhibit still less virility.
3d. The offspring of the former again intermarrying with hybrids equally
removed from the original parentage, shows a yet greater diminution of
virile power.
4th. By still intermarrying with hybrids, and of a corresponding remove,
virility is correspondingly decreased.
5th. Finally, the fourth generation of mulattoism is as absolutely
sterile as muleism, and though there may be, at rare intervals, a
possible exception, yet, in every practical sense, and for all the
purposes of philosophic inquiry, it may be assumed as the natural and
impassable barrier of this abnormal and exceptional form of being. Of
the essential correctness of these laws, or their data, almost every one
living in the South, or perhaps in the larger cities of the Middle
States, will be able to satisfy himself, if he will take the trouble to
investigate the matter. He need not pursue the subject to its ultimate
end, or to an extent necessary to arrive at all the results here
presented, but he may, with comparatively trifling attention to it,
satisfy himself of the _tendencies involved, and that there is somewhere
at least approximating to these laws a fixed and absolute barrier beyond
which mulattoism can not exist_. All the dealers in “slaves” and many
“slave owners” know this from observation and individual experience, and
while entirely ignorant of any thing like the scientific formulæ here
presented, not a few among the former have actually stated it to the
author in total unconsciousness that either he or any one else had ever
thus formalized the essential character of mulattoism. But there is a
very important feature of this matter, which, not understood or
overlooked, may lead astray those who undertake its investigation. As
has been said, hybridity is a phenomenon to be tested and determined by
the nature of the beings involved, and as it must be wholly different in
the human creatures from that manifested in animals, and life is limited
to four generations in the case of mulattoes, while the mule is confined
to a single generation, so, too, must the mere quality or capacity of
offspring be taken into consideration. The mule is remarkable for its
powers of endurance—the mulatto for its fragility and incapacity to
endure hardships. A northern climate is fatal to the negro, but the same
climate is still more fatal to the hybrid, for his approximation to the
Caucasian, and therefore capacity for a northern clime, is more than
balanced by his constitutional tendencies to fragility and decay. Thus,
of the ten thousand free negroes in Massachusetts, whom, “freedom” and
climate together, were there no more external additions, must finally
exterminate, the last man among them would be a typical negro, or, at
all events, approximating nearest to the typical standard.
But it is in the female hybrid that this tendency to decay, or this vice
of constitutional formation, is most apparent. Many of them are
incapable of nourishing or taking care of their offspring, and, together
with miscarriages and the numerous forms of disease connected with
maternity, they are often found to have had a large number of children,
not one of whom reached maturity. In taking into view, therefore, the
sterility of mulattoism, we must have regard to its vices of formation
as well as its limited virility, and that nature completes her
processes, whether of growth or decay, through many different forms; and
while mulattoism is as absolutely confined to four generations as mules
are to a single generation, the former result is worked out through
constitutional fragility and limited longevity as much, perhaps, as by
an imperfect reproductive capacity.
It is seen, therefore, that Prichard and the European ethnologists made
a radical mistake in this matter, and the very proofs which they relied
on to establish their single-race theory, or that whites and negroes
were of the same species, actually prove the precisely opposite fact,
that they are of different species. Not only is the phenomenon of
hybridity different in human beings, from that peculiar to animals, but
it differs in the different races of the former. The author’s inquiries
on this subject have been limited to the white and negro races or
species, but the evidence presented to his observation, during the war
with Mexico, was sufficiently authentic to warrant the conclusion that
hybrids have greater tenacity of life, when the offspring of whites and
aborigines, than in the case of whites and negroes. The former
approximate closer to our own race, and it is only reasonable to suppose
that, in precise proportion to this fact, or to this starting-point, is
the hybrid offspring endowed with vitality; and the same rule may be
applied with equal certainty to all the other species of men.
The sexual instinct, or the instinct of reproduction, is universal in
animal existence. It is that which multiplies its kind, that peoples the
earth and fills the world with innumerable tribes of beings and endless
processions of generations, each after its kind exhibiting the same
qualities and subject to the same laws as the original types, without
the slightest atom of change, though countless generations intervene
between them. In respect to human beings endowed with reason and moral
feeling, it is evidently designed by the Almighty Creator of all that
the instinct of reproduction should be held in subjection to those
higher qualities. Nevertheless, instinct in respect to the sexual
functions is strikingly manifest in the lower races of mankind.
When white men—travelers and explorers—suddenly make their appearance in
African villages, where they were never before seen, the females run and
hide themselves from their sight; and among the multitude of white
prisoners captured by the aborigines of this continent, there has
probably never been an instance of the violation of their persons by
their savage captors. In respect to the so-called insurrection of
negroes in Hayti or San Domingo, where, though all of the white blood,
men, women, and children in their nurses’ arms were remorselessly
butchered by the terror-stricken blacks, there are no authenticated
instances of the violation of white females.
A negro insurrection—that is, a revolt of the negro from the rule of the
white man, to obtain the liberty of the latter—is simply nonsensical: as
entirely so as to suppose an insurrection to obtain the complexion or
any other physical attribute of the superior race; but should some white
miscreant, as attempted lately at Harper’s Ferry, delude “slaves” to
slaughter the families of their masters, there need be little or no
apprehension in respect to that hideous and monstrous idea so prominent
in abolition writings—the violation of the persons of white females. It
is true, hybrids and mongrels might perpetrate such monstrous crimes,
but the negro—the typical, pure-blooded negro—driven on by his fears and
dread of the master race, would only seek its extermination, never the
indulgence to _him_ of such unnatural propensities.
The instinct of reproduction in animals is governed by fixed laws; but,
as has been said, designed by the common Creator to be ruled by the
reason and subjected to the moral affections in the higher human nature;
nevertheless, the ignorance and corruption of our social life have
perverted these designs, and covered society with blotches and ulcers
horrible to contemplate. In this city alone there are said to be ten
thousand prostitutes—lost creatures, so lost that nature denies them
offspring, to reproduce themselves, to form a link or have a place in
the mighty processions of their kind, that stand out distinct and
accursed, dead though alive. And yet each of these blasted ones was
created with capacities of love, of affection, of receiving and
conferring happiness boundless and measureless. God made them pure and
beautiful, and man has transformed them into beings so vile, that their
very existence must not be recognized by the pure and virtuous! God
created them but a little lower than the angels—man has perverted them
into something scarcely better than devils!
What an awful perversion of the instincts of reproduction—of that great
vital and fundamental law which animals obey without any violation of
it, but which we, in our lofty nature and God-given powers, have thus
transformed into such hideous shapes and worked into such sickening and
diseased results! The sexes are equal in numbers, and therefore nature
designs that all men should marry—that one man should be united to one
woman—that they should always be attracted to each other by the
affections, and, in their love and companionship, their care for their
offspring, for their home and its sweet enjoyments, it offers them
rewards the purest, the most exalted, as well as the most rational, that
our being is capable of feeling. And yet the sad spectacle is presented
every day and all about us, that that which God designed should be the
source of our greatest happiness is perverted into the most loathsome
and most hideous of social miseries! What may be the causes or the
principal causes (for there are doubtless many) of this hideous ulcer at
the very heart of modern society, it is needless to inquire—the actual
or proximate cause is the perversion of the sexual laws—the violation of
the instincts of reproduction wholly unknown among animals and
comparatively unknown among the subordinate races of mankind. It is the
proud Caucasian—the large-brained and gloriously endowed Caucasian—who
mostly exhibits this terrible crime against the higher law, and who thus
awfully sins against God and his own nature. Such a thing as
_prostitution_ is unknown among negroes—among the aborigines of this
continent, and scarcely perceptible among Mongols or Chinese. There are,
it is true, great vices, shocking indecencies and beastly practices
among the Mongols and other subordinate races, but prostitution—the
indiscriminate sale of the bodies as well as the desecration of the
souls of women for money, as practiced openly in all the great centres
of Christendom, is peculiar to the Caucasian alone—to that exalted and
highly endowed race which God has so gifted and placed at the head of
all other races of mankind.
_Mulattoism is to the South what prostitution is to the North_—that is,
those depraved persons who give themselves up to a wicked perversion of
the sexual instincts, resort to the mongrel or “colored women” instead
of houses of ill-fame, as in the former case. Such a thing as love, or
natural affection, never has nor can attract persons of different races,
and therefore all the cohabitations of white men and negro women are
abnormal—a perversion of the instincts of reproduction. This “original
sin,” as it may well be termed, carries with it, by inevitable
necessity, certain consequences, and the declaration of Holy Writ, that
the children are punished to the third and fourth generation for the
sins of their fathers, is literally true in a physiological sense. The
precise laws governing the generation of mulattoism have been already
stated, and need not be repeated in this place, but it may be well to
remember that the offspring constantly diminishes when hybrids
intermarry with hybrids of the same remove, until, reaching the fourth
generation, it loses all generative capacity as absolutely as the mule.
With this radical and fundamental vice of organization, it will be
readily seen that mongrelism can never become an important or dangerous
element of population. Mr. Clay once advanced the opinion that the mixed
blood of the South was rapidly increasing, and therefore a time would
probably come when the negro blood would be absorbed by the whites, and
the negro life be utterly extinct. The ignorant abolition writers have
made much of this opinion of Mr. Clay, but whatever the general
intellectual superiority of that distinguished gentleman, any common
sense person must know that his ignorance of the laws of organization
renders his opinion on this subject of no value whatever. Two hundred or
one hundred years ago, the proportion of the sexes among the white
people was doubtless less equal than now, and therefore those abnormal
cohabitations of white men with negro women were more frequent than at
present. But after a certain amount or number of the mixed blood these
cohabitations would take that direction, and, as at present, would be
mainly confined to the hybrid and “colored” women. And in view of the
fragility, sterility, and almost universal tendency to disease and
disorganization in this mixed and mongrel element, it is seen at a
glance how impossible it is that it should ever be of sufficient amount
to threaten the safety or even to disturb the peace of Southern society.
In proportion to the normal population or to the pure blood, it is
doubtless less than it was fifty years ago, and it may even become less
in the future, but it is wholly and absolutely impossible that it can
ever exist in larger proportion than at present.
This vicious intercourse with the mongrel women at the South, of course,
has no resemblance or relation to amalgamation; but it is ignorantly or
wilfully thus confounded by the abolition writers of the day.
Amalgamation is reciprocal union of the sexes, such as that between the
Normans and the Anglo-Saxons in England—that occurs constantly between
the natives of this country and those who have migrated here from
Europe, and indeed as occurred in Mexico and other Spanish provinces,
where the Spanish conquerors, who brought few Spanish females with them,
sought wives among the natives or Indian races. The white blood of the
South, like that of the North, is pure and untainted, and a white woman
so lost and degraded as to mate with a negro, would not be permitted to
even live among negroes in a Southern community. Occasionally a
monstrous indecency of this kind does occur at the North, but they are
usually English or other foreign-born persons, and unless there was some
moral or physical cause—some disease of body or mind which rendered her
incapable of self-guidance, it can hardly be supposed that an
American-born woman ever committed such an indecent outrage upon her own
womanhood, and sin against God, as to mate with a negro. At the South,
as has been said, such a thing is altogether impossible, for the woman
would not alone be driven from the society of her own race, as at the
North, but she would not be permitted (if known) to live even among
negroes! Amalgamation can never occur at the South, and scarcely needs
an exposition in this place; but as it is now actually taking place in
Jamaica and other islands, and, to a certain extent in Cuba, and,
moreover, such a monstrous social cataclysm is necessarily involved in
the theory or idea of the abolition of “slavery,” it is well enough,
perhaps, to give it an explanation.
There are about four millions of negroes in this country, and if, for
the purposes of illustration, we may suppose the theory of
anti-slaveryism to be finally reduced to practice, the following results
must or would occur:—Four millions of whites would form marital unions
with these negroes—the men taking negresses to wife, and the females
negroes for husbands, ending with the next generation, of course, in
mulattoes and the extinction of negroes. The third generation would
absorb the mulattoes and end in quadroons; the fourth generation would
manifest a corresponding diminution, and a time come when every atom of
negro blood would disappear as utterly as if there had never been a
negro on this continent. The popular notion would be, perhaps, like that
of Mr. Clay, that amalgamation of the races would absorb the negro
blood, it being the smaller element, and this would remain forever
floating in the veins of posterity. But this could not be: it would die
out, and in time become totally extinct.
If, for example, one hundred of the leading and influential
Abolitionists of the day should practically live out their own
doctrines—should be placed on some island in the Pacific Ocean, each
with a negress as wife, and utterly excluded from intercourse of any
kind with the rest of mankind, they and their posterity would, after a
certain time, utterly perish from existence. In the second generation
whites and negroes alike would be extinct—that which the hand of the
Eternal had fashioned, fixed, and designed for His glory and the
happiness of His creatures would be blotched, deformed, and transformed
by their own wickedness into mulattoes, and could no more exist beyond a
given period than any other physical degeneration, no more than tumors,
cancers, or other abnormal growths or physical disease can become
permanent conditions. The fourth generation, as stated elsewhere, with
diminished and diminishing vitality, would impart such feeble
glimmerings of life, that their immediate progeny would be as absolutely
limited in their powers of virility as mules, and the whole mass of
disease and corruption would disappear from the earth, which God has
forbidden it to desecrate any longer by its foul and disgusting
presence.[2] But contemplating the subject in mass, or practical
abolitionism, as it would work itself out among the millions, if we are
permitted, for the purposes of illustration, to suppose such a monstrous
and stupendous crime against God and our own being as the actual and
practical development of the theory, widely different results would
naturally follow. As has been said, four millions of our own white race
would be involved in this monstrous maelstrom of amalgamation with the
subject race, while the remaining twenty millions would be left
untouched and unpolluted by the physical degradation that must needs
follow such a stupendous sin as practical abolitionism. But they would
not escape the moral deterioration, and the nation, weighed down by
mulattoism, by such an ulcer on the body politic, by such a frightful
mass of disease and death, would doubtless fall a conquest to some other
nation or variety of the master race, and again become English provinces
or dependencies of some other European power!
Footnote 2:
Royalism, or a Hereditary Aristocracy, or class that attempts to
create a permanent superiority over the great body of the people by
incestuous intermarriage with its own members, is punished with
similar results as those that attend the violation of the sexual
relations of different Races. And the idiotic, impotent, and diseased
offspring of hereditary kings has always a certain physiological
resemblance to the effete and sterile mulatto. Both are violations of
the normal order, and both are limited to a determinate existence,
just as any other diseased conditions which nature forbids to live.
Nations are punished in this life, however it may be with individuals,
and a sin so enormous, a crime and impiety against God so awful, an
outrage on their own nature so boundless and bottomless as practical
abolitionism, or the actual living out of the abolition theory, would
drag after it, as an inexorable necessity, a corresponding punishment.
History is pregnant with examples of this inevitable law. Nations after
nations have risen, flourished, decayed, and died on the African
continent; millions upon millions of white Christian men have existed in
the valley of the Nile alone; three hundred Christian bishops have met
in convention on the site of ancient Carthage, when London was unknown
and Rome itself the seat of the heathen Cæsars; and now, of the five
hundred millions of Caucasians known to have existed on that continent
since the Christian era began, there are probably not one million of
typical white men left to tell the tale of their destruction, or to
mourn over the desolation brought upon them by the crimes and sins of
their progenitors. The vastly preponderating white element would
doubtless save us from similar consequences, should we ever commit such
a hideous crime as that involved in the practical application of the
abolition theory; but, as has been said, we would most likely fall a
conquest to some European power. But should this fate not overtake us,
should we be left to struggle with the load of sin and disease thus
brought upon ourselves by our crimes against reason and the ordinances
of the Eternal, the nation would in time slough off mulattoism, and
finally recover from the foul and horrible contamination of admixture
with the blood of the negro. The twenty millions of pure and untainted
blood would increase so rapidly over the diseased portion, that finally
every trace, atom, and drop or globule of the latter would be utterly
extinct, and though the time for this process to work itself out, or for
the white race to recover its healthy and natural condition, cannot be
estimated with any certainty, such would needs be the final result. This
same process, though the parties are directly reversed, is now in active
operation in Mexico, and all the Spanish-American States. The Spanish
conquerors brought few countrywomen with them, and therefore sought
wives among the natives or aboriginal race, and amalgamation became
universal in all the Spanish provinces, the result of which has been the
generation of a vast and wide-spread mongrelism. The Spanish dominion
usually embodied in the pure blood, not from any prejudice against the
mixed element, but from jealousy of the native born, preserved order and
general prosperity. But the overthrow of this dominion brought the
mongrel element into power, for though Iturbide, Santa Anna, Bravo,
Bustamente, Parades, all or nearly all the chiefs of Independence were
of pure Castilian blood, it was the mongrel element that overthrew the
Spanish power and established the republic. Spaniards were constantly
migrating to the American possessions of the Spanish crown, but, with
the overthrow of the Spanish dominion, this supply of white blood was
cut off, and instead of the generation of mongrelism, from that instant
the reparatory process began, which can only end in sloughing off the
mixed blood, and the restoration of the aboriginal race to its natural
and healthy condition, as it was before the Spanish conquest and the
admixture of the white element. This mixed or mongrel element is found
in the cities, but it is rapidly declining. Mexico had, at the era of
Independence, two hundred thousand inhabitants. It has now little over
one hundred thousand people. Puebla, Perote, Jalapa, all the cities of
Mexico decline in similar proportion, while the rural population—the
pure, untainted, aboriginal element—though placed under great and
striking disadvantages, holds its own, and were it guided and cared for,
as it was one hundred years ago, would doubtless rapidly increase in
number. Nor is it alone the fragility, feebleness, the vicious
organization and imperfect vitality of mulattoism, or of the mongrel
element, that is thus rapidly diminishing the population in Mexican
cities. The _morale_ of mongrelism partakes of the physical deformity,
and the vices of the mind are as striking and constant as the defects of
the body. A creature with half the nature and wants of the white man
united in the same existence with those of the Indian, is confronted
with another, perhaps three-fourths white, while on the other side of
him is one who has three-fourths Indian blood, and population made up of
such materials is necessarily and perpetually at war with itself. Hence
in all the revolutions of Mexico there is no design, no common object
that unite men in common purposes, no sense, reason, or common impulse
whatever, except to destroy, to overturn, to seize power to-day without
any purpose for to-morrow. And this goes on, and must go on until nature
repairs the outrages inflicted on her, until mongrelism dies out and the
aboriginal or Indian element is restored to its pristine condition,
until every atom of the white blood is extinct and the Indian race is
again what it was at the time of the Spanish conquest.
The subject opens up questions of mighty import to us, and possibly, as
Mr. Calhoun believed, great dangers to our people and the future of
civilization; but if understood—if American legislators and statesmen
comprehend the real character of these vast populations south of us,
known as the Spanish-American republics, and apply to them the true
principles of social and political economy, when the time comes to deal
with them, there need be little or no apprehension in regard to the
results. Meanwhile, the solution of these problems is every day becoming
simpler and more easily understood. The mixed blood is rapidly dying
out; a time must come when it will be wholly extinct, and then the white
American will stand face to face with the native, a race which, whatever
may be our experience of it in the North, is easily governed, and as has
been said, if understood, there need be little or no apprehension of
danger or difficulty in regard to it.
The same process is going on in Jamaica and other islands, though here
it is the negro instead of the Indian that is in issue. An idea or
assumption was set up in England that the negroes of these islands were
_black_ white men—men like themselves, except in color—and therefore
naturally entitled to the same rights; and a party sprung up that at
last induced the British Parliament to “abolish” the existing relations
of the whites and negroes, and to place them on the same political and
legal level. The white people protested against this wrong and outrage
on reason and common sense, but it was of no avail. Their cry for mercy
was unheard—at all events, disregarded—and the helpless and outraged
whites are now in process of utter extinction by amalgamation.
The same political and legal _status_ leads, of course, to the same
social level, and it, in turn, to the general admixture of blood. A
white woman is not likely, even under these unnatural circumstances, to
desecrate her womanhood by mating with a negro, though public sentiment
forces her to associate with them. But this woman marries a man with
one-eighth or one-fourth of negro blood, without hesitation, and the
woman of this shade readily mates with a mulatto, and the latter with
the typical negro. Thus, while natural instinct shrinks from such a
crime against nature and such an impiety toward God as the marriage or
mating of the pure types, the outward force of legal and political
systems impels all shades of mongrelism in the direction of the
preponderating element; and a time must come when the white blood,
becoming extinct, the negro will relapse, of course, into his native
Africanism.
The outward presence of a foreign government impels the unhappy white
people of these fertile and beautiful islands into this monstrous
violation of the laws of organization, and certain ultimate social
destruction; but the power of the government also restrains the negro
element from a rapid collapse into its native Africanism. In Hayti,
where all external or governmental influence is withdrawn, the negro
nature already strongly manifests its normal savagery, when no longer
restrained by the master race, and the worship of Obi or Feticism, and
even the native African dialect, is becoming common to many districts in
that island. In general terms, it may be said that the exact moment when
the white blood becomes extinct is also the instant when Africanism is
perfectly restored, but the outward presence of the British government
on the islands, and of the Colonization Society in Liberia, will prevent
the complete development of this otherwise natural and necessary law.
That the white blood of Jamaica must be absorbed, or rather must die
out, is a necessity, an effect, a fate that is unavoidable—the final end
being alone a question of time. A foreign government, as has been said,
regardless of the protests and the cry for mercy of its unfortunate
people, forcibly changed their relations to the subordinate race. It
declared the negroes the legal and political equals of the whites; this
necessarily led to social equality—that, in its turn, to the marriage of
whites and quadroons—quadroons with mulattoes, and mulattoes with
negroes; thus the process, beginning with the act of the British
Parliament abolishing “slavery,” ends naturally and necessarily in the
social immolation and final extinction of the white people of that
island.
All the links in the chain are continuous—all the series of events
dependent on each other—all the steps of the process naturally united;
the emancipation, the legal equality, the social level, the admixture of
blood, and the ultimate extinction, are part and parcel of the same
awful crime against nature and against God, against the laws of
organization and against the decrees of the Eternal. The _end_,
therefore, of these things must be the restoration of the pure Indian
type on the main land and that of the negro in the islands; and, as has
been said, though the time needed for the completion of this reparatory
process—for such it is, physiologically considered—may not be determined
with certainty, it can not be very distant, and were white men to stand
aloof and permit the process to work itself out, without interference,
it is quite probable that a hundred, or, at most, a hundred and fifty
years hence, there would not be a drop of white blood found south of our
own limits.
Mulattoism is an abnormalism—a disease—a result that brings suffering
unspeakable as well as extinction—that is unavoidable; and, in view of
this fate brought upon them by a foreign government, who can doubt but
that the total slaughter of the white people of Jamaica would have been
merciful, in comparison to that forced upon them by the abolition of
“slavery,” and equality with negroes? Or will any one sufficiently
informed on this subject, who understands the physical and moral
suffering involved or inseparably linked with the mixed blood, doubt for
a moment that, as a question of humanity, it would be vastly more humane
to slaughter all the negroes in our midst, rather than apply to them the
abolition theory, or rather than doom them to legal equality, to
amalgamation, to mulattoism, mongrelism, and that final unavoidable
extinction that necessarily attends the minor element under these
circumstances? But in addition to the physical suffering attending the
process of extinction in Jamaica, it was, or is, or must be, the
annihilation of Caucasian intelligence, of civilization, of all that God
has bestowed upon His creatures that is exalted and glorious, and
therefore the crime perpetrated, however blindly or well-intentioned,
must stand out in future ages the most awful and impious ever known in
human annals.
Such is a brief outline of the physiological laws governing mulattoism
and mongrelism—that abnormal or diseased condition which results from
admixture of the blood of separate races or species of men. Its mental
and moral features are equally distinct and discordant, though less
susceptible of explanation or of being classified, as in the case of the
merely physical qualities. As a general principle the mongrel has
intellectual ability in proportion as he approximates to the superior
race. This is a necessary truth; there is mental capacity or
intelligence, latent or actual, in exact proportion to the size of the
brain, in animals, indeed, as well as human beings, as certainly and
invariably as there is muscular power in proportion to the size and form
of the muscles; but this principle is hardly a guide or test in respect
to the moral qualities of the mixed blood. There is scarcely anything or
any phase of the general subject that has so blinded and led astray
“anti-slavery” writers as this subject of mulattoism; for they were not
only ignorant of it, but never dreamed for a moment that there was any
such thing in existence, and constantly assumed in their reasonings (?)
that the mulatto was a negro, and therefore presented him, and even the
quadroon, as an evidence of the mental capacity of that race. One of
these people would find his way to England or the North, was educated,
became an editor, physician, priest, sometimes even an author, on a
small scale perhaps, at all events a public lecturer, to whom white men
and women listened with the utmost gravity, and perfectly satisfied
themselves of the mental equality of the races, for here was a negro who
talked the same language, had the same ideas, and was quite as eloquent
as the general average among white men. Even the Abbé Gregoire labored
under this very absurd and very general misconception, and wrote a book
giving the biography of fifteen negroes to prove the mental equality of
the races, not one of whom was a negro at all! Some mules are doubtless
superior to some horses, but no mule was ever equal to the average
horse; and doubtless some mulattoes have been superior to some white
men, but no mulatto ever did nor ever can reach the intellectual
standard of the Caucasian. What nonsense it would be to point out a
favorite mule to show that asses were the equals of horses; yet this
nonsense, or similar nonsense, is practised every day by those who rely
upon mongrels and hybrids to prove the mental capacity of the negro!
Indeed, quadroons, and even mongrels, with only one-eighth of negro
blood, like Roberts, the President of Liberia, have been quoted as
illustrations of negro character and accepted as perfectly satisfactory
by the blind followers of the equally blind teachers of Abolitionism.
The fact that such a thing as an “educated” mulatto exists at all among
us, as long as we have uneducated white men, is a disgrace to the
nation, to our institutions, to our social development; and in England
it serves as a test of social wrong and wickedness frightful to
contemplate. As has been said, no mule was ever equal to the average
horse, so no mulatto was ever created equal to the standard white man;
yet in England there are eight millions unable to read or write, and
through human institutions rendered inferior to the “educated” mulatto!
The moral qualities of the mixed element are less definite, but every
one’s observations, as well as history and statistics, tend to the same
general conclusion—the greater viciousness of the mulatto when compared
with either of the original types or typical races. This essential
truth, common to all exceptional and abnormal conditions, is universally
manifested among “slaves” at the South, “free” negroes at the North,
mestizoes in Mexico, or the whilom hybrids of Hayti. The mongrels of
Mexico—the so-called Leperos—are thieves, ladrones, robbers, and
assassins, not like the Italian bravos of a former age, who, to a
certain extent, redeemed their horrible crimes by a kind of chivalrous
daring which gave their victims some chance for life, but secret,
crouching, and cowardly assassins, who never attack where there is the
slightest danger to themselves. They crouch, concealed in the shadow of
a wall or door-way, enveloped in huge cloaks, with the exception of the
arm that wields the keen, narrow-bladed, and double-edged knife, which
is plunged in the back of the hapless victim, and then they invariably
run away, unless supported by their vile companions. In the field they
never face white men except when their numbers are overwhelming, and
they give no quarter; but if themselves defeated, their cry for mercy is
so intolerable in its groveling clamor, that the victor is disposed to
dispatch them at once to get rid of it. With diminished vitality, and
less hold on existence than the pure blood, the mongrel, while utterly
reckless of life in respect to others, clings to it himself and shrinks
from death with an abject terror rarely or never witnessed in the
original races. The typical negro, for example, though brave enough when
led by his master, shrinks in terror from the face of the lordly
Caucasian when not thus supported, and a score or two of the latter in
the open field would doubtless drive a thousand negroes before them like
sheep to the slaughter. But a negro condemned to die, to be hanged, to
be burned even, rarely manifests dread or apprehension of any kind. His
imperfect innervation, his sluggish brain, and low grade of sensibility,
render him incapable of anticipating that terrible physical suffering
from which the elaborate and exquisitely organized Caucasian suffers
under these circumstances. So, too, the Indian—“the stoic of the
woods—the man without a tear,” as the poet Campbell, and others ignorant
of his nature, have represented him—a creature, according to their
absurd fancies, fashioned on the Roman model, with the self-poised and
philosophical indifference to outward things of a Seneca, and the calm
contempt of physical suffering of a Cato, but who, all this time, in his
grosser organization, has none of the white man’s perceptions of
physical pain, and therefore sings his death-song in total
unconsciousness of that which to us is the extreme, or supposed extreme,
of physical suffering.
This organic insensibility of the lower races to physical pain, which
renders them indifferent to the approach of death, is sometimes
equalled, and perhaps surpassed, as regards the outward expression, by
the dominating moral forces in the case of the higher organized
Caucasian. Lamartine has said that the mistress of Louis XV., the
notorious Duchess Du Barry, was the only person sent to the guillotine
during the reign of terror that asked for mercy, or shrank with terror
from the approach of death. Not men alone, but women, even delicately
nurtured young girls, who, under ordinary circumstances, would faint on
witnessing the death of a sparrow, ascended the steps of the guillotine
without a tear or the quiver of a muscle. They died for an idea, and a
false one at that, but they believed it true and immutable as heaven
itself, and the exaltation of the mind over the body, the dominating
moral forces over the laws of the physical being, enabled them to meet
death without a murmur, and, as regards the outward expression, to seem
as indifferent to the physical pain involved, as the Indian or the
negro, whose lower organization is incapable of such suffering.
But the mulatto or mongrel has neither the physical insensibility of the
inferior nor the moral force of the superior race, and the instinctive
consciousness of his feeble vitality renders him the most cowardly of
human beings. The generals and leaders of the mixed blood in Spanish
America, as well as those of Hayti, have been as much distinguished for
their monstrous vices, their treachery, cowardice, sensuality, and
ferocity, as for any special ability they may have displayed. The cruel
and despotic government of Spain, when desirous to crush the
revolutionists, invariably trusted the bloody work to mongrel chiefs,
who just as invariably exceeded their orders, and when directed to
decimate a town or village, often massacred the entire population.
The mongrel generals of Hayti were even more ferocious and bloody, if
not surpassing in treachery and cowardice the Indian mongrels of the
Continent. Rigaud, the most distinguished of the Haytien chiefs, was
also the most repulsive in his enormous and beastly vices. Christophe
and Dessalines were negroes, and they simply acted out the negro
instinct under those unnatural circumstances. They remorselessly
slaughtered all the white men, women, and children of the island that
they could find, for when the negro rises against his master, it is not
to conquer but to exterminate the dreaded race; and the helpless infant
or its frightened and despairing mother touches no chord of mercy in the
souls of these frantic and terror-stricken wretches when forced or
betrayed into resistance to their masters. But the mongrel leaders, and
especially Rigaud, were mere moral monsters, whose deeds of slaughter
were alternated with scenes of beastly debauchery and unnatural and
devilish revelry, such as could neither originate in the simple
animalism of the negro nor with the most sensual, perverse, and fiendish
among white men.
But we have this viciousness of the mongrel displayed continually before
us at the North as well as at the South. Nine-tenths of the crime
committed by so-called negroes is the work of the mongrel—the females
almost all being as lewd and lascivious as the males are idle, sensual,
and dishonest. The strange and disgusting delusion that has fastened
itself on so many minds at the North seeks to cast an air of romance
over these mongrel women—these “girls almost white”—and in negro novels
and on the stage represent them as “victims of caste,” and often doomed
to a fate worse than death to gratify the “vices of the whites.” And a
diseased sentimentality, as indecent as it is nonsensical, is indulged
by certain “pious ladies” in respect to these “interesting” quadroons,
etc., who are almost always essentially vicious, while their own white
sisters falling every hour from the ranks of pure womanhood, are
unheeded, and their terrible miseries totally disregarded.
Finally, it scarcely need be repeated that mongrelism is a diseased
condition—a penalty that nature imposes for the violation of her laws—a
punishment that, by an inexorable necessity, is inflicted on the
offspring of those who, in total disregard of her ordinances, of
instinct, of natural affection, and of reason, form sexual interunions
with persons of different races, but which, like all other abnormal
conditions, is confined within fixed limits and mercifully doomed to
final extinction.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE “SLAVE TRADE,” OR THE IMPORTATION OF NEGROES.
In the preceding chapters of this work it has been shown that the human
family, like all other forms of being, is composed of a certain number
of species, all having a general resemblance, but each specifically
different from the other—that the Caucasian and Negro are placed by the
will of the Almighty Creator at the two extremes of humanity—the former
being the most superior and the latter the most inferior of all the
known human races; that the physical structure or organization is always
and necessarily connected with corresponding faculties or functions, and
therefore the more prominent physical qualities of the negro have been
presented, in order to illustrate his mental and moral nature. It has
also been shown that the all-powerful instinct (prejudice) which revolts
at the commingling of the blood of different races (stronger even with
the negro than our own race) springs from a fundamental organic
necessity, impelling us to preserve our structural integrity, and if
disregarded and violated, it carries with it a corresponding penalty,
and the miserable progeny, like all other abnormal conditions, is
limited to a determinate existence; that that which the Eternal hand has
moulded and fashioned is also eternal, and beyond the power, caprice,
ignorance, or wickedness of His creatures, to change or modify; and
therefore all the departures from the typical standard—all forms and
degrees of the mongrel or mixed blood—are doomed to final extinction.
Here we have, then, four millions of a widely different race in our
midst, and though we of the present generation may not be responsible
for their presence among us, and are only called upon to deal with the
fact itself, without regard to its origin, the subject is of profound
interest, and however current or unanimous the opinion may now be
against the original “slave trade,” it is believed that a larger
knowledge and a more extended acquaintance with the facts embraced in
that subject will finally result in a total change of popular (American)
opinion. And what American will not rejoice at such a result, if, when
all the facts are known and tested by reason and conscience and the
dictates of a true humanity, it is found that, however censurable the
means employed may sometimes have been, the “slave trade,” the original
importation of African negroes by our ancestors, was right? The negro,
as has been shown, from the necessities of his organism—the size and
form of his brain—is, perforce, when isolated and by himself, a
savage—an idle, non-advancing, and non-producing savage, and history,
ancient and modern, in a word, all human experience, confirms this
physiological and material _fact_. African travelers, finding
occasionally the _débris_ of Caucasian populations and the remains of
Mahometan civilization, have told fanciful tales about negro industry,
thrift, and morality, while dreamers at home have indulged in even more
absurd fancies still in regard to the future of Africa. But why go to
Africa to theorize about the negro, when we have him here, and subject
to our senses as well as our reason? Why speculate on impossible
assumptions, when the negro brain may be seen any day at a medical
college, and its incapacity—its organic and inherent incapacity—to be
any thing else, or to ever manifest any thing else, but just that which
all human experience confirms and assures us must be, as it always has
been, the destiny of this race, when left to itself? To talk of the
civilization of the negro of Africa is like talking of the change of
color of the negro, for it involves the same absurdities, the same
impossibilities; and were not those who indulge in it utterly ignorant
of the subject, one might say the same impieties, for the assumption
that they can change the intellectual nature which God has given the
negro, is as grossly impious as if they were to undertake his physical
re-creation.
The negro, therefore, isolated in Africa, as has been said, must be in
the future what he has been in the past, and without a supernatural
interposition, must remain forever a simple, non-producing, and
non-advancing savage. Can this have been the design of the Almighty?
There are some things we are not permitted to know, that it is impious
as well as foolish to seek to know, that the Almighty, in His infinite
beneficence as well as wisdom forbids us to inquire into, or rather to
attempt to inquire into; but in all that is necessary to our happiness
and for the well-being of the innumerable creatures that surround us, we
may know, indirectly, it is true, but none the less certainly, the
design of the Almighty Creator.
All things are obviously designed for use—all the innumerable hosts of
living creatures for specific purposes; the natures of many are known to
us now; every day is adding to our knowledge, and a time will assuredly
come when the nature and purposes of the most ferocious of wild animals
and the most venomous of serpents will be clearly understood and applied
to their proper uses. It is, therefore, the obvious design of the
Creator that the negro should be useful, should labor, should be a
producer, and as his organism forbids this, if left to himself, it is
evidently intended that he should be in juxtaposition with the superior
Caucasian. It is equally obvious that the tropical latitudes endowed
with such exuberant fertility were designed for cultivation, for use,
for the growth and production of those indigenous products found nowhere
else except within the tropics and tropicoid regions of the earth. The
organization of the Caucasian utterly forbids physical labor under a
tropical sun. He may live there, enjoy life, longevity, the full and
healthy spring of all his faculties, without lassitude or any of that
weight upon his energies which ill-informed persons have supposed
followed a residence in these climes, but he can not cultivate the earth
or grow the products of the soil by his own labor. The negro organism,
on the contrary, is adapted to this production, and the rays of a
vertical sun stimulate and quicken his energies, instead of prostrating
them, as in the case of the former. In another place this subject will
be fully discussed, and therefore it will be sufficient in this place to
simply state the fact, that the labor of the negro can alone grow the
indigenous products of the tropics, and without this labor the great
tropical centre of the American continent must consequently remain a
barren waste.
The introduction of negroes into the Spanish islands of the West Indies
can, therefore, hardly be called an accident. Negro servants were
introduced into Spain by the Arabian and Moorish conquerors. From time
immemorial negro “slaves” were the favorite household servants of the
oriental Caucasians—not alone because they were the most docile and
submissive of human beings, but because they were the most faithful and
absolutely incapable of betraying their masters, and scarcely a Moorish
family of consideration entered Spain without being accompanied by some
of these trusty and favorite servants. The recent Portuguese discoveries
and conquests on the African coasts had also brought many negroes into
the Peninsula, and when Columbus and the Spaniards began their
settlements in the New World, there were negroes to be found in almost
every town in Spain. The conquest of the miserable natives of Hispaniola
and Cuba, and their partition among the Spanish adventurers, failed to
gratify their fierce desire for wealth, and from the brutality of their
masters, the still lurking desire of these poor creatures for their
former condition, or, it may have been, as declared by the Spanish
writers, their original feebleness of constitution, they rapidly faded
away in the mines and on the plantations, and more vigorous laborers
became an absolute necessity, if cultivation, progress, and civilization
were to be carried on in these islands. It was thus a material and
industrial necessity, rather than any fancied humanity on the part of
Las Casas and his friends in behalf of the Indians, that carried negroes
into the Spanish islands. Some accompanied the earliest adventurers;
they were seen to be safe, and to remain perfectly healthy when
Spaniards themselves were constantly smitten down by the fierce suns and
deadly malaria of the tropics, while instead of the drooping and
listless air that distinguished the natives, these negroes were the most
joyous and contented of human beings.
The interests of civilization and of a true humanity were, therefore,
united with the humane desires of Las Casas and his friends in respect
to the natives, and negroes soon became the sole reliance of the
planters and others to whom lands had been assigned by the Spanish
princes. Modern writers—Helps, Prescott, and others—laboring under the
world-wide misconceptions of our times in regard to negroes, have
expressed astonishment at the (to them) strange inconsistency of Las
Casas, who, laboring so earnestly in behalf of the Indians, quite
unconsciously aided in substituting the negro, and thus, as they
suppose, laid the foundation or led the way to the enslavement of one
race, while working for the freedom of another. But neither Las Casas,
nor any one else, had any notion of freedom or slavery in connection
with these negroes. Such a thing as a free negro was doubtless unknown
in Spain or anywhere else, or, if known, it was simply because he had
lost or strayed from his master. History does not, it is true, cast much
light on the subject, but it is certain that neither Las Casas nor any
of his cotemporaries had any conception of negro freedom, or associated
with that race any other condition or social status than that which
modern writers have universally designated as negro slavery.
Nor was he laboring for the freedom of the Indians, as that term is now
understood. Many, perhaps most of those who defended the natives from
the oppressions of the Spaniards, were prompted solely by religious
zeal. These poor “heathens,” they held, were entitled, not to freedom,
to political or social rights of any kind, but to the rights of
religion, to participate in the Holy Sacraments, to enjoy the privileges
which the Church promised to all who would accept them, and as the
ferocity of the Spaniards constantly interfered with this, hunted them
down and slaughtered them without mercy, or rapidly destroyed them by
hard labor and the excessive burthens heaped upon them when they no
longer resisted their invaders, the priests generally, and many others,
sought to defend them.
Las Casas, who seems to have been a generous and noble-hearted man,
devoted himself for many years, indeed a whole life-time, to the cause
of the natives, but at no time or in any way was he laboring for their
freedom or to secure to them social or political rights of any kind.
Other priests labored to secure their spiritual welfare, or what they
believed to be this, while Las Casas, though a profoundly religious man,
sought their material preservation, and to save them from that direful
fate of total extinction which even then was threatened, and which
finally has been so complete, that at this moment there is not one
single descendant of these people left to tell the tale of their
destruction. The popular notion, therefore, that Las Casas was the
author or originator of the “slave trade,” and of American (negro)
“slavery,” in order to “free” the native race, is altogether groundless.
It originated, as has been stated, in an industrial necessity—and while
he assented to it, with the humane belief, doubtless, that it would tend
to benefit the native race in relieving it from the excessive and fatal
burthens imposed by the Spaniards, his assent or dissent could have no
influence whatever on the subject. And as he was not laboring for the
freedom of the natives—for nothing whatever but their mere material
preservation—of course he could have no doubts or anxieties in regard to
negroes in that respect, and when he saw them resisting alike the deadly
malaria of the climate and the brutality of their masters, and contented
and happy, he doubtless felt that it was a wise and beneficent
arrangement of Providence that had thus adapted them to their condition
and to the fulfilment of the great purposes of civilization and human
progress.
The supply of negro labor in San Domingo, Cuba, and other islands, was
followed, however, by extensive importations for the main land, and
finally the trade, falling into the hands of the Dutch and English,
became a world-wide commerce, and negroes were taken into every nook and
corner of the New World where there were found buyers, or where the
traders could dispose of their human cargoes. And here begins the wrong
side of the matter—the cruelties, injustice, outrages, and inhumanities
which, together with the false theories, morbid philanthropy, and a
certain amount of falsehood, have made the term “slave trade” synonymous
with everything that is diabolical and devilish that the imagination can
conceive of. The Spanish government of the day limited the introduction
of negroes, and provided for an equal number of females, and encouraged
the importation of children; indeed, while there is no reason to suppose
that they ever contemplated the negro as abstractly entitled to the
rights claimed for them in our times, it is certain that both the
governments of Charles V. and Philip II. did regard them as human, and
made every provision that was proper for their kind and humane
treatment, both in regard to their passage from Africa and their
treatment on the plantations. But when the physical adaptation of the
negro had become so clearly demonstrated in the Spanish islands, the
British and Dutch merchants began to import them in such multitudes, and
the prices fell so low, that it would not pay to import women and
children, and then began that nameless and unspeakable outrage, not
merely on human but on animal nature, which has distinguished this trade
ever since, and, to the disgrace of all Christendom, which at this
moment distinguishes it in the neighboring island of Cuba—the separation
of the sexes and the violation of the rights of reproduction. Instead of
a simple supply of negro labor essential to tropical production, and
which violated no instinct, want, or necessity of the negro nature,
ships were now fitted out on speculation; cargoes of men, as mere
work-animals, were obtained in Africa and carried to any port where
there was a chance of a market, not in the tropics alone, but all over
North America; and the British Provinces of New England, as well as Cuba
and Porto Rico, became the marts for traffic in human beings. This
accounts for the great mortality of these people in the islands. In
general terms, it may be said the negro will work no more than he ought
to work; that is, nature has so adapted him that he can not be forced in
this respect; but when they could be purchased so cheaply, the master
had little interest in their health, and together with the very small
native increase going on, the mortality vastly preponderated. The New
England as well as the Middle States were fully supplied with these
cheap negroes, but they never were profitable, and the laws of
industrial adaptation has steadily carried their descendants southward.
The “slave trade,” after the first fifty years of its commencement, up
to the American Revolution, may be said to have been in the hands of
the British mainly, of the merchants of Bristol and Liverpool. These
traders, as has been said, made it a mere matter of commerce, dealing
in it just as they did in any other article of commerce, and many of
the largest fortunes in England are believed to have had their
foundations laid in this traffic. So far as the colonists participated
in it, they approached somewhat to the earliest Spaniards, and though
there were more males imported than there were females, the horrible
practice of the islands, which forbade these people to fulfill the
command of the Almighty, and multiply their kind, did not prevail to
any considerable extent. Nature always recovers from the outrages
committed on her laws, and though no legislation or human means has
sought to remedy the disproportions of the sexes, they are now
probably equal, though of the imported progenitors of our negroes
probably two-thirds at least were males, and though even a larger
proportion than this were imported into Northern ports, there are now
scarcely a quarter of a million in the Northern States, while the
descendants of those imported into the North have expanded into four
millions at the South! What a lesson these facts present to the blind
and infatuated “friends of freedom” in Kansas, and the equally blind
believers in the ordinance of 1787. The negro, by a higher law than
human enactments, goes where he is needed, and _permanently_ no where
else. A broad and liberal survey of the whole ground—the nature of the
negro, his utter uselessness when isolated or separated from the white
man—his organic adaptation to tropical production—the wonderful
fertility of tropical soils—the vast importance of their peculiar
products to civilization and human well-being—demonstrates, beyond
doubt the right and justice of the original “slave trade,” or the
original importation of African negroes into America. The abuses that
finally attended it have been made to overshadow the thing itself, in
the popular estimation, but despite all these, and all other
drawbacks, it is certain that the introduction of these negroes has
resulted in a vastly preponderating good to our race, while the four
millions of Christianized and enlightened negroes in our midst, when
compared with any similar number of their race in Africa, are in a
condition so immeasurably happy and desirable, that we can find no
terms that will sufficiently express it.
The frightful tales invented of their cruel treatment on the passage
from Africa may be dismissed with the single remark that it was the
highest interest of the traders to take the utmost care of them, and if
that be not sufficient, with the simple but pregnant fact that the
average mortality, when the trade was legal, was only eleven per cent.,
while the illegal trade, the efforts to put it down, the false
philanthropy, and mistaken interference, have raised the mortality to
something like forty per cent.!
There were but two mistakes, wrongs, inhumanities, outrages on nature,
whatever we may term them, involved in the “slave trade,” so far as we
were concerned: 1st, the importation mainly of males, and the consequent
violation of the laws of reproduction—of that fundamental and universal
command of the Almighty to multiply their kind and to replenish the
earth; and, 2d, their importation into northern latitudes, unsuited to
the physical and industrial nature of the negro. But, as has been said,
nature, sooner or later, recovers from every outrage upon her laws, and
while we, in our ignorance and folly, have been disputing over our petty
theories in respect to this subject, her reparatory processes have
silently and steadily gone on and corrected our mistakes, and,
therefore, both of the real _wrongs_ connected with the “slave trade”
are now substantially _righted_.
It is, however, discreditable to our intelligence that the statute-book
of the nation is disfigured by our laws and legislation on this subject.
England has waged a war upon the distinctions of nature and the natural
relations of races, ever since we threw off her dominion, and set up a
new system of government founded on the fixed and unchangeable laws of
nature. The preservation of her own system—the rule of classes and of
artificial distinctions among men of the same race—impels her by a blind
instinct quite as much, perhaps, as reason, to pursue this policy, and
therefore, under the pretense of putting down the “slave trade,” she has
constantly labored to obliterate the distinctions of race, and force or
corrupt the white men of America into affiliation and equality with
negroes. The war upon the “slave trade” was simply the means for
accomplishing her ends—the equalization of races in the New World, and
in Canada, the West Indies, in all her American possessions, she has
succeeded. Negroes, whites, Indians, and mongrels are all alike her
_subjects_, and the distinctions of society, as in Europe, are wholly
artificial, while those of race, of nature, that are fixed by the hand
of the Eternal, are impiously disregarded. And we have been her tools,
her miserable dupes, and ourselves labored for our own degradation, to
accomplish her objects and obliterate the distinctions of races. The
question of importing more negroes—to keep open or to prohibit the
“slave trade”—was and is a question of expediency, that our government
should decide for itself, without regard to the opinions or policy of
any other people. But to blindly follow England in her nefarious and
impious efforts to break down the distinctions of race, to pronounce the
conduct of our own ancestors infamous and worthy of death because
English opinion and monarchical influences and exigencies demand it, is
a disgrace to the manhood of our people and the intelligence of our
statesmen that should not be permitted to disgrace our government any
longer; and it is to be hoped that the time is not distant when this
disgraceful legislation will be swept from our statute book.
CHAPTER XV.
NATURAL RELATIONS AND NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO.
There are now between four and five millions of negroes in the United
States. They or their descendants must remain forever—for good or
evil—an element of our population. What are their natural relations to
the whites?—what their normal condition?
The Almighty has obviously designed all His creatures—animal as well as
human—for wise, beneficent, and useful purposes. In our ignorance of the
animal world, we have only domesticated or applied to useful purposes a
very small number, the horse, the ox, ass, dog, etc.; but these we
practically understand, so that even the most ignorant will not abuse
them or violate their instincts. The most ignorant farmer or laborer
would never attempt to force the dog to perform the domestic _rôle_ of
the cat, or the ox that of the horse, or the sheep that of the ass, etc.
He knows the natures of these animals—their relations to himself and to
each other, and governs them accordingly.
The natural relations of parent and offspring, of brothers and sisters,
of husbands and wives, are also measurably understood by the most
ignorant, for natural instinct quite as much, as reason guides us in
these things. The father knows that the child should obey him, and the
latter feels instinctively that this obedience is a sacred duty. The
same instinct prompts the brother to love his sister, and it may be said
that all the relations of consanguinity, and the duties that spring from
them, are regulated more by instinct than by reason. There are
innumerable books written on this subject, to teach the duties of
parents and offspring, husbands and wives, etc., but with a proper
cultivation of the intellect and of the affections, just perceptions of
the duties involved follow intuitively.
Passing beyond these domestic and family relations—the relations of
individuals—of one man to another, and to the State or general
citizenship, are less understood, for here nature must be led by reason,
and though there are certain great and fixed facts that serve as
landmarks for our guidance, we must mainly rely upon our reason.
It is true, Christianity indicated these relations two thousand years
ago; nevertheless, they are almost totally disregarded in the Old World;
but though too often misunderstood and misapplied among ourselves, they
are sufficiently comprehended to constitute the foundation of our social
order.
Another advance, and we arrive at the relations of races—of white men
and negroes—and of other races that may chance to be in juxtaposition,
and of which the whole world may be said to be profoundly ignorant in
theory, while one-half of our people have justly and truly solved them
in practice. The social order of the South—the social and legal _status_
of the negro—reposes on the natural relations of the white and black
races, and, as has been observed, while the world is ignorant of these
relations, the people of the South, indeed it may be said the American
people, have practically solved them, and to the mutual benefit of all
concerned. But before we can enter on a discussion of the natural
relations and social adaptations of races, we must first clearly
understand the relations that we bear to each other as individuals, and
to the State or aggregate of individuals.
All the individuals of a species, whether animal or human, of course
have the same faculties, the same wants, in a word, the same
specialties. Occasionally chance—some accident, remote or
immediate—deforms or blights individuals; they may be idiotic, insane,
or otherwise incapable, but these are exceptional cases that do not
disturb the great, fixed, and, unchangeable equality, sameness, or
uniformity of the race. The white or Caucasian race, as has been
observed, varies much more than any other race. There are tall men and
short men, giants and pigmies, blondes and brunettes, red-haired and
black-haired, but the nature remains the same; and if they were all
placed under the same circumstances of climate, government, religion,
etc., all would exhibit the same moral characteristics, and, to a
certain extent, the same physical appearances. This is sufficiently
illustrated among ourselves every day. Almost universally our people
have sprung from the “lower classes” of European society. The coarse
skin, big hands and feet, the broad teeth, pug nose, etc., of the Irish
and German laborer pass away in a generation or two, and their American
offspring have more delicate and classical features than even the most
favored and privileged European aristocracy. Having the same faculties,
the same wants, etc., it is a self-evident truth that they are entitled
to the same rights, the same opportunities, to live out the nature with
which God has endowed them. The Divine Author of Christianity
promulgated this vital truth with great impressiveness. He selected his
disciples from the lowest and most oppressed classes of the people, and
thundered his most terrible denunciations in the ears of the sacerdotal
aristocracy. The great body of the Jewish people were mere beasts of
burden to their brethren—the priestly oligarchy—which governed the State
and lived in idle luxury on the toil, ignorance, superstition, and
misery of the people. On all occasions these oppressors were denounced,
and the great and everlasting truth that God was no respecter of
persons, and all men equally precious in His sight—even the beggar
Lazarus and the repentent Magdalene—were the daily teachings of Christ.
And there can be no doubt that the persecution and final crucifixion of
the Author of the Christian religion was intended, by the rulers of the
Jews, to crush out the great doctrine of equality, and thus to preserve
their ascendency over the minds and fortunes of the people. The Divine
ordinance—to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us”—is a
complete exposition of our natural relations to each other, and an
indestructible rule of nature as well as a religious obligation. All
men—that is, all who belong to the race or species—having the same
nature and designed by the Creator for the same purposes, the same
rights and the same duties, it is an obvious inference that all human
governments should rest on this great fundamental truth. No man should
be permitted, indeed no man should be base enough to claim privileges
denied to his fellow, or to any class of his fellows, and the same great
principle which Christ ordained should guide His followers in their
personal relations, should be the only legitimate rule in their
political relations. To do unto others as we would have them do to us—to
recognize in all other men the rights we claim for ourselves—to admit
those reciprocal obligations which, in truth, spring from the
necessities of our being—in short, to demand equal rights for ourselves,
and to admit the same rights on the part of our fellows, seems so
obvious, so instinctive, so just, and indeed self-evident, that an
intelligent and just mind wonders how it ever could be otherwise, or
that systems of government can exist in our own enlightened times in
utter contradiction to such simple and self-evident truths. Government,
the State, the aggregate citizenship, based on the great fundamental
truth of equality, becomes a simple, beneficent, and easily understood
institution. It leaves all men where God and nature places them, in
natural relation to each other. Its functions, however complicated the
details, are simply protective, leaving individuals to ascend or descend
in the social scale, just as their industry, cultivation, and moral
worth may be appreciated by their fellow-citizens. It protects one man
from the violence or injustice of another, and the aggregate citizenship
or nation from foreign aggression.
It is a misnomer to speak of government conferring rights; it may (or
the thing called government in other lands may) take away, suppress, or
withhold rights; but rights, as declared by Mr. Jefferson, are inherent
and in fact inseparable from individual existence. God has endowed every
man with the capacity of self-government, and imposed this
self-government as a duty as well as a right. He has given him certain
wants instincts, desires, etc., and endowed him with reason to govern
and guide these things. As a citizen, he of course does not, or can not
surrender any of his natural rights or control over himself. The State
protects him from wrong or injustice, but himself a portion of the
citizenship, he still governs himself. It is a contradiction to suppose
that one man can govern another better than he can govern himself—that
is, under the same circumstances, and therefore it is palpably absurd to
limit suffrage or to exclude a portion of the people from participation
in the government. All being naturally equal—for though some men may
have more mental capacity than others, as we sometimes see some have
greater physical powers—they have all the same nature; and therefore
govern themselves and fulfill the purposes of their creation when they
all vote at elections and participate in the making of laws. For
purposes of convenience, a limited number of the people are delegated to
conduct the government, but the popular will, the desire of the people,
the rule of the entire citizenship, is complete; every vote tells, every
man’s voice is heard, every one governs himself. And the government,
limited or rather confined to its legitimate function of protection,
leaves every one a complete and boundless liberty to do every thing or
any thing that his instincts, wishes, caprices even, may prompt him to
do, so long as he does not infringe upon the rights, interests, etc., of
others.
Such, then, are the natural relations we bear to each other, and the
social and governmental adaptations that spring from them. The mere
conventional formula may be varied at times—the circle of individual
action contracted or expanded as the public exigencies may demand, but
the right and the duty of every man to an equal participation in the
government, or in the creation of laws which govern all, is vital, and
every man denied this is necessarily a slave, for he is then governed by
the will of others and not by his own, as God and nature have ordained
he should be.
There are no contradictions or discords in nature. All creatures, and
the purposes God has assigned to them, are perfectly harmonious; and all
their relations to each other, and the duties that spring from them, are
in perfect accord. It is our ignorance, and sometimes our caprices and
vices, that interrupt this harmony; but it is consoling to know, that
happiness is inseparable from the due fulfilment of our duties, and
therefore the wiser the world becomes, the better it will be. The man
who loves his wife the most will also have the tenderest affection for
his children; those who are most careful to respect the rights of others
will be the most secure in their own rights, and the government, or
state, or nation based on the natural relations that men bear to each
other, will be the most prosperous and powerful.
We are, it is true, at a great distance from the practical or complete
development of our system, but in theory it is right, and most Americans
recognize the truth and justice of its elementary principles. On the
contrary, Europeans, and especially Englishmen, have scarcely a
perception or glimpse of men’s natural relations to each other, and
their whole social and political system, if thus it may be called, is in
direct conflict with these relations, with the vital principle of
democracy, with reason and common sense. A woman is the chief of the
nation, whose husband is her subject—thus violating the relations of the
sexes—of husband and wife—and thrusting her from the normal position of
woman as well as contradicting the relations and duties of citizenship.
God created her, adapted her, and designed her, for a wife and mother, a
help-mate to her husband and the teacher and guide of her children; He
endowed her with corresponding instincts to love, venerate, and obey her
husband and devote her life to the happiness and welfare of her
offspring, and to trample on His laws—to smother these instincts and
force this woman to be a queen, a chief of state, the ruler over
millions of men, is as sinful as it is irrational, as great an outrage
on herself—her womanhood—as it is on the people who suffer from it. The
annual expenditure for royalty amounts to several millions, and requires
probably that some thirty thousand people should be employed or
compelled to devote their labor to this purpose. Thirty thousand men,
women, and children, ignorant, abject, and miserable, with no chance
whatever for education, for the cultivation of their faculties or the
healthy development of their natures, are bound to lives of toil and a
mere animal existence in order to furnish means for this one family, not
of happiness, but of boundless folly, which is supposed to constitute
royal dignity. God created this woman with the same faculties, endowed
her with the same instincts, and designed her for the same purposes as
all other women in England, but the human law, disregarding the evident
designs of the Almighty, has impiously sought to make her a different
and superior being, to reverse the natural relations of the sexes, to
render her husband subject to her will, to place her above many millions
of men, the head of the state, to even force this fragile, weak, and
helpless female to be the commander-in-chief of their armies, and they
crush and pervert thirty thousand other people out of the natural order,
and doom them to a mere animal existence, in order to sustain this one
family in “royal splendor.” The two things are inseparable—the violation
of the natural relation drags after it these frightful consequences. All
these people thus doomed to ignorance and toil, to support the luxury
and grandeur of royalty, would, under the same circumstances, be just as
grand, majestic, and royal as the present royal family, and the wrong in
the present instance may be measured or tested by the consideration that
of these thirty thousand poor, ignorant, abject, and toiling creatures,
whose labor, or the proceeds of whose labor is appropriated to the
support of royalty, the majority would doubtless exhibit more capacity
and refinement than those who rule over them, if, standing where nature
placed them all in common, they were permitted to compete for
superiority. The same unnatural order prevails on the Continent: the
natural equality that God has stamped upon the race—for they are all
white men—is disregarded, and though the people are ignorant, debased by
poverty, excessive toil, and misery, the _status quo_ preserved alone by
force. Nearly four millions of armed men are kept in constant readiness
to repress and keep down the instinct of equality, while a “civil” force
of perhaps a million more is constantly acting in conjunction with the
former, in preserving that artificial and unnatural rule which the few—a
mere fraction of the population—exercise over the many. And so
instinctive and irrepressible is this sentiment—this innate and eternal
law written by the finger of the Almighty on the soul and organism of
the race—that if these armed forces were withdrawn, every government in
Europe would be demolished within a week. Nor can the existing condition
be preserved much longer. Those writers ignorant of the essential nature
of the race, often indulge in absurd fancies in regard to the future of
European society. They are good enough to say that democratic
institutions may do for America, but that they will not suit the people
of Europe, and therefore monarchy is to be a permanent institution.
Democracy or equality is a fact rather than a principle. Beings who have
the same nature, the same wants, and the same instincts will struggle,
as they must struggle, for ever, to enjoy the same rights and to live
out the same life. And though they are chained down by ignorance and
misery as well as by the armed hordes of their tyrants, there can be no
peace, no cessation of the conflict, no stopping-place short of the
universal recognition of their natural relations to each other, and that
fixed and eternal equality which the Almighty Creator has stamped upon
the race and fixed for ever in its physical and mental structure.
If the natural relations that men bear to each other are thus
misunderstood and disregarded in Europe, it may well be supposed that
they are wholly ignorant of the natural relations of races, and without
even the remotest conception of the relations that naturally exist
between white men and negroes. It is therefore a subject never
introduced or treated of—a _terra incognita_ to the European mind,—and
dependent as we are on European authority, the natural relation of
races, and the normal condition of the negro, have only quite recently
become a subject of American investigation.
But while our writers and men of science have been, and quite generally
are even now, wholly ignorant of these relations, indeed, worse still,
in slavish subserviency to European dictation, have accepted the absurd
theories of the former in explanation of the phenomena constantly
presented to their view, our people have practically solved their
natural relations to the inferior race, and placed or rather retained
the negro in his normal condition.
There are eight millions of white people and four millions of negroes in
juxtaposition. The latter are, in domestic subordination and social
adaptation, corresponding with their wants, their instincts, their
faculties, the nature with which God has endowed them. They are
different and subordinate creatures, and they are in a different and
subordinate social position, harmonizing with their natural relations to
the superior race, and therefore they are in their normal condition.
This, if not exactly a self-evident, is certainly an unavoidable truth—a
truth that no amount or extent of sophistry, self-deception,
authoritative dictum, or perverted reasoning can gainsay a moment, for
it rests upon _facts_, fixed forever by the hand of the Creator. The
negro is different from, and inferior to the white man. He is in a
different and inferior position, and therefore, of necessity, is in a
normal condition. _That_, as a general proposition, is true beyond
doubt, for there is no place or material for doubt. God has made him
different—widely different, as has been shown; that difference is as
unchangeable as are any of the works of the Almighty. _He_ has therefore
designed him, of course, for different purposes—for a different and
subordinate social position whenever and wherever the races are in
juxtaposition. It needs no argument to prove this truth, great and
startling as it must be to those who have never before contemplated it.
The _facts_—the simple, palpable, unchangeable facts—only need to be
stated, and the inference, the inductive fact, the absolute truth, is
unavoidable. God has made the negro different from, and inferior to the
white man. They are in juxtaposition—the human law corresponds with the
higher law of the Almighty; the negro is in a different and subordinate
position, and therefore in a normal condition. But it may be said by
some that while this is so, or while the negro, in juxtaposition, must
be subordinate, it does not follow that the actual condition of things
at the South is essentially right, natural, and just. They would be
mistaken, however, for the _facts_ involved do not permit or admit of
any such assertion. The white man _is_ superior, the negro _is_
inferior, and therefore the inference is unavoidable that the latter is
in his normal condition whenever the social law or legal adaptation is
in harmony with these natural relations of white men and negroes. It is
true that a wide field for inquiry, for comparison, for arriving at
relative truth, is here opened to our view, but the simple, precise, and
unavoidable truth remains unaltered and unalterable—the different and
inferior negro is in a different and inferior social position at the
South, and therefore in harmony with the natural relations of the races,
he is in a normal condition. If it were said that the existing condition
were defective—that in some respects injustice were done the negro—that
there was a wide field for improvement in the social habits of the
South—in short, for the progress and improvement of Southern society,
then there would be reason, perhaps, in such suggestions. But to say or
to assert that the condition of the negro at the South was wrong or
unjust in its essential character, would be altogether absurd, and an
abuse of language that none but those wholly ignorant of the facts
involved would ever, or could ever, indulge in. The simple statement of
the facts lying at the base of Southern society, however false our
perceptions of them, or whatever our ignorance of them, or whatever may
be the perversity of those who will not seek to comprehend them, is
sufficient, when clearly presented, to convince every rational mind that
the negro is in his normal condition only when in social subordination
to the white man.
But however obvious or irresistible this momentous truth, when it is
thus forced upon the mind as an inductive fact, it is also demonstrable
through processes of comparison, which, if not quite so direct or
palpable, are equally certain and reliable. And the normal condition of
the negro, or the social adaptation at the South, necessarily involves
the protection as well as the subordination of the inferior race. The
two things are in fact inseparable, as in the case of parents and
children, or the relations of husband and wife, or indeed any condition
of things resting on a basis of natural law.
Any one capable of reasoning at all must see that four millions of
subordinate negroes in juxtaposition with eight millions of superior
white men, must be in a subordinate social position—that the instinct of
self-preservation, the primal law, obviously demands that the superior
shall place the inferior in just such position as its own interests and
safety may need—that it may and should even destroy it, utterly
obliterate it from the earth, if its own safety requires it—though such
instance never could happen unless some outside force or intermeddling
brought it about—that the mode or manner, or special means are of
secondary consideration, and to be determined or worked out according to
circumstances, the habits, progress, and condition of the master race.
Contemplating, therefore, the great existing fact—the juxtaposition of
vast masses of widely different social elements at the South—the
inference is unavoidable, that it is the right and the duty of the
dominant race to provide for the wants of such a population, and that,
for the common welfare and safety, they may and must place the negro
element just where their own reason and experience assure them is proper
and desirable. This has been done, and is done, but instead of the State
or government providing directly for these things, individuals are left,
to a great extent at least, to provide for the wants of the subordinate
race. The motive of personal interest, therefore, is brought into
action—a motive often, doubtless, stronger than affection, and though,
like the latter, it will not always save the weak and dependent from
wrong and cruelty, it usually serves as a sufficient protection. The
father loves his child, the being so inferior, so weak and dependent on
his affection. He has absolute control over the actions, the labor, the
time, habits, etc., of his son, may compel him to labor for him, or hire
out or sell his services to another, and it is only on rare occasions
that this natural affection of the father is not sufficient protection
for the offspring, and the State is compelled to interpose its power to
save the latter from the parent’s cruelty. It is the utmost interest of
the father to treat his offspring with kindness, and though affection is
the dominant feeling, his real interests are always advanced by this
treatment, so that it might be said that the man who loves his children
most will have the most useful and the best children. And in the
relation of husband and wife a similar result necessarily follows: the
husband who loves his wife most tenderly will—other things being
equal—always have the best wife, and the wife who loves her husband and
children most devotedly will be rewarded by the greatest love and the
greatest happiness in return.
In the case of the master and so-called slave, interest instead of
affection is the dominant feeling; but even here they are inseparable as
well as in the relations just referred to. It is the utmost interest of
the master to treat his negro subject with the greatest kindness, and in
exact proportion as he does so, he calls into action the affections of
the latter. Every one who practically understands the negro, knows that
the strongest affection his nature is capable of feeling is love for his
master—that affection for wife, parents, or offspring, all sink into
insignificance in comparison with the strong and devoted love he gives
to the superior being who guides, cares, and provides for all his wants.
There is, then, this radical difference between parent and child, and
master and “slave”—the first, prompted by affection, is rewarded by
interest, while the latter, impelled by interest, is followed by
affection; and the grand result in both cases is happiness, well-being,
the mutual benefit and common welfare of all concerned—that universal
reward which God bestows on all His creatures, when, recognizing their
natural relations to each, they adapt their domestic habits and social
regulations to those relations.
The popular mind of the North, so deplorably ignorant of all the facts
of Southern society, has a general conception, perhaps, of negro
subordination at the South, but none whatever of the reciprocities of
the social condition. The negro—a different and inferior creature—must
be in a social position harmonizing with this great, fundamental, and
unchangeable fact; but while he owes obedience, natural, organic, and
spontaneous, he also has the natural right of protection. Or, in other
words, while he owes obedience to his master, the latter owes him
protection, care, guidance, and provision for all his wants, and he can
not relieve himself of this duty or these duties without damaging
himself. For example: the master who overworked his people, or under-fed
them, or treated them cruelly in any way, would necessarily compromise
his interests to the precise extent that he practiced, or sought to
practice, these cruelties. They would become feeble from over-exertion,
or weak and prostrated from the want of healthy food; while indifference
to the master’s interests, sullenness, perhaps sometimes fierce hate,
would impel them to damage his property, and in any and every case their
labor would be less valuable. Furthermore, God has so adapted the negro
that he can not be overworked; and though the master or overseer may
kill him in the effort, he can not, nor can any human power, force him
beyond a given point, or compel him to that extreme exertion which the
poor white laborer of Europe is often forced into. Subordination and
protection, the obedience of the inferior and the care of the superior,
the subjection of the negro and the guidance of the white man, are
therefore inseparable, and when we outgrow and abandon the mental habits
borrowed from Europe and designate the social condition where these
elements exist, by a proper term or word, it should be a compound one
that embodies both of these things.
Such, then, are the domestic habits and social adaptations at the South,
or where widely different races are in juxtaposition, and which, in
truth, spring from the necessities of social existence whenever they are
found together. But, as already remarked, the truth, essential justice,
beneficence, and necessity of this condition—this subordination on the
one hand and protection on the other—while an obvious, and, indeed,
unavoidable conclusion or inference from the great and unchangeable
facts involved—are equally demonstrable by comparison with other
conditions. Or, in other words, while the mere statement of existing
facts, in their natural order and their true relations, irresistibly and
unavoidably forces the mind to the conclusion that Southern society
reposes on a basis of natural law and everlasting truth, its essential
justice, naturalness, and beneficence may be made equally clear to the
mind by comparing it with other conditions where these elements are
found to exist. We absolutely know nothing of the negro of antiquity
except that recently revealed on the Egyptian monuments, through the
labors of Champolion and others, and possibly a glimpse occasionally of
negro populations through Roman history. The ignorant Abolitionists, and
the scarcely less ignorant European ethnologists, on this subject, fancy
negro empires and grand civilizations long since extinct; and
Livingstone and others, with the false and nonsensical notion that there
should be found remains of these imaginary empires, of course succeeded
in finding them occasionally, or the interests of the “friends of
humanity” would languish, and perhaps subside altogether. But the author
desires to say to the reader that while, as an anatomist, he _knows_
that an isolated civilized negro is just as impossible as a
straight-haired or white-skinned negro, he has also consulted history,
ancient and modern, European and Oriental, Pagan and Christian, and in
the _tout ensemble_ of the experience of mankind there is nothing
written—book, pamphlet, or manuscript—in the world that casts any light
whatever on this matter, or that authorizes the notion that populations,
where the negro element dominated, had a history. Since the great
“anti-slavery” imposture of modern times began, there are many writers
and lecturers who assume such things, as that negro empires had often
existed and exercised vast influences on the progress of mankind—that
the rich and powerful republic of Carthage was negro—that even Hannibal,
the man who so long contested the empire of the world with the grand old
Romans, was a negro—indeed, some of these ignorant and impious people
have assumed that Christ was a negro; but it is repeated, there is no
negro history, nothing whatever, except what we now see on the Egyptian
monuments, that indicate the position of the negro or the condition of
society when in juxtaposition with white men.
As depicted on the monuments, the negro was then as he is now at the
South, in a position of subordination; while isolated, he was as he is
now, a simple, unproductive, non-advancing savage. In this condition of
isolation he multiplies himself, and therefore is in a natural
condition. His acute and powerful senses make amends for his limited
intelligence, and enable him to contend with the fiercer and more
powerful creatures of the animal creation, while the fervid suns and
luxuriant soils of the tropics, where the earth may be said to produce
spontaneously, enable him to live with little more exertion than simply
to gather their rich and nutritious products. It is a natural condition,
so far as it goes, for, as has been said, he increases and multiplies
his kind; but it can not have been designed as the permanent condition
of the race, for that involves the anomaly of waste, uselessness, a
broad blank in the economy of the universe. But as that aspect of the
subject will be discussed in another place, it need not be entered on
here.
The condition of savagism, or whatever we may term it, where the negro
is isolated and without any thing to call his wonderful powers of
imitation into action, where he is simply a useless, non-advancing
heathen, surely no one, however perverted his mind may be on this
subject, will venture to say is a preferable condition to that which he
enjoys at the South. It might suffice to say that he increases with more
than double rapidity, to demonstrate the fact of his superiority of
condition in the latter; but there are moral considerations that show
this with still greater distinctness. It is true that we must not take
our own standard to test this matter, or we must not assume that that
which would constitute our own happiness would also secure the greatest
happiness of the negro. Of course the white man never did and never
could live such a life as the isolated negro; but, contemplating the
negro in the South as he now exists, in comparison with the condition of
the isolated negro in Africa, will any one or can any one doubt for an
instant the immense superiority of the former condition? He is cared for
in his childhood by his master as well as his mother, taken care of when
ill, always supplied with an abundance of food and clothing, given every
chance for the development of his imitative faculties, permitted to
marry generally as he pleases, to feel always that he has a guide and
protector, and a constant, peaceful home; and in his old age will be
cared for and decently buried with all the sanctions and comforts of the
Christian religion. In Africa, a negro, isolated from the white man,
rarely has a home, rarely knows his father, is left unprotected in his
childhood to all the chances and uncertainties of savagism, sometimes
nearly starved, at other times gorged with unwholesome food, without any
possible chance for education or the development of his faculties,
liable at any moment of his life, in some wild eruption of hostile
tribes, to be carried off a slave, perhaps to be eaten by the victors,
and after running the gauntlet of savagism, if he lives to old age, to
be left to perish of hunger, if no longer able to seek food for himself.
But it is quite unnecessary to multiply words on this point; the
condition of the negro in America, under the broad glare of American
civilization and the beneficent influences of Christianity, is so vastly
and indeed immeasurably superior to that of the African or isolated
negro, that we have no terms in our language that can truly or fully
express it. We ourselves, under our beneficent democratic institutions,
doubtless enjoy an extent of happiness or well-being, over that of the
masses of our race in the Old World, somewhat difficult to measure or
express in words, and it is reasonable to say that the negro population
of the South, relatively or comparatively, enjoys even greater
happiness, when contrasted with African savagism. There is, in fact, no
other condition to compare with, for freedom, the imaginary state that
the Abolitionists have labored for so long, is not a condition, and has
an existence in their imaginations alone, and not in the actual
breathing and living world about us. They have a theory, or rather an
abstract idea, that the negro is a _black_-white man, a black Caucasian,
a creature like ourselves except in color, and therefore that, placed
under the same circumstances—that is, given the same rights and held to
the same responsibilities—he will manifest the same qualities, etc. On
this foolish assumption legislatures and individuals have acted, and
both in the South and in the North considerable numbers of these people
have been thrust from their normal condition into what? Why, into the
condition of widely different beings.
If any one were to propose to give the negro straight hair, or a flowing
beard, or transparent color, or to force on him any other physical
feature of the white man, everybody would denounce the wrong as well as
the folly of thus torturing the poor creature with that which nature
forbids to be done. It has been shown that, in the mental qualities and
instincts of the negro, the differences between him and the white man
are exactly measured by the differences in the physical qualities, and
therefore the efforts of the Abolitionists to endow the negro with
freedom involve exactly the same impieties and the same follies as if
they sought to change the color of the skin. Or if it was sought to
force the child to live out the life of the adult—or the woman that of
the man, or to compel our domestic animals to change their
manifestations and to contradict the nature God has given them, it would
be promptly denounced as cruel, impious, and foolish. All that could be
done would be to destroy them—to shorten the life of the unhappy
creatures; and this is exactly what has been done, and is now done, in
regard to negroes; but, owing to a universal ignorance and wide-spread
misconception, that which should be denounced as the grossest wrong has
been regarded as the highest morality and philanthropy!
The negro is thrust from the care and protection of a master at the
South, but he has none of the responsibilities of society laid on him,
and furthermore, there is no very pressing competition for the means of
subsistence. He has nothing of what are called rights—that is, is not
forced to live the life of another being—and though he has no master to
teach and guide him, his powers of imitation are, to a certain extent,
called into action, for he is still in juxtaposition and subordination.
But even under these favorable circumstances, he rapidly—as contrasted
with those under the care of masters—declines and dies. There is, at
this time, a large number of these people in Maryland, Virginia and
other transition States. Their condition is truly deplorable, and is
every day getting worse, for the increase of whites is every day adding
to the pressure on them, and rendering the means of subsistence more
difficult to obtain. It seems to many, doubtless, a great wrong to place
them again in a normal condition, and true relation to the whites—which
would be a wrong like that of the inebriate forced back into
temperance—a process, in truth, of great suffering, but desirable in the
end. If the abnormal habit of drunkenness continues, the man will die
within a given time; but if he reforms and recovers his normal state, he
may live many years.
There will be few, if any, more negroes “emancipated,” as forcing them
out of a normal condition has been termed, in the South, and therefore
it is only a question of time when these people, left as they are now,
will become extinct. As a question of kindness and humanity, therefore,
it is like that of the drunkard: left as they are, they must perish; but
if restored to a normal state, whatever their temporary suffering, they
or their descendants may live forever. Most unfortunately, however,
there is another difficulty involved in the fortunes of these poor
people. They have a large infusion of white blood—a very large portion,
perhaps, are mulattoes, and therefore while in the case of the typical
negro there could be no doubt where true humanity pointed us, in the
case of these mongrels there is room for doubt and difficulty. But in
the more Northern States, where it is sought to force the habitudes of
white men on them, they perish rapidly. The mortality is greater in New
England than in the Middle States, and greatest of all in Massachusetts
where they are citizens, and the ignorant and misguided, however
well-meaning, “friends of freedom” have their own way, and give full
scope to their terrible kindness. The whole subject may be summed up
thus:—The negro, in a normal condition, increases more rapidly than the
whites—for the negress, if not more prolific, escapes by her lower
sensibility the numerous chances of miscarriage, premature births,
weakly children, etc., which ordinarily attend on the higher and more
susceptible organization of the white female.
The “free” or abnormal negro of the Southern States tends to
extinction—of the Middle States still more rapidly—and finally, most
rapidly of all in New England. Or the actual laws governing this matter
may be summed up thus:—In precise proportion as the negro is thrust from
his normal condition into that of the white man, he tends to extinction,
or one might say, that precisely as the rights of the white man are
forced on the negro, he is destroyed. All the negroes brought to this
continent were in a normal condition. The monstrous assumption set up by
British writers when the colonists began to throw off the British
dominion, that negroes were _black_-white men, and, naturally
considered, entitled to the same _status_, after nearly a hundred years,
and an amount of wrong, falsehood, and suffering to these people that is
beyond computation, has at last culminated. From this time forth, few,
if any, will be “emancipated.” Indeed, it is far more likely that the
numbers restored to a normal condition will outnumber those thrust from
their natural relations to white men. If all the legislation on the
subject were suddenly blotted out, of course there would be no such
thing as a “free negro” on this continent, and this is the point towards
which the course of American society is now rapidly tending. It may be
somewhat difficult to determine that period—for we know not what may be
the action of many of the States that have a considerable population of
this kind—but one can not err when saying that it can not be remote, and
it is absolutely certain to arrive within the next hundred years.
Indeed, it is most probable that from the culmination of the great
“anti-slavery” imposture, or from the starting-point of the reaction, to
the final period when such a social monstrosity as a “free” negro will
be entirely extinct in the New World, the interval will be less than
that of the strange and wide-spread delusion which has so long run riot
over the understanding, the common sense, the interests, and
self-respect of our people.
Of course, no comparison proper can be made with so shadowy and
intangible a thing as this. It is not a condition—it is only an attempt
after that which neither has nor can have an existence. If it had been
assumed simply that the _status_ of the negro was wrong at the South,
and that some other _status_ was proper for him, then possibly an
experiment would have been legitimate. But, as it was assumed that the
negro was a Caucasian, whose color merely was different, and naturally
entitled to the position of the white man, all these efforts were made
to reduce the assumption to practice, and compel him to live out the
life of the former. There could be and can be only a single end to such
effort. God created him a negro, a different and inferior being, and of
course no human power could alter or modify, to the millionth part of an
atom, the work of the Eternal. That which destroys a creature, or under
which he dies, can never be right, or even approach to that which is
right. When nature is so outraged that she refuses to indorse the human
action, or when she in mercy interposes her power to limit such action,
then we can not possibly mistake the wrong we are doing, or attempting
to do. It is an historical fact that slaves never propagated while in
that condition, and the supply was constantly kept up by fresh wars and
increased captives. It was such a stupendous outrage on the natural
relations, that men of the same species bear to each other, or on that
natural and unchangeable equality common to the race, that nature
refused to propagate it, or to consent to its permanent existence.
Nature also refuses offspring to prostitution—that terrible cancer so
corrupting to Northern society, and who does not see her wisdom and
beneficence in thus refusing a permanent existence to so foul a blot on
the sexual relations? So, too, in the case of mulattoism, where a
monstrous violation of the physical integrity of the races is involved,
nature interposes and forbids it to live. And in incest—the violation of
the laws of consanguinity, where relatives intermarry—nature
appropriately punishes them, through the idiocy and impotency of their
offspring, which is always forbidden to exist beyond a determinate
period. Free negroism, therefore—the attempt to force a different and
inferior being to live out the life of a different and superior being—is
not a condition, and can not be compared with that which is, or that
which the higher law of nature grants, a fixed order of life. There are,
then, only two possible conditions for the negro—isolation or
juxtaposition with the white man—African heathenism or subordination to
a master—a blank in the economy of the universe, or the social order of
the South, where he is an important element in the civilization,
progress, and general welfare of both races. It is not in the scope of
this work to treat of the natural relations or social adaptations of
other races. They must be determined by experience, though the
starting-point—the fundamental truth—that when in juxtaposition they
must occupy a subordinate social position, corresponding with the degree
of inferiority to the white man, may be said to be self-evident, or, at
all events, an unavoidable truth.
In conclusion, it may be well to repeat the great leading truths that
underlie the subject discussed in this chapter.
All of God’s creatures, animal as well as human, have a right to live
out the life—the specific nature—that He has endowed them with, and we
have comprehended this great, vital, and fundamental law in respect to
our domestic animals, and generally conform to it. The natural relations
of the sexes—of parents and offspring—are also understood, and generally
lived up to in our daily life. The natural relations of men to each
other are less understood, but the natural order, the equality of
rights, and equality of duties, based on an equality of wants, is a
vital principle of Christianity, and however far we may be from living
it out in practice, our political system, and the whole superstructure
of our civil and legal institutions, repose upon this fundamental law of
nature.
This natural order is generally disregarded in the Old World, though
even there, with all their numerous false traditions, relics of
barbarism, and ancient wrongs, as well as modern corruptions, they are
forced, to a certain extent, in their legal and civil institutions, to
recognize it. Nature absolutely forbids any change or any violation of
her laws, or, in other words, the work of the Almighty can not be
altered by human force or accident. The millions of Europe are,
therefore, unchanged in their essential natures, and the few who rule
and wrong them are only able to prevent the development of their
specific and latent capabilities by their systems of repression. But the
natural order—the natural relations they bear to each other—the inherent
and eternal equality that God has stamped forever on the organism of the
race, is perpetually struggling to manifest itself; and though buried in
a profound animalism, though deluded by false theories and corrupted by
innumerable lies, and steeped in poverty and misery fathomless and
measureless, they are only temporarily kept from asserting the natural
order and specific nature of the race by four millions of bayonets.
The natural relations of races, and especially of the white man and
negro, have been wholly misunderstood, for, ignorant of the nature and
specific wants of the negro, it necessarily followed that it should be
so. But while in theory we have been ignorant of these relations, the
people of the South have solved them in practice. Their actual
experience of the negro nature, of its wants, its capacities, its
industrial adaptations, perhaps we may say, the instinctive necessities
of a society where widely different social elements are in
juxtaposition, have developed a social order in practical harmony with
the best interests and highest happiness of both races. That society
rests on the same basis as that of the North, with the superadded negro
element, which, in social subordination corresponding with its natural
inferiority and natural relations to the white man, is immovable and
everlasting, so long as the foundations of the world remain unaltered
and unalterable. Ignorance and impiety may beat against it; folly,
delusion, and madness may waste their wild energies in blind warfare on
it; European kings and nobles, all those who live and flourish for a
time on the perversion of the natural order and the degradation of so
many millions of their kind—their natural equals—may combine to
overthrow it; dupes, instruments, open foes and secret traitors may aid
them, and the great ignorant and deluded masses for a time may be
blindly impelled in this direction, but all in vain; the social
order—the supremacy of the master and the obedience of the “slave”—will
remain forever, for it is based on the higher law of the Almighty, the
natural relations of the races, the organic and eternal superiority of
the white man and the organic and everlasting inferiority of the negro.
CHAPTER XVI.
CHATTELISM.
The common European notion (and the American, borrowed from it), regards
the American “slave” as a chattel—a thing sold like a horse or dog, and
equally the absolute property of his master. Lord Brougham and others
have denounced this barbarism, as they have called it, with great
bitterness, and the former has declared that it is immoral, abhorrent,
and even illegal “for man to hold property in man”—a declaration that
might be true enough, perhaps, if negroes were black-white men, as
supposed, but which, in view of the actual facts involved, is simply
absurd. They suppose that negroes in America are held by the same tenure
that the Romans and other nations of antiquity held their slaves. But
there is no resemblance whatever, and, in truth, it would be difficult
to find anywhere in history conditions so absolutely and so widely
different. All the so-called heathen nations had slaves, or rather they
had captives taken in war, whose lives were forfeited, and who thus
became the property of their conquerors. The rule or custom seems to
have been universal, and it was only after the introduction of
Christianity that it became obsolete. A Roman army invaded Gaul or
Germany—a great battle or series of battles occurred—those captured on
the field became the property of the victors, while the nation or
country became a Roman province, and ever after paid tribute to the
Roman civil officers. Gaul, Britain, most of Germany, indeed, nearly all
the then known world, were thus overrun by the Roman armies, and the
vast multitudes that were defeated in battle were carried off to Italy
to cultivate the lands of the Roman nobility. There was no question of
freedom or slavery, or of rights of any kind involved—the man risked his
life, and if defeated, this life was forfeited to the victor. The latter
might or might not slay him the next morning, or the next week, or the
next year, or twenty years after, just as he pleased. He might send him
to work on his lands in Italy, keep him as a domestic in his household,
compel him to enter the arena and combat as a gladiator for the popular
amusement, or direct him to be crucified or given to feed his fishes, or
he might sell him to others, who, of course, had the same control over
him; or, finally, by one supreme act of generosity, he might give him
back his forfeited life, when, as a freedman—not freeman—he entered the
ranks of ordinary citizenship and was lost in the mighty mass of Romans
that made up the population of the great city. Freedom or slavery, or
what, in modern times, is called such, had nothing to do with the
matter. It was a question of life and death rather than of freedom and
slavery. The life, the actual physical existence was forfeited—the man
had no right to live, and only did live by the sufferance of the captor
or master, and therefore all subordinate considerations were lost in
this one great, all-dominating fact. Many wise, learned, and
accomplished men were slaves or were of this unfortunate class, and
remained thus through life, subject often, doubtless, to the caprices
and cruelty of illiterate and brutal owners, who at any moment could put
them to the torture or to a cruel death. The rule was universal among
all the ancient nations, except the Hebrews, who, in some respects, or
as regarded their own people, made some humane modifications. It was
entirely personal—the state or government having nothing to do with the
matter either as regarded the original forfeit or the cancelling of the
bonds and the restoration to liberty, or rather to life, of the
unfortunate captive.
There was a certain social prejudice in respect to freedmen, or the
children of those who had been slaves, but there does not appear to have
been any legal or political disability. They had forfeited their
lives—they became absolutely dead in law, mere things, chattels, or
property of their owners, of which the government or state took no more
account than of horses or oxen, or any other property; but the moment
that their lives were restored to them, then they at once entered the
ranks of citizenship with all the rights and privileges common in those
days, and in those relatively barbarous times.
There were some incidental features or phases of this terrible condition
that are too marked to pass over without notice, as they tend to show,
in a very striking manner, the wide and indeed unapproachable distance
between it and that which, in our own times, has been so generally
confounded with it. Servile wars were almost constantly occurring
events. Opinion, even in the rudest times, has always, to a certain
extent, governed the world, and the universal custom of enslaving those
defeated in battle was submitted to in the first instance without a
murmur. It was the fortune of war, and no one disputed the inexorable
rule which doomed them to become the absolute chattels or property of
the victor; but when their numbers increased to any considerable extent
in any locality, the natural instinct which told them they were the
equals, and very often the superiors of those who owned them, could not
be restrained, and the long and terrible servile wars almost always
raging within the bosom of the Roman Empire probably weakened and more
than any other thing prepared it for that awful overthrow which finally
overtook the Roman colossus. Another equally striking feature
distinguished this condition. The slave population never increased
itself in the regular and natural order. Most of them were adult males,
originally, and the small number of females may sufficiently account for
the constant tendency to extinction; but beyond this, the abnormal
condition, the terrible and transcendent wrong of forcing beings like
themselves, with the same wants and the same instincts as their masters,
to lives in absolute and abject subjection to the wills of others, was
necessarily incompatible with a permanent existence.
This universal custom prevailed—all men, even the wisest and best, in
their profound ignorance of their own nature, believed slavery to be
right, just as many good men in our own times believe that the European
condition, which dooms the millions to subjection to the few, is right;
but it was so utterly in conflict with natural instinct that the servile
population tended constantly to extinction, and therefore, as observed,
it soon died out when the spirit of Christianity modified the customs of
war, and the conquered became prisoners to be exchanged, instead of
slaves subject to the caprices and cruelties of creatures like
themselves. Some superficial writers, ignorant of the underlying facts,
have supposed that Greece and Rome were great and prosperous because
they had slaves, a process of reasoning quite equal to saying that a man
enjoyed good health because he had a fever-sore on one of his legs!
These nations and all other nations have been prosperous and powerful in
precise proportion to the number of free men, and weak and contemptible
in exact proportion to the multiplicity of slaves—a truth as evident at
this day as in any other, and rendered more palpable in our own history
and condition than ever before. Greece and Rome were great and powerful,
in contrast with the great Oriental empires—Persian, Babylonian,
Egyptian, etc.—because there was a large free population in the former,
while in the latter they were all slaves, or the slaves of slaves. Of
course no such condition could exist in our times, and the most ignorant
and abject portion of the European population could not be placed or
kept in such position a single hour. The Oriental populations still
practice it, to a certain extent, perhaps. The Turks, when they invaded
the lower empire and captured Constantinople, made slaves of their
prisoners, and long trains of unhappy beings, wealthy matrons and
delicately nurtured young girls, chained by the wrists to their own
servants, or to rude soldiers and uncouth peasants, were marched off to
become the abject and miserable slaves of still more gross and brutal
masters. The sale of Circassian girls for Turkish harems is altogether a
different affair, and however revolting to our notions and habits, has
nothing in common with the condition historically known to us as
slavery. The essential fact in this condition, as will be seen, was the
forfeited life; all other facts hinged on that, and the idea of property
or chattelism was incidental—a mere result. When the man’s life was
forfeited, when he was deemed to be dead in law, when his captor could
do as he pleased with him, crucify, torture, or destroy him altogether,
then it necessarily followed that he was a chattel, or a thing that he
would be apt to make as profitable as possible, and this self-interest
was the sole protection of the miserable creature. It therefore was,
doubtless, a great interest—some of the Roman nobles owning many
thousands of them, though, except in respect to the servile wars, almost
constantly raging within some portion of the empire, the government
seems to have had nothing to do with slaves or slavery. It was wont,
however, to resort to terrible punishments to keep them in subjection,
and it was not uncommon to line the highways leading into the city for
forty miles with crosses, on which these wretched beings were suspended,
and left in sight and hearing of each other, until death relieved them
from their sufferings.
Such was Roman slavery, as it has been described by historians of the
time—a condition not at all involving what we call freedom or rights of
any kind, but simply that of a forfeited existence, and which, if given
back by the owner, the man was restored to life, to a legal existence,
to his normal condition, and, without the slightest interference of the
government, was at once absorbed in the general citizenship. Of course
there is no resemblance or even approximation to the social order of the
South; indeed, as observed, it is difficult to conceive of conditions
more utterly opposed or unlike each other. As has been shown elsewhere,
the labor, the service, the industrial forces of the negro were
essential to the cultivation of the soil and the growth of the
indigenous products that belong to the great intertropical regions of
the American continent. Ships, therefore, were fitted out for this
purpose to bring negroes to the New World, not to make slaves of them,
or to transform them into things, but to make their labor available for
the common good of mankind. Much wrong, cruelty, and inhumanity, it is
quite likely, have been practiced, but the motive and the object were
right, of course, for these had their origin in human necessities and
human welfare. The abuses we have nothing more to do with; the object
and the essential fact—the service—remains, and will remain forever, if
the great tropical centre of the continent remains civilized, instead of
being transformed into a barren waste. The service of the negro, his
industrial capacity, his labor, is a thing that may be estimated as
easily and accurately as any other species of property, and therefore is
property, and to the precise extent necessary to enforce this labor or
this service the owner of it has absolute control over the person of the
negro. There is not, nor should there be, any difference between this
property and other property, and to this extent it may be called
chattelism, for, as observed, it may be as easily and precisely fixed or
defined as any other property. The master takes care of him in childhood
and in sickness, clothes, feeds, and provides for his old age, or for
the loss of health, etc., and estimating or comparing these things with
his services, he is able to fix a positive value to the labor of the
negro, and this, like any other property, he may dispose of to any one
else, if he chooses to do so. This property he must have absolute
control over, and therefore, to the precise extent needed to make it
available, he has absolute control over the person of the negro. The
ignorant abolition writer says, “the slave is put upon the
auction-block, examined and handled precisely as the horse, or other
animal, and knocked off to the highest bidder; he follows his master
home, to be dealt with just as any other animal.”
It is true, there is a seeming resemblance, but if we follow them home
and observe what follows, then it will be seen that there is no
resemblance at all. The master takes care of his horse, for such is his
interest; he may even have a liking, a kind of affection for him; but if
sick or worn out, or if he falls and breaks a leg, he blows his brains
out, and after taking off his skin, leaves the carcass to be devoured by
the dogs or vultures. In the case of the negro he also takes care of him
and treats him well, for it is his highest interest to do so, and often
feels an affection, and a very strong one, for him. If ill, he sends for
a surgeon and treats him as men usually treat their children. He is a
part of the household, belongs to the family, and is usually strongly
attached to the master and the master’s children. His own wants are all
attended to. He has his cabin, his patch of garden, his poultry, etc.,
very often his bale of cotton. He is permitted to choose his own wife,
to enjoy all the domestic happiness that his nature is capable of, and
if he fulfils his duty industriously, promptly, and honestly, then the
master may be said to have no more control over him; but should he reach
old age, break his leg, or in any way become disabled and useless, if
the master should blow his brains out he would be hanged as a murderer.
There is surely no resemblance in these things, none whatever; indeed it
may be said that the one essential fact accomplished, the “service” duly
rendered, the master’s absolute control ceases. He must still care for
and protect the negro and provide for him in sickness and old age, but
his absolute rule is always within well-defined limits, and beyond them
the master may not go. He may enforce service, and if the negro
disobeys, punish him, or if he resists the reasonable will of the
master, compel obedience—absolute, unquestioning obedience. But the laws
of every Southern State protect the “slave” from the caprices and
cruelties of the master just as in the Northern States they protect the
child from a sometimes passionate and brutal father.
In the previous chapter it has been shown that the negro is in his
normal condition only when in social subordination to the white man—for
that is the natural relation of the races whenever or wherever they are
in juxtaposition; but the precise form of this subordination may be
modified, perhaps, by time and circumstances. Subordination and
protection exist together—indeed, are inseparable. The strong should
protect the weak: the superior white man, who demands the obedience of
the inferior negro, should also protect this feebler being; and such is
the social condition at the South. Owning the service of the negro, it
is the highest interest of the master to take the utmost care of him,
while the latter has an equal interest—relatively considered—in being
honest, industrious, and faithful to the master. Indeed, it is
impossible to perceive any antagonism of interests in this condition,
and compared with any other, it may be said, without chance of
successful contradiction, that it is the most harmonious in its
essential principles known to our times. It originated in an absolute
want—the service of the negro—that industrial capacity which he alone
can furnish, and this service is the essential feature of the domestic
institutions of the South. It was and is made a property that may be
sold or exchanged as promptly as any other property, and the person of
the negro is subject to the absolute control of the master to an extent
necessary to enforce this power, but no further. There is still a large
margin for self-control, for all the self-government that nature
demands, for the gratification of all his wants and the full development
of all his faculties. This is demonstrated beyond doubt, for he rapidly
multiplies, while if he were denied the rights that nature accords him,
his instincts repressed, his wants forbidden gratification, like the
Roman slave, or like the so-called free negro of the North, he would
become languid and diseased, and tend rapidly to extinction. But while
the existing condition is thus healthy, natural, and just, as before
remarked, it is quite likely that, in the future time, it may be widely
changed in its details. This relation—the subordination with the
inseparable protection—can never be changed without destruction to both,
or without social suicide; but the social condition may some day be
modified sufficiently, perhaps, to do away with any defects, if such
exist at present.
In another place the subject of climate and industrial adaptation is
fully considered, and it will suffice to remark in this place that the
tropics are the natural centre of existence of the negro, and some day
not very remote our negro population, with a few exceptions, perhaps,
will be found within the intertropical region. And when that day comes,
it is quite likely that some modification will be worked out which,
while the essential principles of the existing condition are preserved,
chattelism, or that seeming personal property in the negro now so
extensively associated in the popular mind at the North as wrong, may
disappear altogether. We are only just emerging, as it were, into a
boundless field for progress, for inquiry, for experiment, for social
development, for working out the great problem of humanity. All Europe
is in utter ignorance and blindness; and if the whole political and
social order is not in conflict with the natural order, the latter, is,
at all events, repressed, and forbidden a development. We, ourselves,
have reached a comparatively far advanced position—the grand position
and declaration of the men of 1776, that all men (of course of our own
race) are created equal, and designed by the Almighty for the same
liberty, etc.; and we have based our political order on this fundamental
and everlasting truth; but while in theory we have thus recognized the
relations that nature has decreed between individuals, in practice we
have made but little advance over the people of Europe.
Our cities and towns are filled to overflowing with poverty, ignorance,
vice, and misery, and though much of this is the direct result of the
wrongs and oppressions of the Old World, and all of it legitimate
consequences of the European practice which yet prevails among us,
especially in the States most connected by commerce, literature, and
opinion with the Old World, our social progress is small, indeed,
compared with our political enlightenment. But the masses are, however
slow the progress, becoming more and more intelligent, and consequently
more virtuous and happy, for, however frequent the exceptions among
individuals, morality among the masses always keeps pace with their
intelligence. And though the social condition at the South is less,
infinitely less defective than at the North, and social progress in the
future has a comparatively circumscribed field of action, there are many
things, doubtless, which, in the future time, will be widely altered
from the present. God has organized and fixed the nature and relations
of His creatures, so that there is no conflict of duties, and that which
best secures the happiness of ourselves, also accomplishes the happiness
of others, whether they be our equals or our inferiors, men of our own
race or negroes. Thus, when the dominant race—the citizenship of the
South—comprehend most clearly and truly what their own welfare demands,
then, too, and of necessity, will the best interests of the negro be
secured. The perverse fanatics at the North, who, unmindful of, and
indeed dead to the woes of their suffering brethren, imagine the most
terrible miseries among negroes at the South, can not continue much
longer in their unnatural delusions, and when the pressure of their
attempted interference is withdrawn, earnest and conscientious citizens
will doubtless inquire into those possible social defects that may exist
among them, and strive to apply the appropriate corrections. What these
defects may consist in, the writer does not assume to decide or to
understand, but after a long-continued and patient investigation of the
social condition of the South, he thinks he can not be mistaken when he
declares that they are wholly or mainly confined to the citizenship, and
he is wholly and absolutely incapable of comprehending any wrong
whatever in the fundamental social relations of the races or so-called
slavery of the South.
CHAPTER XVII.
EDUCATION OF NEGROES.
The _fact_ that the negro is a negro, carries with it the inference or
the necessity that his education—the cultivation of his faculties, or
the development of his intelligence—must be in harmony with itself, and
therefore must be an entirely different thing from the education of the
Caucasian. The term education, in regard to our own race, has widely
different significations. It may be the mere development of the mind, or
it may mean, with the cultivation of the intellect, the formation of the
character, as Pope says:
“’Tis education forms the common mind;
Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”
But without restricting the term to the former limit—the development of
the intelligence—it will be found that the education of the negro at the
South is in entire harmony with his wants, the character of his mind,
the necessities of his mental organism; and that they are the best
educated negro population ever known in human experience.
Common sense and experience teach us to educate all creatures committed
to our charge in accordance with their wants. No one would presume to
teach a horse as he would a dog, or any other animal. We have our
schools for girls as well as for boys, and the education varies
continually as the child changes into youth, adolescence, and finally
into manhood. The nature and condition of the pupil are the great
central facts—whether a horse or a dog, a boy or a girl, a youth or a
man, a negro or a Caucasian; the education must, if natural and proper,
always hinge on this central fact. The negro brain and mental character,
as has been shown, differs from our own both in degree and in quality,
in the extent of its powers, and the form or modes of mental action. As
still more strikingly manifest among animals, the negro child has more
intelligence than the white of the same age. This is in harmony with the
great fundamental law which renders the most perfectly organized beings
most dependent on reason—in the parents, if not that of the offspring.
The calf or pig of a month has more intelligence than the child of that
age; the negro child has more than that of the Caucasian, but the
character of this intelligence, of course, varies in each and every
case. In the lower animals it is instinct; in the case of the negro
child it is more than instinct, but it is also radically different from
that nascent rationality peculiar to the white child. Nevertheless, it
is intelligence, and, as observed, more active in the negro child than
in that of the white of the same age—an intelligence which enables it to
preserve life where the former would, perhaps, perish, and thus to
preserve the race amid the exigencies of savagism and the absence of
care and forethought in the parents. It is this smartness of the negro
child that has often deceived and deluded those perverse and deluded
people of our own race, who get up negro schools. They see, or rather
think they see, in this smartness the proof of their theories in regard
to negroes, and parade their pets to admiring visitors with the utmost
confidence in the justice and humanity of their exertions in behalf of
an “oppressed and down-trodden race.” But a few years more of these
negro pupils would be sufficient (if any thing could be) to open the
eyes of these perverted people, who, shutting their eyes and closing
their ears to the ignorance and miseries of their own race, waste their
money and time on a different one; indeed worse than waste, for they
inflict much evil on the mistaken objects of their labors, evils though
perhaps not traceable, that must necessarily attend every one of these
negro pupils thus forced into a development opposed to the laws of their
organism, and in contradiction to the negro nature.
The cultivation and development of the mental faculties, the mode or
modes of education, are instinctive with our race, though constantly
improved and perfected by reason resting on experience. The Greeks,
Egyptians, and other ancient nations practiced substantially the system
now common to modern times—that is, they taught their children by
abstract lessons as well as oral instruction. They studied arithmetic,
or the science of numbers, grammar, history, etc., under the direction
of parents or guardians, as well as listened to lectures on rhetoric and
philosophy in the “groves of the academy.” History and biography were
the legends and traditions of gods and goddesses, it is true, but modern
history is mainly that of kings and queens, and as the former were once
human, the only substantial difference consists in the greater accuracy
of the latter.
The Mongol mind has its specific tendencies in this respect; that is,
children are taught, not by abstract lessons, but by material emblems
which represent _their_ ideas. They have no history, in our sense of the
term. It is utterly impossible that the Mongol mind can trace back
events beyond a certain number of generations, and the crude and
contradictory mass of nonsense which passes for Chinese history or the
“Annals of China,” is the work of Caucasian Tartars or those of
predominating Caucasian innervation.
The negro has never taken one step towards mental development, as we
understand it. He has never invented an alphabet—that primal
starting-point in mental cultivation—he has never comprehended even the
simplest numerals—in short, has had no instruction and can give no
instruction except that which is verbal and imitated, which the child
copies from the parents, which is limited to the existing generation,
and therefore the present generation are in the same condition that
their progenitors occupied thousands of years ago. But the Almighty has
adapted him to a very different condition from this fixed and
non-progressive savagism. All the subordinate races have a certain
capacity for imitating the higher habitudes of the Caucasian, unless it
be the Mongol, which, perhaps, does not possess this faculty. The
English have been masters in Hindostan for more than a century—their
power rests on the same tenure of force on which it was founded—they
have made no impression whatever on the habitudes of the
Hindostanee—their language, their schools, their religion, their mental
habits, are untouched, and it may be doubted if God ever designed that
they should be in juxtaposition or made subject to a superior race.
In regard to the negro, there can be no doubt, not merely because, by
himself, he is a non-producing and non-advancing savage, but because his
entire structure, mental and physical, is adapted to juxtaposition. All
the other races have a certain specific character to overcome first, or
to be understood and properly harmonized, but the negro is a blank, a
wilderness, a barren waste, waiting for the husbandman or the Caucasian
teacher to develop his real worth, and gifted with his wonderful
imitative powers, he not only never resists, but reaching forth his
hands for guidance and protection, at once accepts his teacher, and
submits himself to his control. Of the four millions now in our midst, a
considerable proportion are the children of native Africans, indeed,
there are not a few natives still among us, and yet everything connected
with Africa—their traditions, language, religion, even their names have
wholly disappeared. The Normans conquered the Saxons eight centuries
ago, but the Saxon names, and even their language, are now as entirely
Saxon as if a Norman had never landed on the shores of England. This
blank, this feeble mental capacity and readiness of the negro nature to
imitate the habits, bodily or mental, of the superior race, adapts the
negro to his subordinate social position, and the purposes to which
Providence has assigned him. The child-like intellect does not resist
the strong and enduring mental energies of the Caucasian—its first
impressions pass away in a few years, while its imitative capacities sit
so gracefully on the negro nature that multitudes of ignorant people
confound the real with the borrowed, and actually suppose that the
“smart” negroes to be met with occasionally at the North are examples of
native capacity. Of course, the borrowed intelligence is equally
short-lived, and were our negroes carried back to Africa, they would
lose what they had acquired here with the same rapidity that they have
parted with their original Africanism, and names among them now
celebrated would be as utterly lost a hundred years hence as their
African names have disappeared here. These things being so, it obviously
follows that negro “education” must be oral and verbal, or, in other
words, that the negro should be placed in the best position possible for
the development of his imitative powers—to call into action that
peculiar capacity for copying the habits, mental and moral, of the
superior Caucasian. It may be said that all mental instruction is
through the imitative capacity, or that our own children are thus
educated, but the negro mind, in essential respects, is always that of a
child. The intelligence, as observed, is more rapidly developed in the
negro child—those faculties more immediately connected with sensation,
perception, and perhaps memory, are more energetic, but when they reach
twelve and fifteen they diverge, the reflective faculties in the white
are now called into action, the real Caucasian character now opens, the
mental forces are fairly evolved, while the negro remains stationary—a
perpetual child. The negro of forty or fifty has more experience or
knowledge, perhaps, as the white man of that age has a more extended
knowledge than the man of twenty-five, but the intellectual calibre—the
actual mental capacity in the former case is no greater than it was at
fifteen, when its utmost limits were reached—its entire power in full
development.
The universal experience which, in this as many other instances, usually
rests upon truth, leads the people of the South to designate the negro
of any age as a “boy”—an expression perfectly correct, in an
intellectual sense, as the negro reaches his mental maturity at twelve
or fifteen, and viewed from our stand-point, is, therefore, always a
boy. Indeed, this psychological fact, together with his imitative
instinct, constitutes the specific character of the race, and present
the landmarks necessary for our guidance when dealing with the mental
and moral wants of the negro. Intellectually considered, he is always a
boy—a perpetual child—needing the care and guidance of his master, and
his instinctive tendencies to imitate him, therefore, demand that, as in
the case of children, the master should present him a proper example.
His mental wants, it is believed, are provided for, and his capabilities
in these respects fully developed at the South. They are in pretty
extensive intercourse with the white people; even on the large
plantations they have the master’s family or that of the overseer to
copy after and to guide them, and though it may be that something more
is needed, that a better mental training is possible in the future, it
is, at all events, certain that this verbal instruction is better
adapted to their wants than the schools and colleges of a different and
vastly superior race. If any one should propose to teach children of
five the branches proper to those of ten and twelve years of age, or the
latter those that occupy young men in the universities, it would be seen
at a glance that this teaching was unnatural and improper. And our
every-day experience will show that it is injurious, not alone to the
mental, but to the bodily health of the pupil. The same or similar
results must attend the school education of negroes. It is, perhaps,
difficult to trace the consequences of negro education at the North.
There are but few negroes, and the mulattoes and mongrels who pass for
such must pay a penalty for this education according, doubtless, to
their proportion of negro blood.
The mongrels, and possibly some negroes at the North, often seem as well
educated as white men, but it must be at the expense of the body,
shortening the existence, just as we sometimes witness in the case of
children when the pride, vanity, or ignorance of parents have stimulated
their minds, and dwarfed or destroyed their bodies. An “educated” negro,
like a “free negro,” is a social monstrosity, even more unnatural and
repulsive than the latter.
It is creditable to the people of the South that no such outrage on
nature and common sense is found in all her borders. God has made the
negro an inferior being, not in most cases, but all cases, for there are
no accidents or exceptions in His works. There never could be such a
thing as a negro equaling the standard Caucasian in natural ability. The
same Almighty Creator has also made all white men equal—for idiots,
insane people, etc., are not exceptions, they are results of human
vices, crimes, or ignorance, immediate or remote. What a false and
vicious state of society, therefore, when human institutions violate
this eternal order, and by withholding education from their own
brethren, educate the inferior negro, and in a sense make him superior
to white men, by setting aside the law of God!
Some of the States have passed laws against teaching negroes to read; a
more extended and enlightened knowledge of the negro will, doubtless,
some day govern this matter through public opinion, and without
governmental interference. The negro learns from his master all he needs
to know, all that he can know, in a proper sense, all that is essential
to the performance of his duties, or necessary to his happiness and the
fulfilment of the purposes to which nature has adapted him; and though
there might, perhaps, be no good reason given why he should be
prohibited from learning to read, it is sufficient to say that it is
absurd, as well as a waste of time that should be carefully employed.
His mental powers are unable to grapple with science or philosophy, or
abstractions of any kind, and it would be folly to suppose that he would
be or could be interested in history or biography, in which his race,
his instincts, his wants have no share, record, or connection whatever.
All this applies, of course, to the South—to negroes in their normal
condition and natural relation to the superior race. It may be well
enough at the North, as long as they have mongrels and free negroes, to
provide schools for them, as they have no other guide or protector but
the State itself, but though they thus acquire a certain kind of mental
activity, as observed, it is at the expense of the vital forces, and
another of those incidental causes that tend to the final extinction of
this abnormal element. It is, however, a disgrace, and, to a certain
extent, a crime in any State to educate negroes or mongrels, so long as
they have one single uneducated white man within their limits. The proof
of this is seen every day in the _fact_ that however educated, or
whatever the seeming mental superiority of the “colored” man, the
uneducated white man tolerates no equality. Thus nature vindicates her
rights, and whatever the ignorance, delusion, or crimes of society, the
eternal order fixed by the hand of God is inevitable and everlasting.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS.
The instinct of paternity—the love and care of offspring—is common to
all creatures, animal and human, and is indeed necessary to the
preservation of their existence. The animal frequently exhibits it more
decidedly than the human creature, and however unseemly it may be, we,
even our own supremely endowed race, may take a lesson from it. The
animal instinct, however, is limited to the mere preservation of the
life of its offspring, and the latter, when a certain development is
reached, no longer needs it, for its own instinct then guides it to
preserve itself.
The love, and care, and guidance of the Caucasian mother for her child
is both a profound instinct and a lofty sentiment, and indeed calls into
action the highest capabilities of her nature, her profoundest
intelligence as well as the most exalted and self-sacrificing affection.
It begins with the birth and ends only with the death, for though it is
constantly modified by time and changes in the development of her
offspring, it accompanies the latter through life, and disappears only
at the portals of the grave.
God has endowed the parents with the highest intelligence, and laid on
them the command or the duty of caring for their offspring—not the mere
bodily preservation, as in the case of the animal, but the education,
the guidance and development of the faculties, the moral capabilities as
well as the intellectual powers of their children. He, therefore, has
endowed them with affections of corresponding breadth and strength, and
adapted them to these duties, and, moreover, rewards them with
corresponding enjoyment or happiness in the affections and love of their
offspring. These duties are too often imperfectly performed, indeed
often misunderstood. They are sometimes delegated to others, sometimes
carelessly fulfilled, and often disregarded altogether. They should
never be delegated to others unless the loss of health or some
imperative cause exists. The mother should always nurse her own child—if
able to do so—and the parents should always educate their own children.
In the main, this is done in our American society, for though children
go to the public schools, the impress of the character is generally made
at home. The child arriving at adult age, and no longer needing the care
and guidance of the parents, marries and leaves home, but the affection
of the parents, especially that of the mother, accompanies it through
life, and not unfrequently, after a separation of forty years, it is
found to be as strong and fresh as in the days of childhood. The large
brain of the Caucasian mother, or her large intellectual nature, as has
been said, is associated with corresponding capabilities of affection.
The interests of life, the social welfare, the progress of
civilization—in short, absolute social necessities, demand this, for
were it otherwise, were the affections limited to the infancy of the
offspring, society, as it now exists, or indeed anything at all
resembling it, would obviously be impossible.
The interest of parents in their children, years after they have left
home—their grandchildren, etc., though separated thousands of
miles—their letters to them, their visits to the old homestead, and the
ten thousand other nameless things that bind together those of the same
blood, constitute a large portion of our social existence, and is indeed
an essential part of our civilization. And _all_ of this is dependent on
the affections and in harmony with the elevated intellectualism of the
race, the breadth and strength of the former corresponding, of course,
with the mental endowments and specific capabilities of the Caucasian.
The negro, of course, is endowed with affections, approximating in some
respects, indeed in many respects, to those of our own race, but there
are some things, some qualities in his emotional nature utterly
different, and then again some things specific with us totally absent in
the negro. The mother has a similar love for her offspring at an early
period in its existence, possibly stronger, or rather more imperatively
instinctive, than that of the white woman. Instances are not unfrequent
among the lower classes in England, and other European countries, where
mothers destroy their offspring, and painful as it is to acknowledge it,
the same thing sometimes happens at the North; but though an instance of
the kind is possible, there have been so few among negroes at the South
as to warrant us in saying that not one person in a thousand has ever
heard of such a thing. It is true, the negro is in a normal condition,
and the European peasant is, to a certain extent, in an abnormal one,
and vice and crime, and consequent misery, are always in exact
proportion to the extent of the latter in all races. Nevertheless, it is
quite certain that, both living under equally favorable circumstances,
the negress is less likely to destroy the life of her offspring than is
the white woman. Her maternal instincts are more imperative, more
closely approximate to the animal, while that sense of degradation which
the higher nature and more elevated sensibilities of the white woman
prompts to the hiding of her shame by the destruction of her offspring,
is entirely absent in the negress. She may possibly destroy her child in
a paroxysm of rage, but here nature has guarded her too strongly by the
imperative maternal instinct, while those ten thousand chances in our
higher habitudes and social complications which may involve the most
exquisite suffering of the unhappy mother, and impel her, by one
terrible and supreme crime, to destroy her own offspring, can never
happen or influence the negro mother.
A few years since a “slave” woman escaping from Kentucky to Ohio was
recognized and taken back to her home, but on the way down the river cut
the throat of her child, whom she had carried off in her flight. The
Abolitionists, of course, admired and praised this bloody deed, and
declared that, rather than her child should live a slave, she, with
Roman sternness and French exaltation, herself destroyed its life. If
they had said that the mother had killed her child because it was not
permitted to have a white skin, or straight hair, or to have any other
_specialty_ of white people, it would have been quite as rational and as
near the truth as to say that she killed it because it was not to grow
up with the freedom of the white man. The woman was doubtless a mulatto
or mongrel, who in revenge possibly for the supposed wrong, inflicted
this punishment on those whom she had been taught to believe had wronged
her. But while this unnatural crime was quite possible, as indeed any
unnatural vice or crime is always possible to the mixed element, it is
scarcely possible to the negress, whose imperative maternal instinct, as
has been observed, shields her from such atrocity. The negro mother has
always control and direction of her offspring at the South so long as
that is needed by the latter. The master, of course, is the supreme
ruler—the guide, director, the common father, the very providence of
these simple and subordinate people, but while his is the directing
power that sees to all their wants, and protects them in all their
rights, the relations of mother and child are rarely interfered with,
for both the interests of the master and the happiness of the mother
demand that she should have the care and enjoy the affection of her own
offspring. This, however, is confined to a limited sphere when
contrasted with the instinctive habitudes and enlarged intellectualism
of our own race. The negro child, in some respects, at the same age, is
more intelligent than the white child. This same fact is manifested by
our domestic animals. The dog or calf of six months is vastly less
dependent on the mother than the human creature. The negro child, with
its vastly greater approximation to the animal, is also less dependent
at a certain age than the white child. As frequently stated in this
work, the negro has absolutely nothing in common with animals that our
own race has not.
There is an impassable chasm, wide as it is deep and everlasting,
between the human and animal creation. But while the negro has nothing
whatever in common with animals that we ourselves have not, in all those
things or qualities in a sense common to both men and animals, the negro
has a vastly larger approximation to the latter. As the intelligence or
the capacity of providing for itself, therefore, is more rapidly
developed in the animal, so, too, in the case of the negro child, at a
certain age it is less dependent on the care and affection of the mother
than is that of white people. Those ignorant and perverse persons who
stifle the impulses and sympathies with which God has endowed them for
their kind, and engage in teaching, as they suppose, negro children,
have been so impressed by this fact, that in their utter ignorance of
the negro nature, they have inferred that the latter was really the
superior race; they have often found a negro boy or girl of ten years,
for example, whose perceptions, memory, etc., seemed to them, and,
doubtless, sometimes were, more clear, prompt, and decided, than those
of white children of the same age, and therefore they were quite
convinced of the superiority of the negro and of the sublimity and
immensity of their own labors in thus helping on the intellectual
development of a wronged and down-trodden but really superior race.
But if they could have followed out the future of these children for a
few years, and were persons of sufficient understanding to analyze facts
at all, they would have made a still more startling discovery than that
of the fancied superiority of the negro. The negro mind reaches its
maturity, its complete development, at from twelve to fifteen years, and
though there may be vastly more knowledge or experience, the negro of
fifty has no more actual mental capacity than he had at fifteen. The
faculties directly dependent on the senses are actively and rapidly
developed in the negro child, but the reflective faculties, the
faculties in regard to which the senses are mere avenues through which
external influences are conveyed to the brain, are absent, of course, in
the negro, for there is an absence of brain itself, and therefore it is
just as absurd to imagine him possessing them as to suppose the sense of
sight in any creature without eyes or without an organism for that
faculty. The white boy, on the contrary, only begins at this age to
manifest the reflective faculties, which, constantly expanding,
doubtless reach their maturity from twenty to twenty-five. Of course the
mind may continue to expand in a sense for many years, for a life-time,
but the actual mental capabilities, like those of the body, doubtless
reach their normal standard from twenty to twenty-five. Thus, a white
boy and negro of ten, with the faculties directly dependent on the
senses possibly most active in the latter, begin a year or two later to
diverge from each other. The negro at fifteen, with scarcely perceptible
reflective faculties, remains stationary, while the Caucasian, with
constantly increasing powers, with imagination, comparison, and
reflection, superadded to the mere perceptive faculties, requires
several years more for the development of his complete intellectual
nature. It is not merely that the negro mind becomes stationary at
twelve to fifteen, for to _them_ it is complete development, but if we
can suppose a white boy of twelve to fourteen remaining thus—mentally
considered—through life, then we can form a pretty accurate conception
of the mental differences between white men and negroes, for the latter
are intellectually boys for ever. This is a common and familiar
expression at the South, which originates in the nature and necessities
of things, and the term boy expresses the intellectual existence of the
negro as truthfully as the term _man_ expresses the physical condition
of the white man.
The affections harmonize, of course, with the mental nature, and the
love of the negro mother corresponds with the wants of the offspring.
She has a boundless affection for her infant; it grows feebler as the
capacities of the child are developed; at twelve to fifteen she is
relatively indifferent to it; at forty she scarcely recognizes it; and
all of these phases in the maternal instinct or domestic affections of
the race are in accord with its specific nature and the purposes
assigned it by the Almighty Creator. Without the enlarged brain and
reasoning power of the white mother, nature has made amends to the
negress, and provided for the wants of her offspring by giving her a
more imperative maternal instinct, that shall insure its safety and
welfare. When the negro reaches maturity, at twelve to fifteen, nature
has accomplished her purposes. The offspring no longer needs her care,
and the mother becomes indifferent to it, and it cares little for the
mother. A few years later, and she forgets it altogether, for her
affections corresponding with her intellectual nature, there is no
basis, or material, or space for such things. Of course, living in
juxtaposition with the superior race, and the imitative faculty of the
negro constantly brought into action, there is a seeming resemblance to
white people in these respects. But one only needs to remember the
mental qualities of the negro—the small and widely different brain, and
consequently feeble, and, as compared with us, limited sphere of
intellectualism, to see the absurdity of endowing the negro with
domestic affections corresponding with ours. At twelve to fifteen, as
has been said, the purposes of nature are accomplished. The offspring no
longer needs the care of the mother—the affections with which nature
endowed her are no longer needed. Why should they exist, then? Isolated
in Africa, they perhaps rarely feel any interest in their offspring
after the latter reach maturity, and, separated a few years, would not
know them, would have no recollection of them, for there is no
civilization, no social development, nothing whatever of that which we
call society, and in which with us the domestic affections—the family
relationship—the love of mother, wife, sisters, brothers, and offspring
constitute so large and essential a part. The limited intelligence of
the negro, the small brain and feeble (scarcely perceptible) reasoning
faculties, it will be evident to the reader, must be accompanied by
corresponding domestic affections and an emotional nature that accords
with this limited intellectualism. And this is manifested in the habits,
wants, and condition of the negro at the South, in his feeble and
capricious love for his wife and indifference to his offspring, redeemed
only in the potent and instinctive affection of the mother in its
earlier years for her child. The strongest affection the negro nature is
capable of feeling is love of his master, his guide, protector, friend,
and indeed Providence, who takes care of him in sickness and shelters
and provides for him in old age and helplessness. God has adapted all
His creatures for the wisest and most beneficent purposes, has endowed
the negro with affections harmonizing with his wants, has given the
negro mother imperative maternal instincts that shall secure the safety
and welfare of her offspring, but little more, for little more is
needed; for society or civilization neither does nor can belong to negro
existence, while affection for his master, love and devotion to him who
protects and provides for him through life, is both a necessity and an
enjoyment, and therefore God has made it the strongest and most enduring
feeling of the negro nature. Of the four or five millions in our midst,
great numbers are the children or grandchildren of African parents, a
few even are of African birth, but probably not one has any distinct
memory, recollection, or tradition of their forefathers[3]—not one that
cherishes any past family sentiment or affection of any kind whatever,
indeed not one that even preserves an African name! We trace back not
alone the general but the family histories, the loves and affections,
the hopes and fears, and sacrifices and sufferings of our pilgrim
forefathers of two or three centuries ago, because all this accords with
the large brain and expanded intellectualism, and the corresponding
strength and breadth of the affections, which may be said to be the
motive forces which impel the whole social phenomena in question. But
the negro neither has nor can have any thing in common with this. He has
no capacities of the kind, no civilization or social development, and
therefore no wants of the kind, no affections even resembling our own,
though at the same time God has endowed him with all that is necessary
to his happiness and to the mutual welfare of both races when in
juxtaposition.
Footnote 3:
These facts, and some others mentioned in this chapter, were referred
to in a previous one, but they need to be repeated in this connection
to fix them fully on the mind of the reader, as well as to explain the
subject here under discussion.
The affection of the mother for her child, and the husband for the wife,
though widely different from that which we witness in our own race, is
abundantly sufficient for the purposes that nature has in view, and with
the accomplishment of these purposes they subside. The affection for the
master, which is necessary to their welfare through life, remains—the
sole enduring affection of the negro nature, as it is obviously the sole
permanent want of the negro existence. The laws and legislation of the
Southern States generally accord with these facts of the negro nature,
for though those who have made these laws were unable to explain them
even to themselves, their every-day experience and practical knowledge
of the negro enable them to legislate for the wants and welfare of these
people as well and justly as for themselves. Probably all, or nearly all
of the States forbid the separation of the mother and child, so long as
the maternal instinct remains, or her care of her offspring is needed by
the latter; and even if there be no law of this kind on the statute-book
of some States, it is in the hearts and instincts of the dominant race,
and is equally potent in the form of public sentiment to prevent such an
outrage on nature as the forced separation of mother and child.
There are, doubtless, instances where wrong is done at the South, as
well as elsewhere, to the subordinate negro as well as to our own kind,
but with the same political and social system as that of the North, and
with vastly more political intelligence and faithfulness to the
principles of that system, it is only reasonable to conclude that, in
regard to the negro element, the same enlightened spirit of justice and
fair dealing generally pervades Southern society. And when it is
remembered that the social adaptation is in harmony with the natural
relations of the races, and not only that there is no social conflict,
but, on the contrary, that it is the utmost interest of the master to
treat his negroes kindly, then whatever the temporary exceptions, the
general result must be in favor of the happiness and welfare of these
people.
CHAPTER XIX.
MARRIAGE.
Nothing, perhaps, is so repugnant to the northern mind as the notion
that marriage does not exist among the “slaves” of the South, and the
Abolition lecturers have given this subject the most prominent place in
their terrible bill of indictment against their southern brethren. The
spectacle, or the seeming spectacle, of four millions of human beings
living without marriage, without family, without children, with nothing
but offspring, shut out, like the brutes that perish, from all the
household charities, and doomed to live in universal concubinage, as it
has been termed, was, to the northern and European mind, such a
stupendous outrage on “humanity,” that we need not wonder at their
fierce indignation, or at the wild and unsparing denunciation heaped
upon the authors of such boundless and unparalleled iniquity. Especially
were northern women shocked and indignant, and above all others, the
women of New England were excited at times to a “Divine fury” when
contemplating this mighty “wickedness.” Our fair countrywomen are
believed to be equally virtuous and lovely, but the _domestic_ education
of those of New England, in some respects, is more admirable than that
of others or any other country. They are taught to labor, to be their
own housekeepers, to regard life, and the duties of life, as a solemn
mission to be faithfully and conscientiously fulfilled, and though it
imparts a certain materialism bordering on hardness, perhaps, to the New
England woman, it is associated with such simple and transparent love of
truth, and such an earnest and abiding sense of duty, that the harsher
features of the character are lost in these gentler and more exalted
qualities. Hence they are taught to regard a violation of the family
relation as the one most heinous and unpardonable sin. To women thus
educated, with the utmost abhorrence of any violation of marital
obligations, the seeming universal disregard of this relation, and the
duties embraced in it, among the “slaves” of the South, was probably the
most transcendent wrong that the mind could conceive of, and the
“anti-slavery” delusion of the North has doubtless been increased to a
considerable extent by this strictness or severity of female education.
And if the facts were what they suppose, then indeed would their
indignation and abhorrence be just enough, but strange that they should
never have doubted or mistrusted these facts. Many of the most
intelligent have known their sisters of the South, known them to be as
virtuous, refined and womanly as themselves, and yet living every day of
their lives in the shadow of this mighty wrong, and in the midst of this
supposititious iniquity. Could that be possible? Could woman retain her
purity, her womanly delicacy, or expand into the full stature of a true
womanhood with such surroundings, in an atmosphere thus corrupt and
corrupting, in a social condition where four millions of people were
living without marriage, in open and utter disregard of the fundamental
principle of morality as well as of social order? No, indeed, it could
not be possible, and, as remarked, it is strange that the women of the
North have not had misgivings of this kind, or have not mistrusted the
assumed _facts_ of “negro slavery” in this respect. But before the
actual facts involved are presented to the reader, it is necessary to
clearly understand what marriage itself is. It may be defined as the
pledge of two persons of different sex to live together for life—pledged
to each other and to society, for the presence of witnesses to a
marriage contract or a marriage ceremony has simply this meaning, and
none other. With us marriage is a mere civil or legal contract. It is
the same in France, and, to a certain extent, in England, but in other
countries it is combined with religious considerations, and the Catholic
church makes it a sacrament. This is marriage, as ordinarily understood,
as the necessities of the social order compel us to accept and regard
it. Nevertheless, every one’s instincts will assure him that marriage
consists in reality of vastly more than this description of it. A man
and woman may pledge themselves to each other and to society—all the
legal and customary forms may be complete, and yet we know, or may know
that there is no true marriage, for these parties may be entirely
indifferent, or even objects of actual dislike to each other. The
obligations or duty to society may be fulfilled, the interests of
families provided for, the legal rights of the parties themselves
properly protected, even the welfare of offspring appropriately guarded,
nevertheless, if the parties are not united by affection, by those
mysterious affinities with which God Himself has endowed them, and for
this precise purpose, then there is no true marriage, and, abstractly
considered, they are as entirely separate as if they stood on different
sides of the Atlantic instead of at the altar where the ceremony is
being performed. It is clear, therefore, that marriage, truly
considered, involves vastly more than the mere external ceremony or
legal formularies, which the universal interest demands, however, as an
essential accompaniment. “Increase and multiply” is an ordinance of
nature as well as the command of holy writ. All the innumerable tribes
of inferior beings obey this command with a regularity, order and
completeness that admit of no exception or interruption. They are all
governed by instinct, by a wise necessity which impels them to fulfill
this Divine decree and in modes adapted to their specific nature. Birds
choose their mates, are faithful to them, share together, in some
instances, the care and nurture of the common offspring, and all other
animals of the higher order exhibit a tendency to form these temporary
unions. But in addition to the natural instinct impelling us, in common
with all other creatures, to fulfill the universal command to “multiply
and replenish the earth,” the Almighty Creator has given us reason and
endowed us with capacities of affection which are designed to guide us
in these respects. A youth and maiden are thrown into each other’s
society, an acquaintance, an intimacy, a mutual affection and reciprocal
love follow. They feel themselves united, not merely harmonized, but
morally consolidated, as it were, into a single being, and they mutually
pledge each other to be thus as long as they both shall live. They are
united, not by their pledges to each other, their mutual declarations of
affection, but by those beautiful and mysterious affinities that God has
planted in the soul itself, and the pledges and promises are the mere
outward expression of their actual existence.
It is thus sometimes said that marriages are made in Heaven, for there
is an eternal fitness, a complete unity or oneness in these impalpable
agencies which, whatever may be the seeming incongruities of character
in some instances, thus link together for ever these human souls as well
as persons. Alas! that it should so often be mistaken—that pride and
vanity, or a groveling and sinful lust, should be imposed on the simple
and loving heart of woman as the counterpart of her own glowing and
beautiful affection; and the man guilty of this frightful sin, this
“gallantry,” as the corrupt and rotten society of Europe designates the
desecration of a woman’s soul, commits a crime infinitely more atrocious
than murder or the mere destruction of the body of his victim.
Unfortunately, too, accident, imperfect education, circumstances, a
thousand things may and do lead both parties to mistake each other or
themselves, and to rush into marriage only to discover a few months
later, that they were deluded and deceived, and instead of that perfect
unity of feeling, of affection, of soul, which they had believed in,
there were contradictions and repugnances that no gentleness of temper
or strength of reason or length of time could ever change, and therefore
in sullen despair they settle down into hopeless apathy, or still worse,
shock and scandalize society by a reckless violation of its laws as well
as of the personal vows so sacredly pledged at the altar. But when the
instincts of natural affection have been guided by reason and a true
perception of the wants and nature of each other, and that perfect unity
of feeling and of purpose exists which flows from this reciprocal
adaptation of the parties, then there is marriage in its true sense, for
then two relatively imperfect beings are united into one complete whole.
And if we could suppose this husband and wife living for themselves
alone, and isolated from all association with others, then nothing more
would be needed. They were united by affection, by adaptation, by true
perceptions of each other’s wants, by those mysterious affinities which
we call love, in short, by an organic and eternal fitness, and their
mutual pledges would be abundantly sufficient for themselves. But we are
not permitted to suppose such a thing as isolation or separation from
others, or from society. Our existence is necessarily complex, and our
duties relative as well as personal, and therefore, marriage must be
witnessed, and pledges given to society as well as made to each other,
for the due fulfilment of the duties involved. A modern doctrine, if it
may be called thus, has been set up that people who have mistaken their
“affinities,” and only discovered their true ones after marriage, have a
right to correct their mistakes and form a new marital union which they
may suppose essential to their happiness. But they would disregard
utterly their relations to others, their duties to society, their
reciprocal obligations to their fellows, and trample on the fundamental
principle of social order, indeed, society would itself be rendered
utterly impossible could such individual caprice and selfishness prevail
to any considerable extent. All their so-called arguments against the
“institution” of marriage are, therefore, simply absurd, for while their
conception of an essential portion of it may be correct enough as far as
it goes, the assumption that the parties are alone responsible to each
other, and are not called on to give pledges to society in the form of a
civil contract or legal and indissoluble marriage, is founded on a total
misconception or total disregard of their relations to others and of the
duties necessarily involved. But enough on this point. Marriage is a
natural relation that springs spontaneously from the necessities of
human existence, and though a civil contract, it has a deeper and holier
significance than the mere external ceremony or pledge which is thus
given to the world as well as to each other.
Marriage, is of course, a natural relation among negroes as well as
ourselves, and were it true that these four millions of people were
living without it, then the denunciations heaped upon the people of the
South would doubtless be merited. But a moment’s reflection should be
sufficient to convince any one, at all events any American, that with a
different nature, with different faculties, different wants, and
different duties of these people, there must follow a different form or
modification of this relation. The negro is substantially a child or
undeveloped and undevelopable man, with affections, moral wants and
faculties approximating, of course, to our own, but yet so different
that his happiness as well as that of the white man demands a
corresponding development. The affection of the sexes strongly resembles
that of our school-children. It is sudden, capricious, superficial, and
temporary, and sometimes violent, but rarely permanent, or would be
rarely permanent were it not for the example of the whites, whose
habitudes in these respects the imitative instincts of the negro impel
him to copy after. In their native Africa, and without the influence and
example of the superior race, polygamy is universal, the affection of
the husband being a mere caprice in most cases, they sell their wives
and children without compunction, but the mother, with that universal
maternal instinct common to all human creatures, and to animals of the
higher classes, clings tenaciously to her offspring, while perfectly
willing to change husbands or owners, as they really are in fact. Many
of the “rich men” of Africa are only so in the number of their wives and
children, and they trade and traffic in this property as coolly and
regularly as if they were legitimate subjects of commerce. Nevertheless,
the natural law and the natural tendency of this people is to a single
union, and probably a large majority of the native Africans have only
one wife. There is no natural tendency to polygamy in any race, for the
numbers of the sexes being equal, the natural impulse is to a single
union. But their feeble and capricious affections lead to polygamy, and
their incapacity to purchase or support wives is the only limit to the
negro practice in these respects. Under the teachings and restraints of
the superior race at the South, the negroes, male and female, are vastly
elevated in this regard, as well as others above their African
habitudes. They form sexual unions or marry essentially like the whites.
The parties become intimate, an affection springs up, they ask and
receive the consent of their masters, and they are married by a white
clergyman or by a minister of their own people. Thus far, marriage among
“slaves” is, on the surface at least, an exact copy of the marriage of
whites. They ask the consent of their masters, as white persons ask the
consent of their parents or guardians, and they are married with the
same ceremonies either by a minister of their own, or, as very often
occurs, by a white clergyman. But here they diverge. The negro does not
and can not constitute a part or portion of that mighty fabric we term
society. He has no social interests, no property to guard or to devise,
for though he receives and enjoys a larger portion of the proceeds of
his labor than any mere laborer in Europe, every thing legally belongs
to the master. There are no family interests for which to provide, no
reputation or character to protect, no social duties to perform, or
rights to defend in his case; in short, he has no connection whatever
with that vast and complicated machinery which we call society.
Marriage, therefore, from our stand-point—that legal formula and social
pledge so vital to the very existence of social order—is obviously
absurd and impossible in the case of negroes. The natural affinity, the
union of affection, the perfect adaptation so essential to a true
marriage in our race, is substantially imitated and substantially
similar in the case of negroes at the South, but to seek to force the
negro beyond this—to force upon him the social responsibilities that
attach to white people; or, in other words, to make marriage a legal
contract in the case of negroes, would be as absurd as to force him to
vote at an election, or to perform any other high social duties, and
which are evidently impossible. In regard to his own wants, the
well-being of his offspring, every thing connected with the best welfare
and highest happiness that his race is capable of, he now enjoys, and
any attempt to force him to marry as white people marry—that is, to make
marriage a civil or legal contract—is not merely impossible, but it
would be a crime and a monstrous outrage upon the nature God has given
him. The Almighty has endowed the negro with wonderful imitative powers:
of course, it is impossible for him to imitate all our higher
qualities—he can only approximate to them—but when the master has
presented him with a proper example, in this respect as well as in other
respects, as parents and guardians are expected to do in the case of
children, they have fulfilled their duties to these “slaves,” and
generally the negro is restrained and governed by these examples. But
the feeble and capricious affections of the negro give their masters
much annoyance, and perhaps the greatest trouble they experience with
these people is their faithlessness to their marital obligations. The
ignorant “anti-slavery” lecturer at the North has distressing tales to
tell of cruel masters who separate wives and husbands, and break up
families; but while such things have doubtless happened, it is quite
certain that masters have interfered a hundred times to keep them
together to one instance to the contrary, or to sell them apart. Such
things happen occasionally, when estates are to be settled and property
divided; but the instincts of the whites and the happiness of the whites
are more disturbed by them than the negroes themselves. The limited
intellectual power—the feeble moral nature, and superficial and
capricious affections of the negro lead him to regard these separations
of wives and husbands—of parents and children, with indifference, or
rather we should say he has none of our perceptions or our instincts in
respect to these family relations, and therefore when they do happen he
is relatively or comparatively unconscious of suffering. In his native
Africa he sells his wife and children without hesitation, and all the
suffering he now feels is borrowed or imitated from the whites—a feeling
scarcely perceptible in his native state, but in his better and higher
life at the South, it is doubtless exalted into something like a
sentiment of family. Nevertheless, he readily adapts himself to whatever
changes the chances of life may bring him, and where the white husband,
and certainly the white wife, might despair and die, the negro and the
negress, with new partners and another marriage, are quite as happy as
if they had never been separated from their former ones.
But these things are exceptional, and husbands and wives are doubtless
far less frequently forced apart by these accidents of society than are
the wives and husbands of the “lower orders” in England by the pressure
of want and that necessity of self-preservation which so often rends
them asunder. The real trouble, however, as has been said, is in the
negro himself—his feeble and capricious affections—substantially similar
to those of white childhood, and which it requires the constant
supervision and influence of the master to restrain so as to keep them
faithful to each other. The limited mental endowment and the feeble
moral perceptions of the negro render him incapable, in these respects,
of little beyond the fulfilment of the universal command to “increase
and multiply.” White husbands and wives, when one dies in early life,
often remain unmarried, faithful to a memory forever; and still more
frequently, perhaps, the affections that bound them together in their
youth remain bright and untarnished in age and to the borders of the
grave. Such a thing never happened with a negro. Not one of the
countless millions that have lived upon the earth was ever kept from
marrying a second time by a sentiment or a memory. With their limited
moral endowment such a thing is an absolute moral impossibility. They
live with each other to extreme old age, because they imitate the
superior race, and because it has become a habit, perhaps, but the grand
purposes of nature accomplished, there is little or nothing more, or of
those blessed memories of joy and suffering—of early hope and chastened
sorrows, which so bind and blend together the white husband and wife,
and often render them quite as necessary to each other’s happiness as in
the flush and vigor of youth. Affection for his master is, in fact, the
strongest, and it may be said to be the only enduring affection of the
negro nature, for it remains an ever-present feeling long after the
feeble and capricious “family sentiment,” or love of wife and offspring,
is entirely obliterated from his memory. Marriage of “Southern slaves”
thus briefly presented, will be seen to be as real, decent, orderly, and
natural, as the nature of the negro admits of, or relatively speaking,
as the Almighty Creator himself has designed or decreed. _He_ has
endowed the negro with different and vastly subordinate moral wants and
affections, but at the same time given him an imitative capacity that
enables him to copy the higher nature and more exalted habitudes of the
superior race. They therefore marry as white people marry, with the same
forms and the same ceremonies, and such a thing as polygamy, or what the
“Abolitionist” calls concubinage, is utterly unknown among these people.
They are no portion or part of society, have no place in the social
compact, they are unable to fulfil its duties, and therefore have none
of its rights, hence legal marriage is obviously absurd and impossible.
To the ignorant Abolition writer it may seem quite plain that marriage
should be a civil contract with negroes as well as white people, for his
theory that the negro is a _black_ Caucasian, neutralizes all
difficulties in this as in other things. But even they must see that to
force them on the same social level in this vital respect must
necessarily involve social equality in all other respects—a result,
unless their theory be sound, obviously unnatural, monstrous, and
wicked. The negro, isolated in his native Africa, is at this moment
exactly what he was four thousand years ago, selling his wives and
offspring with as utter disregard of marital relations, and
unconsciousness of a family sentiment, as in the time of the Pharaohs;
and when we contrast these things—the universal polygamy, the trade in
wives, the caprice and savagism of the lawless husband or master with
the decent and Christian marriage of “Southern slaves,” imitated from
the superior race, and generally restrained by its example, may we not
say with entire reverence and truth, that marriage, as it now actually
exists among these people at the South, being all that their natures are
capable of, and all that their wants and their highest happiness demand,
is also, and of necessity, all that God Himself has decreed or designed
in respect to this race?
There is no other comparison to make, or contrast to present, but that
of African savagism; for that modern product of a world-wide delusion,
“freedom,” or free negroism, as shown elsewhere, is a social
abnormalism, a diseased condition, that necessarily ends in extinction;
and unless it can be proven that disease is preferable to health, and
death itself a greater good than life, no argument or proof drawn from
it is legitimate or allowable.
CHAPTER XX.
CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION.
The surface of the earth is naturally divided into zones or centres of
existence. These great centres of creation have each their _Fauna_ and
_Flora_, their animal and vegetable life peculiar to themselves alone.
Geographical writers use these terms, and speak of the temperate,
frigid, and torrid zones, etc., as mere designations of certain portions
of the earth where the climate is widely varied; but this is very
subordinate to the real differences that separate the great centres of
organic life. All creatures, indeed all organic and living things, have
their centres of existence, their local habitations, their places in the
mighty programme of creation. They are all adapted to these great
centres of life—their organic structure, their faculties, and the
purposes they were designed to fulfil, all harmonizing with their
localities, the positions the Almighty has assigned to them. There are
approximating forms of life, certain genera among animals and plants,
that may be said to belong to the same family or group, but which are
found in different zones or centres of existence, but there is no such
thing as the same _species_ being found in more than one centre of
creation. All the animals and plants of Europe are, therefore, different
from those of America, as all the creatures that belong to the northern
region of this continent are specifically different from those of the
tropics.
Each and every _specific_ creation is different from every other
specific existence, and differs just as widely in the circumstances that
surround it, and to which it is adapted, as it does in its own organic
structure. If an animal, for example, it has a special structure with
special instincts, qualities, etc., and the external circumstances, the
climate, the vegetation, all things are in perfect harmony. This law may
be said to be universal, for the few seeming exceptions scarcely deserve
notice. There are a few plants and cereals suited to all climates. The
potato, of American origin, is cultivated with equal success in Europe,
while most of our ordinary vegetables are of European origin. Wheat
grows with equal luxuriance in the Valley of the Nile, the table-lands
of Mexico, and the great Northwest. But while all of these things, and
many more, are thus capable of successful cultivation in different
localities from those in which they were originally created, the
external conditions must be preserved—the same or similar soil, and, to
a certain extent, the same climate or the same heat and moisture are
essential in their cultivation. This is also generally true of animals.
Our domestic animals are all suited to different climates. The horse,
dog, ox, sheep, etc., are of European origin—some of them Asiatic—and
they live and multiply with equal certainty under the fervid suns of the
tropics, or amid the icy blasts of the extreme North. They are striking
exceptions, however, to the general law which adapts—all creatures to
their own centres of existence, and, it would seem, were designed by the
Almighty and beneficent Creator for the especial purpose of benefiting
man. They have accompanied him in all his wanderings, especially the dog
and horse, shared his fortunes, aided in fighting his battles, and
however subordinate, played an important _rôle_ in the civilization of
mankind. They are closely associated in this capacity for resisting
external circumstances with man himself, that is, the Caucasian, or
master man, who, as regards mere climate, is capable of living and of
enjoying the healthy development of all his faculties in all climates
alike, unless, perhaps, the polar regions, or extreme North. As a
general law, all creatures, as they ascend in the scale of being, become
less and less subject to external influences; but some of our domestic
animals are certainly exceptions, for the dog and horse, at all events,
are capable of living where the negro, and possibly the Mongol, would
surely become extinct. The same general laws of climate affect the human
races, not exactly similarly, of course, but approximatively as they do
animals, and with a certain modification, as they do plants—that is,
they have all centres of existence to which they are _specifically_
adapted, with the sole exception of the Caucasian, as some of our
domestic animals, and indeed some vegetable existences are exceptions.
The white man, as has been said, can exist everywhere, where life of any
kind is possible, except the extreme North, and even here, as shown by
Kane and other explorers in those bleak and barren regions, by proper
precautions, or by complying with certain conditions, life is possible
for certain periods. He is, doubtless, designed for the temperate
latitudes, industrially considered, but, as regards climate, he is at
home everywhere. Writers, ignorant of the laws of climate, and indeed
ignorant of the specific character of races, have supposed that they
become weak, effete, and imbecile in tropical latitudes, and this notion
is, perhaps, very generally entertained by otherwise intelligent people.
The population found in these regions are negro, Indian, or Malay,
intermixed often with white blood, and these inferior people are
supposed to be a result of climate, and to exhibit the natural
consequences of a warm and enervating atmosphere! The white man under
the equator, living, or rather attempting to live, the life of the
negro—to labor under the rays of a vertical sun—would rapidly decline
and die, for his organic structure could not resist the external
influences that tend to destroy him. The _malaria_ springing from the
decomposition of the rank vegetation, which ascends in the early portion
and descends to the earth in the later portion of the day, would soon
poison all the springs of life, and fever would close the scene. Any
attempt at labor in midday would be still more rapidly fatal, for the
caloric generated by the exertion, without an excretory system to
relieve it, would end in fatal congestions of the vital organs,
especially the brain. We constantly witness an approximation to this in
our Western States and Territories, where nearly a generation
voluntarily sacrifice themselves in the effort of preparing comfortable
homes for their offspring. But after a certain progress is made, the
causes of disease subside, and the temperate climate enables them to
labor at all times.
But while the white man is forever forbidden by the laws of his physical
nature to labor, or by his own hands to grow the natural products of the
tropics, he can live there, and enjoy all his faculties of mind and body
with the same certainty and success that belong to the temperate
latitudes. It may be that the temptations to indulgence, to
voluptuousness, or to the gratification of the animal appetites, are
greater in these warm and glowing climes, but surely no more so than in
our own summers, compared with the winter or other less attractive
seasons. On the contrary, the necessities of cleanliness and the less
potent demand for stimulants, with the cooling and delicious fruits of
the tropics, tend to delicacy of tastes and appetites. At all events, it
is certain that the grossest, most brutal, and most immoral populations
of Europe are found in the far north, while those of southern Europe are
the most temperate and the most delicate in their habitudes of any
people in the world. But climate has little, if any, influence in these
respects. The white man under the same circumstances is the same being,
and his grossness and immorality, or his delicacy, temperance, and
morality, are things of chance, according as he has been educated, and
circumstances, public and private, have formed his character. As a
master, as the guide and protector of the subordinate negro, he may live
wherever the latter can, otherwise the negro would have been created in
vain—a blank in the economy of the universe, a contradiction in the
designs of Providence, and a blotch on the fair form of creation.
Generally speaking, climate or other external circumstances have
influence over the life, either human or animal, according as they are
low in the scale of being, and therefore while the Caucasian man can
live and enjoy the full development of all his powers in the tropics,
the negro and other inferior races are absolutely limited to their own
centres of existence. The Mongols have been confined to those portions
of Asia where they now exist, ever since known to history, for though in
the mighty invasions of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and others, when
millions of them spread like a flood over other regions, and even as far
as Chalons, in France, they almost as rapidly receded, and are now just
where history first found them.
The modern slave trade, carried on so extensively by the English of our
day, where these people, under various pretexts, are placed aboard ships
and sent to Jamaica, and other West Indian Islands, to supply the place
of the abandoned negro, must be a far greater wrong than the importation
of negroes from Africa, for it is a violation of the laws of climate
that must rapidly destroy them, while in the case of the negro he is
still within that centre of existence, where God himself placed him. The
Malay, too, is in his own centre of life, and like all the inferior
races, never migrates from it. The Esquimaux, buried in the bleak and
desolate North, never ventures beyond it, and should he be carried into
the tropics by the white man, would doubtless soon succumb under its
burning suns. We know but little of the Indian or aboriginal in these
respects. They now constitute the industrial forces of Mexico, and,
except Brazil, of all South America. There are some ten millions of
them, and as we know that the negro never can labor on the table-lands,
or live at all in an atmosphere several thousand feet above the level of
the sea, it may become a question of immense importance to the
civilization of this continent to determine the natural position and our
true relations to this race. The negro, more distinctly, perhaps, than
any other race, is limited to his centres of life. If Dr. Kane had taken
any with him in his Northwest explorations, it is hardly possible that
they could have lived through it, if of pure negro type. His organic
structure, while as perfectly adapted to a tropical climate as the eye
is to sight or any other organism to a given purpose or function,
utterly forbids him to live beyond a certain latitude. An individual may
do so, of course, or a generation or more may linger out a miserable
existence, but his structure forbids that he should multiply himself or
become a permanent resident in the extreme north. There are great
numbers in Canada, the result of that wide-spread ignorance of his true
nature that has worked out such tremendous evils to these poor people as
well as to the deluded and mistaken whites. Their situation in Canada is
the most miserable, perhaps, that human beings can possibly endure. It
would be miserable enough if they had masters, guides, protectors, and
providers for their wants, but, without these, with none of the external
circumstances with which God surrounded them when He first called them
into being, and then left to compete with white men for the means of
subsistence, it is repeated that their condition must be the most
deplorable to which unhappy human creatures could be subjected. The
constant accession to their numbers through the Underground Railroad
renders any thing like an estimate of the fatality among them quite out
of the question, but when, in addition to their abnormal social
condition, there is the pressure of an unnatural climate or of external
influences utterly opposite to those that God originally provided for
them, and directly in conflict with their organic structure, then it is
obvious, of course, that they must perish rapidly.
All those physicians in the North who have had any experience of the
diseases of these people, know the tendencies to consumption or disease
of the respiratory organs so common, almost universal among them, but
few if any have known that this was a necessary result of the peculiar
structure of the negro. His entire surface is studded with innumerable
sebaceous glands, which are the safety-valves that nature has provided
for relieving his system from the action of vertical suns, but these
rendered torpid, indeed incapable of performing their functions in the
icy atmosphere of the North, congestion and disease of the lungs
necessarily follows. Almost every one has seen negroes in Northern
cities, who have lost their legs by frost at sea—a thing rarely
witnessed among whites, and yet where a single negro has been thus
exposed, doubtless a thousand of the former have. Climate, therefore,
has a fixed and absolute control over the existence of the negro. God
has adapted him, both in his physical and mental structure, to the
tropics, and though he can live in the temperate latitudes, his welfare,
his happiness, and the development of his faculties are secured just as
he conforms to the designs of the Almighty, as written in his organism,
and lives within the centre of existence where he was created. And those
ignorant and terribly mistaken people who have seduced and led him into
the bleak and forbidden North, have unconsciously committed a crime that
would appall them if they could truly comprehend it.
Such are, briefly, the more prominent laws of climate, and their
influence on men and animals; but as climate itself, in the ordinary
meaning of the word, has regard only to degrees of latitude, or to
modifications of heat and cold, they are of secondary importance, or, at
most, are only a portion of those general laws of adaptation which
govern animal existence, and harmonize it with the locality in which it
was originally created. Beyond the few exceptions referred to, all
organic existence is adapted to its own centre of life, and incapable of
living in any other. This is illustrated every day, and familiar to the
least observing among us. Cereals and vegetables of every kind demand,
if not always a special climate, certainly a special soil. Corn, wheat,
etc., require a soil suited to them—there must be a special adaptation
of external circumstances, for there is an eternal relation between the
organism and the circumstances that surround it. The most ignorant among
our agriculturists know from their own experience that certain things
can only grow on certain soils, and this fixed and indestructible law,
thus manifested in the simpler forms of being, pervades the whole
organic world. And, as remarked, it is in exceptional instances, or the
instances where climate does not govern, that these adaptations to
particular soils are essential. In general, it can not be transplanted
or removed from its own centre of existence. The products of the
tropics—the sugar cane, coffee, indigo, cotton, etc., the numerous
fruits, etc., can not be changed, or, at all events, can not be grown
successfully outside of their original centre of creation.
As we ascend in the scale, the laws of adaptation, are, of course,
multiplied, or become more elaborate, and in the case of human beings,
they are widely diversified with numerous secondary relations; but the
great universal and all-dominating law that unites men to their centres
of existence, is as indestructible and everlasting as it is in the
simplest form of vegetable existence. God has created both them and the
external circumstances, has given them a specific structure and
corresponding faculties, and He has made the earth, the soils, the form
of its products, its climate, etc., in perfect accord with the former,
and as time and chance, or human forces, can never change or modify the
works of the Almighty, this law of adaptation is everlasting.
The white man—as a laborer—is adapted to the temperate latitudes, not
because mere climate, or heat and cold, demand it, but because such is
his natural adaptation. All the external circumstances accord with his
nature—his physical structure and his intellectual endowments. The soil,
its natural products—the time and mode of their growth, their ripening
or maturity, in short, their cultivation is in perfect harmony with his
faculties. The farmer of Ohio or Illinois, for example, ploughs and
prepares his fields through the early summer, for sowing them with wheat
in the early autumn. The process is elaborate. The land must be manured,
ploughed carefully at different times, harrowed over at intervals, and
gradually made ready for the reception of the seed. Then he carefully
selects that which his experience assures him is best. After it is sown
he again harrows over his fields, watches them carefully for several
months, and then, the crop having ripened, another process begins.
This is equally elaborate and demands the fullest exercise of his mental
faculties as well as the labor of his body. He must watch and judge of
the weather, when he shall gather in his crops, how dispose of them,
etc.; then comes the threshing, the separation of the grain, etc., the
disposal of the straw, the feeding of his stock, all again needing the
fullest exercise of all his highest faculties. Then, again, begins
another process—if not personal or where he himself is the leading
party, where men like himself or with the same faculties as himself are
associated with him and engaged in completing the process which he
began. That which he planted and gathered is now still more elaborately
manipulated. The wheat is changed into flour by a lengthened and
elaborate process, and then passing through another elaboration, it
becomes bread—the sustenance of the race, the natural food of the
millions, the legitimate result of a healthy exercise of his specific
faculties and of the industrial adaptation of the race. Beginning with
the selection of the land, its preparation, the selection, etc., of the
seed, the planting, the care and estimate of the weather, the ripening,
the gathering, the separation of the grain, the transformation into
flour, the still greater change into bread, in the entire process, from
the occupation of the land to the moment when placed on the table of his
household, the _tout ensemble_ needs and calls into action the highest
faculties of reasoning and comparison, and however uneducated or
ignorant the individual may seem, when compared with the man of books,
the process, or rather processes, would be impossible, of course, to any
race except our own, or to beings with capacities inferior to those of
the white man.
It is the same with all the other products common or indigenous to
temperate latitudes. They all demand the highest capacities for their
cultivation. The nature of the soils, the fitness of particular products
to particular soils, the periods of growth, of ripening, the influences
of the atmosphere, the action of heat and cold, the change of seasons,
etc., are all in harmony with the elevated faculties, while the result,
their cultivation and uses, are all essential to the welfare and
happiness of the white man. The industrial adaptation is complete, the
varying soils, often widely different on the same farm, the numerous
regulations, the multiplied relations and connections involved, the
changing seasons and complicated circumstances render the temperate
latitudes as absolutely the centre of life to the white man,
industrially considered, as the tropics are to the negro, or as any of
the simpler forms of being are to the localities in which we find them.
The industrial and specific adaptation of the negro to his own centre of
life is, however, more palpable and demonstrable, for his limited
intelligence and more direct relations to external circumstances enable
us to grasp the facts involved more readily. The soil of the tropics has
little variation, and rarely needs any manure or preparation like those
of temperate latitudes. And the indigenous products, those that need
care and labor for their cultivation, however luxuriant their growth,
are few in number. There are almost innumerable species of fruits that
grow spontaneously, and indeed a great number of plants that are
nutritious, which need no care or labor, and which the negro, in his
isolated or barbarous state, lives on to a great extent. But the great
natural products of the tropics, those that are essential to human
welfare, which are at this instant the most important elements of modern
commerce, and are vitally affecting the civilization of our times, are
few in number, and need only the lowest grade of intelligence for their
cultivation. Cotton, for example, needs but little beyond planting and
picking, and sugar, so far as the labor is concerned, is even more
simple. It is true, in the complete elaboration and final perfection of
these products, the manufacture, etc., the highest order of intelligence
is called into action, but this has no necessary connection with the
negro. Cotton is shipped to the North or Europe, and passes altogether
into other hands, and though the negro labor was vital in the
preliminary stages, it has no more connection with the ultimate
disposition of this material than the labor of mules that were employed
to prepare the earth for its original cultivation. Coffee, tobacco,
indigo, etc., are all equally simple, all in accord with the simple
soils, the uniform atmosphere, the primitive laws of development, as
they may be termed, and in perfect harmony with the grade of
intelligence, the specific nature and industrial adaptation of the
negro.
His physical organism is adapted to the cultivation of these products as
perfectly as is his grade of intelligence. His head is protected from
the rays of a vertical sun by a dense mat of woolly hair, wholly
impervious to its fiercest heats, while his entire surface, studded with
innumerable sebaceous glands, forming a complete excretory system,
relieves him from all those climatic influences so fatal, under the same
circumstances, to the sensitive and highly organized white man. Instead
of seeking to shelter himself from the burning sun of the tropics, he
courts it, enjoys it, delights in its fiercest heats, and malaria—that
deadly poison to the white man, which, in the form of yellow fever, has
swept from existence vast multitudes of our race, is as harmless to the
negro organism as the balmy breezes of May or June to the organization
of the white man. Of course mulattoes and mongrels may have something
that approximates to the yellow fever of the white man, but to the negro
it is simply an organic impossibility. His faculties, his simple grade
of intelligence, his physical organism, his specific, climatic, and
industrial adaptations are therefore in perfect harmony with the
primitive soils, the simple products, and uniform atmosphere of the
tropics, and in complete relation and perfect union with the
circumstances that surround him in the centre of existence where the
Almighty has placed him.
The late Daniel Webster once declared that God had limited “slavery” to
certain climates, and that he, at least, would not “reënact the will of
God,” and this declaration, though as a form of speech absurd enough,
was certainly in close neighborhood to a great and vital truth. If he
had said that the Almighty had adapted the negro to certain climates, he
would have expressed just what we are now considering; but the relation
of the negro to the white man, the thing he called slavery, is, of
course, as proper and as natural in New York or Ohio as in Mississippi.
The vulgar notion, therefore, that “slave labor,” the industrial
capacities of the negro, is unprofitable in temperate latitudes is only
partially true. The “slave” relation, the normal condition, as
contrasted with the so-called free negro, presents just the difference
between a useful negro and a worthless negro, or a negro who adds to the
productive forces of a State, and one who lives on the State—a healthy
and a diseased social element, and therefore wherever found, if, indeed,
in the extreme North, it is simply absurd to speak of the former as
unprofitable when contrasted with the latter. But when the negro is
contrasted with the white man in Ohio or New York, then the whole
subject is changed. His industrial capacities are incompetent to grow
the indigenous products of the temperate latitudes.
The reasoning, the reflection, the elevated faculties called into
action, that are absolutely essential to the cultivation of their
products, the varying and complicated soils, their elaborate
preparation, the care and judgment needed in gathering them, etc., the
still more elaborate processes before they are rendered fit for human
sustenance, all this needs the high intelligence, and therefore the
large brain, of the white man, and to the isolated negro is impossible,
of course.
It is true, the master may guide them, and the owner of a hundred
negroes in Ohio may carry on these processes and cultivate the soils of
the Western and Middle States sometimes, perhaps, when all labor is
scarce, with tolerable success. But their inferiority, their lower grade
of intelligence, the time and trouble expended in this guidance, must be
so palpable to every one who reflects a moment, that the case only needs
to be stated to convince them of the relative worthlessness of this
labor. And leaving out of view the force of climate, the changing
seasons, the sudden frosts which sometimes disable and very generally
affect the negro injuriously, and in the end destroy him—leaving all
this out of consideration, and contemplating his mere industrial
adaptations, it is obvious that the negro can never be, as he never has
been, able to cultivate the soils or grow the products of the temperate
latitudes. But while the great dividing lines are distinct enough, while
the white man and negro, in their industrial adaptations, can never be
in conflict when each is within that centre of existence to which the
Almighty Creator has adapted and designed him, there is a large extent
of territory where they may both labor to advantage, and where time and
circumstances may often determine their presence and their fitness for
such labor. The white man is forever forbidden by the laws of his
organization to labor under a tropical sun, or to grow by his own
physical efforts the products indigenous to the tropics. The negro, by
the laws of both his physical structure and mental nature, is forever
incapable of cultivating the soil or of growing the products indigenous
or common to the temperate latitudes.
These great elementary and indestructible truths, which, fixed forever
by the hand of God, admit of no exception, change, or modification
whatever, which time, and circumstances, and human power can not
influence, any more than the laws of gravitation, or animal growth, or
the term of animal existence, or any other law of the Creator of the
universe, will not be mistaken; but when we come to consider the
approximating latitudes, then there is a wide field opened up, to our
view, to chance, to time, to a multitude of considerations.
In general terms, it may be said, that wherever the white man can labor
with effect, that is, can preserve his health and the full exercise of
his faculties, there his labor must be more valuable than is that of the
negro. People who are ignorant of the laws of climate and industrial
adaptations, and still worse, ignorant of the nature of the negro and
his relations to the white man, when traveling on the Ohio River,
observe that the populations on the Ohio side are more energetic,
industrious, and prosperous than they are on the Kentucky side of the
river, and they infer that it is because Kentucky has “slavery.” The
author is not prepared to admit their assumption, for though there may
be greater wealth and apparently greater prosperity in Ohio, the true
and only test of well-being in a State is the equality of condition and
of the happiness of its people, and we have no means of determining this
truth by applying this test in the present instance. England is vastly
more wealthy than any other State in Christendom—its annual production
is vastly greater, but this wealth is monopolized by a fraction of the
population. While the great body of the people are steeped in poverty to
the lips, and while the few are every day growing wealthier, the many
are, with equal rapidity and certainty, becoming more abject in their
poverty, and, consequently more ignorant, vicious, and miserable. If,
therefore, it were true that Ohio did increase in wealth more rapidly
than Kentucky, it would by no means follow that the people of Ohio were
in a better condition than those of Kentucky. But it is reasonable to
suppose that the production is greater than that of Kentucky, for while
the climate and industrial adaptation are suited to the white man, there
are none but white men in Ohio, while nearly half of the laboring
population of Kentucky are negroes. The same absurd assumption and
inference have been made in respect to Virginia and other so-called
Slave States, when contrasted with New York and other so-called Free
States. It has been said, “Virginia falls behind New York in general
prosperity.” “It is because she has half a million of slaves, and if she
will abolish this slavery, then she will soon equal, perhaps surpass,
New York, for Virginia has certain natural advantages which New York has
not.” Or, in other words, it is said that Virginia is less prosperous
than New York, because her half a million of negroes are in a normal
condition, and if she will thrust them from this condition and turn them
loose, as New York has done, then Virginia will soon be equally
prosperous as the latter! Possibly one out of twenty of the negroes in
New York, Ohio, or any other so-called Free State, is engaged in
productive labor, while the nineteen others live—temporarily—on the
labor of the producing classes of those States. The argument of these
political economists, therefore, is simply this: Virginia with half a
million of industrious and productive negroes, is less prosperous than
New York, but if she will transform them into half a million of idle,
non-productive, and good-for-nothing negroes, then she will rapidly
recover from her present depressed condition. But enough—these people
who set up an abstraction entirely nonsensical, must reach conclusions
equally preposterous. They are not only ignorant of what they argue
about so pompously, but they imagine conditions that not only do not but
can not exist, either here or elsewhere, in our own times or any other,
in the existing, or any other world.
Virginia, Kentucky, all of the transition States, all the States with
considerable negro populations that are in the temperate latitudes, are,
of course, less productive than those bordering on them with entire
white populations, for the negro is greatly inferior in his industrial
capabilities, as in all other respects, where white men can labor. Thus
far there can be no doubt, for there is no room for doubt, but it by no
means follows that the people of Ohio or Pennsylvania are in a better
condition than those of Kentucky and Virginia. The people of Virginia,
if not homogeneous in race, are so in interest, and that one great fact
underlying the social condition, is itself, or in the results that flow
from it, of vast benefit. The interests of the State, of all its people,
the “slaveholder,” “non-slaveholder,” and the negro or so-called slave,
are homogeneous, universal, and indivisible, and therefore without
social conflict, or causes for social conflict, the tendencies of the
social order are harmonious and beneficent. The only seeming conflict or
the sole thing that superficial thinkers might mistake for such, is the
fact that the negro is not adapted to the locality, and they might
suppose that therefore the owner of his services, or of this so-called
slave property, might, to a certain extent, monopolize the soil that of
right belonged to the white laborer. But a moment’s reflection will be
sufficient to convince any rational mind of the unsoundness of this
supposition.
A Virginia planter may, perhaps, inherit a thousand acres of land and a
hundred negroes. His poor white neighbor is without land perhaps, and
thinks it hard that these negroes, whom his instinct as well as reason
assures him are not as well adapted to the locality as himself, should
occupy it, while he has none. But the planter himself is worse off
still. The land is worn out—the negro capacity can not resuscitate
it—they barely earn sufficient for the common support—the planter finds
it hard to live at all, and only does so, perhaps, by parting with some
of his people, and therefore whatever the evil of this negro element in
localities which the changes of time and circumstances have brought
about, it is an evil that presses upon the owner of this species of
property with vastly greater force than it does on the non-slaveholder.
Of course the remedy is obvious—“Slavery Extension”—free and full
expansion—the acquisition of new territories suited to the industrial
capacities of the negro. For example, if we suppose the late General
Walker had been successful, and opened Central America to American
settlement, energy, civilization, and prosperity—the Virginia or
Maryland planter, who now finds it difficult to “make both ends meet,”
would gather up his household and migrate to these inviting and fertile
regions. His negroes producing double or treble, or even more, in their
new homes, he could afford to send his children to the North or Europe
to be educated, and himself spend his summers at the Springs or abroad,
and live as luxuriously as he pleased, while his negroes or so-called
slaves, in their centre of existence, where God ordained that they
should live, laving themselves in the genial heats of the tropics, with
all their best and highest capacities called into action, and the best
qualities of their nature healthily and naturally developed, would be
even more benefited, perhaps, than the master himself. The vacancy would
be filled by the increasing white population, by the constant inflowing
of the mighty masses pouring in upon us from the Old World, by the poor
German or other European peasant, who only needs liberty and the means
for developing the high nature with which God endowed him, to exhibit
himself as the equal of the kings and aristocrats who have crushed him
into an artificial inferiority actually resembling the natural
inferiority of the negro, and these impoverished soils being
resuscitated by his industry, his intelligence, in short, his industrial
adaptations, the now wasted and wasting lands of the transition States
would become, and doubtless will become some day, the very garden of the
republic. Nor would this be the whole of the beneficial process in
question. The world needs, and especially our own farmers and working
classes need, the products of the tropics. Sugar, and coffee, and
tropical fruits should be had at half their present prices, while the
increased production, the extension of commerce and general progress
would have a vast influence over the civilization of our times by this
simple application of industrial forces in conformity with the
fundamental laws of climatic and industrial adaptation. A large majority
of our negro population are at this moment outside of their own centre
of existence, and a time will come when the border or transition States
will probably have few of these people. As observed, it is absurd, a
contradiction, an abuse of language, to speak of “slavery,” or the
social subordination of the negro, as an evil, or as being, under any
possible circumstances, unprofitable, for that involves the anomaly of
supposing the idle and good-for-nothing negro a benefit to the State;
but the negro is profitable to his master, beneficial to the State, and
happy himself in such proportion as he approximates to the tropics, and
is placed in juxtaposition with the external circumstances to which God
has adapted him. They or their progenitors were mainly landed at
northern ports. They were, in the then scarcity of labor, possibly
needed even in the Central States. As an advanced guard in the rising
civilization of the New World, they were once, perhaps, essential to the
Provinces of Virginia, Maryland, etc., for the rich soil, the rank
vegetation, the extensive marshes and wild river bottoms generated an
extent and degree of malaria that was often fatal to the white man, and
rendered the labor and aid of these people of vital importance in the
early settlement of the country. But as the country became cultivated
and white laborers became plenty, it was seen that the labor of the
negro was less valuable; so that Mr. Jefferson, and many of his
contemporaries, actually fancied it an evil, and desired to be relieved
from it. And indeed, what was worse still—they confounded the existence
of the negro with the relation, the so-called slavery, of the negro; and
it was only when Louisiana was occupied, and new and appropriate regions
were opened to the negro, and in harmony with his industrial capacities,
that this erroneous notion of Mr. Jefferson and others disappeared from
the southern mind. Virginia has still a large negro population, but
while they are mainly employed in cultivating tobacco, suited to the
simple capacity and subordinate nature of the negro, the demand for
cotton, rice, sugar, etc., in the great tropical regions of the
republic, is rapidly attracting them southward, and in conformity with
their own happiness as well as the welfare of the white citizenship,
this process is destined to go on until they are all within their own
centre of existence. Whether or not Virginia, or any other transition
State, would be better without them at this time, it is of course
impossible to say, or to conjecture even. The simple fact, however, of
their presence there would seem to indicate that it was desirable to
have them among them yet, or at all events in considerable numbers, but
the industrial attraction is constantly carrying them further south—to
Texas, Florida, and other Gulf States, where their labor is more
valuable.
These general laws of climatic and industrial adaptation, which thus
underlie the social fabric when made up of mixed populations, are also
illustrated by the national history, and demonstrated in every step of
the national progress. When negroes were first introduced into the
British North American Colonies, there was, of course, and for many
years after, a great demand for labor. Here was a mighty continent, a
new world, open to the enterprise and energy of the most energetic and
most enterprising branch of the great master race of mankind. All that
was wanted was labor—labor, too, that was of the lowest kind in some
respects, and laborers whose imperfect innervation and low grade of
sensibility could resist the malarious influences always more or less
potent in new countries and virgin soils, even in temperate latitudes,
were often desirable. The Bristol and the Liverpool “slave merchants,”
therefore—the progenitors of the saints and philanthropists of Exeter
Hall—supplied these wants, ordinarily with negroes, but occasionally
with some of their own poorer and more helpless brethren, whom they did
not hesitate to kidnap and send out to labor on the American
plantations. Negroes, therefore, were forced from the sea-board to the
interior, even as far as Canada, while the Central Colonies had even
very considerable numbers of these people. With the downfall of the
British dominion, however, the Bristol merchants were forced to engage
in other enterprises, and as the genius and daring of Clive and his
companions had just then opened a new and boundless empire in India,
English capital, enterprise, and polity took another direction, and
though the African trade was continued for some years afterward by our
own people, there were, comparatively, but few negroes imported after
the overthrow of the British rule. After the removal of a foreign and
artificial rule, and the establishment of a political system in harmony
with the instincts and wants of our people, the social and industrial
laws were permitted a natural development, and from this period a widely
different movement began. Negro labor was less profitable in the Eastern
than in the Central States, and of course less profitable in the latter
than in Virginia, the Carolinas, etc., and therefore the industrial
attraction carried them from the interior to the sea-board, and from the
North to the South. The acquisition of Louisiana, of Florida, etc., the
opening of new regions and the formation of new States adapted to the
climatic wants and industrial capabilities of the negro, drained them
off still more rapidly. Mr. Jefferson and others, as has been observed,
confounding the relation of the races, or so-called slavery, with the
non-adaptability of the negro labor in temperate latitudes, desired to
exclude, not negroes, but the social relation which they supposed an
evil, from the northwest territory, and the old confederation, it will
be remembered, passed an ordinance to that effect. This “ordinance,”
which ignorance and folly have so long worshipped as a “bulwark of
freedom,” with as abject a spirit and total absence of reason as the
Hindoo worships his Juggernaut, of course never had, nor could have, the
slightest influence over the subject.
If there had been no extension of our southern borders, no Louisiana,
Florida, Alabama, or other States adapted to the wants and industrial
capabilities of the negro, the whole Northwest, at this moment, would be
what these blind and mistaken people term “slave territory.” The cheap
lands and fresh soils of the West, would attract the holders of this
species of property even more strongly than any others, and the only
difference, so far as the negro is concerned, would be, or could be,
that their numbers would be less than at present. As he approximates to
his centre of existence, or as the negro is in harmony with the external
conditions to which the Almighty has adapted him, his well-being is
secured, his vitality is greater, and he multiplies himself more
rapidly; therefore as regards the negro element, it would have been less
in the Northwest than it is now in the South-west, but the relation, of
course, would be as at present, for however willing Vermont, or some
other State without negroes might be to pervert these relations, and in
theory place themselves on a level with a subordinate race, those who
are in juxtaposition with negroes have never done so, or thus
voluntarily attempted social suicide.
Mr. Jefferson, by the acquisition of Louisiana and the extension of our
Southern limits, therefore, “saved” the Northwest from a negro
population and so-called slavery, just as the acquisition of Texas by
President Tyler and the eminent and far-seeing Calhoun and others, at a
later day, opened other and still wider regions adapted to the wants and
specific nature of our negro population, and which are now, by the
natural and indestructible laws of climate and industrial adaptation,
gradually withdrawing this population from the border or transition
States. Indeed, one only needs to examine the several census returns of
the federal government, from 1790 to 1860, to understand both the
history of the country, in these respects, and the operation of the laws
of climate and industrial adaptation. They will then see that the negro
element constantly tends southward—a black column ever on the march for
its own centre of existence—an advance guard of American civilization,
that moves on without cessation, and that must continue to advance until
it is in perfect accord with those external conditions to which it is
naturally adapted. Nor is the interest of the master—the increased value
of the negro labor—the sole motive power, though certainly the leading
cause of this progress southward. The increased and increasing white
population, with the vast European emigration, is pressing on its rear,
while the demands of modern society for the products of its labor, and
many other influences, are every day increasing in force, and impelling
the negro tropic-ward with greater rapidity at present, perhaps, than
ever before.
Persons wholly ignorant of these causes, or of the laws underlying this
progress of the negro southward, have blindly labored against it, and in
regard to the annexation of Texas, which opened such a wide and
beneficent field for negro industry, and therefore for the true welfare
of these people, they doubtless really believed they were doing them a
kindness when thus foolishly striving to reverse the ordinances of the
Eternal, and to prevent the expansion of this negro population. And this
expansion, or this industrial attraction constantly going on from
Virginia and other border States to Texas and the Gulf States, doubtless
does appear unjust, and, perhaps, inhuman to those ignorant of the negro
nature, as well as of those laws of industrial adaptation which always
have and always must govern the subject. The sale of negroes in Richmond
and Norfolk, to be sent South, seems to them, perhaps, a great hardship,
but while it is believed that the larger portion are accompanied by
their masters, who naturally seek new homes in Texas, etc., there is no
other possible mode or means through which they could reach a more
genial clime, and therefore, even if it were indeed a harsh procedure to
sell them in Richmond, it would still be vastly more inhuman to keep
them from approximating to their specific centre of existence. As it is,
it is true beneficence and kindness to facilitate their progress
southward; but if they really were black-_white_ men, as the ignorant
anti-slaveryite fancies they are, and without any specific affinity or
adaptation for a tropical climate, even in that case their public sale
at Richmond or Norfolk, to supply the labor market of Texas, would not
involve a thousandth part of the misery and physical suffering endured
by a very considerable portion of those British subjects who annually
arrive at New York. Indeed, it is safe to say that the thousand or so
diseased, half-starved, and miserable British _subjects_, which the
Mayor of New York had penned up and out of sight of the Prince of Wales
at Castle Garden, in order not to offend the olfactories or revolt the
senses of that young person, embodied more physical suffering, more
wrong and outrage on humanity, than _could_ be inflicted on negroes
through all eternity, so far as this process of extension southward may
be concerned. The master, or the man who purchases the service of the
negro, has, of course, the utmost interest in taking care of him and
providing for all his wants, while the negro himself, on the way to the
climate and the external conditions for which the Almighty has adapted
him, _must_ be in the pathway of progress, and advancing generally
toward that goal of happiness and well-being which the common Creator
has designed for all His creatures.
No law or legislation would seem to be needed—nothing but the removal of
all obstructions from the path of progress, and the free and full
development of the laws of industrial attraction. The demands for
tropical products, and the greater value of the negro labor—the
necessities of modern civilization and the interests of the master—have
carried the negro from the Central, as they are now carrying him from
the border States, toward the great tropical centre of the continent.
And by a beneficent and inevitable necessity which God himself has fixed
forever in the economy of the universe, the welfare of the negro is
secured in exact proportion as these laws of industrial attraction and
adaptation are permitted free action and full development.
In conclusion, therefore, it would seem that a simple removal of all
obstructions to these fixed and fundamental laws would be all that was
needed to secure the best welfare of all—white men and negroes—of the
North equally with the South, for while the industrial attraction would
remove the negro element just as fast as the interests of the border
States may demand, the West can always secure themselves from a
considerable negro population, by aiding in the removal of obstructions
from our southern borders, as Jefferson saved them sixty years ago.
CHAPTER XXI.
NORTH AND SOUTH.—ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF GOVERNMENT.
Although the progenitors of our so-called slaves were mainly imported at
Northern ports, and all of the Northern and Middle States have had, at
times, considerable negro populations, the process of transition
southward has been so rapid that the Northern communities, or the people
of the Northern States, have been but little impressed by them or
influenced in their ideas and mental habits by the presence of this
widely different and subordinate element of our general population. But
when they became a fixed population, when Virginia, especially, had
acquired what, by comparison, may be called a large negro element, then
the actual presence of these negroes called into existence new ideas,
and gave development to new modes of thought or mental habitudes. All
our ideas and mental habits are, in a sense, accidental, the result of
circumstances, just as language, which is the outward expression of our
ideas, becomes changed by time and circumstances. The English of the
tenth century were widely different, of course, in their ideas and
mental habits from the English of the fourteenth century, under the rule
of the Normans; and this difference was widely varied from anything that
mere time or ordinary circumstances could have produced.
And the different mental habits of the people of America generally, when
contrasted with those of Europe, show sufficiently that all our ideas
are accidental, the result of local circumstances, though, of course,
all are in subordination to those fixed and fundamental laws of mind
that are specific with the race. The presence, therefore, of the
negro—of a widely different and subordinate element of the population of
Virginia, and other States, when it became stationary and had to be
provided for by the local legislatures, its specific wants as well as
those of the citizenship looked after, and its social adaptations
rendered harmonious with the welfare of the former—naturally developed
new ideas of government and new modes of thought in the dominant and
governing race. Except, possibly, some of the Spanish colonies south of
us, there was no portion of the New World where so many of those who
could claim connection with European aristocracy originally settled as
in the province of Virginia.
In the earlier days of Massachusetts a great number of the most
respectable of the middle classes of English society, and some few
instances of the old hereditary nobility, found new homes in the colony,
but in the latter case they had abandoned the old Norman traditions, and
to enjoy their religion and “freedom of conscience,” identified
themselves with Puritanism. In the Dutch province of New York, there
was, perhaps, a somewhat larger infusion of the aristocratic element,
but as Holland itself was essentially republican, and the Dutch really
the originators of modern liberty in Europe, and, moreover, had a very
limited landed aristocracy compared with England, France, etc., but few
persons identified by tradition and association with the hereditary
aristocracy of the Old World found their way into the Dutch settlements
of the New.
But Virginia was originally settled—to a very large extent—by the
offspring of the old Norman chivalry, by the cavaliers—the descendants
of the proudest, most warlike, most chivalrous, heroic, and
enterprising, and, at the same time, most tyrannical and oppressive
aristocracy the world has ever seen. Those who belong to the race—the
same species—of course will, under the same circumstances, manifest the
same qualities, and therefore, if at any time the child of the princely
Plantagenet or lordly Warwick had been exchanged in its cradle with the
“base” progeny of some Saxon churl, who fed and kenneled with their
hounds, the latter would have grown up with all the pride and chivalry,
and princely bravery common to the former. Nevertheless, a class, an
aristocracy, a privileged order, forms sentiments, ideas, etc., and
transmits its traditions, rules, etc., to its descendants, that may, for
centuries perhaps, preserve their integrity. Even in our social
every-day life, and changing society, we often see families transmitting
their family usages, habitudes, modes of thought as well as action, for
several generations, and with only slight departures from the family
model left by some original or venerated ancestor. Aristocracies,
however, usually destroy themselves by the very means they resort to to
preserve their ascendency over the great body of the people. In order to
preserve the respect, the awe, the continued belief of the vulgar mass
in their seeming superiority, they must avoid the populace and
intermarry with their order, and the more completely this is done, the
more they become a close corporation as it were, and violate the laws of
consanguinity, the more rapidly they are deteriorated and fall below the
general average of the people. The Northmen, the robust and enterprising
fishermen of the Baltic, the fillibusters and pirates of the Northern
Seas, invaded France and conquered Normandy, and Rolla and his roving
horde of followers threatened to overrun Paris, and indeed the whole
kingdom. They finally settled down in Normandy, from which, at a later
date, they emerged into Italy, conquered Naples, the island of Sicily,
and for a long time threatened an invasion of the Oriental World, which
could hardly have resisted such an indomitable race of men. A Duke—a
bastard Duke of Normandy, at that time laid claim to the crown of
England, and with forty thousand followers landed in that country, and
in a single battle so completely demolished the “Anglo-Saxons” and
Anglo-Saxonism, so much boasted of in these days, that the former have
remained slaves ever since, and the latter was so utterly annihilated
that it disappeared for ever on that fatal day at Hastings. Then, for
the first time, the Normans assumed the distinct form of an aristocracy
or privileged order.
Though they had long since cast off the rude habits and uncouth manners
of adventurers and conquerors, and when they invaded England were,
perhaps, as intelligent and refined as any similar number of European
people, and a great deal more so than those they conquered in England,
they had never assumed the form, enacted laws, or established rules and
regulations as an aristocracy or governing class. From this time forth,
however, the Norman aristocracy ruled England with an iron hand, and
though the wars of the Roses, and the still more fatal conflict with the
Puritans or middle class, exterminated or drove out the remains of the
Norman blood, and there is little, if any, in England at this time, the
country is still governed by the traditions, the habits, in short, the
system established by the old Norman aristocracy. Most of the great
families became extinct, while the younger sons and others of broken
fortunes emigrated to Virginia, and with the establishment of the
commonwealth, very many of the Norman ancestry abandoned England. So
many and so strong were the remnants of the old Norman families in
Virginia, that they refused to recognize the commonwealth, and actually
set at defiance the formidable power and iron will of Cromwell.
But these remains of the old Norman aristocracy—that aristocracy which
for several centuries governed England—that have left their impress,
their habits, their laws of primogeniture, their feudalistic customs, so
deeply engraven on the English mind, that the aristocracy of the day,
though entirely modern, and with scarcely any family connection with it,
are able to govern the masses, through these habitudes, as absolutely as
the Normans once did by the sword and the strong hand of arbitrary
power, these descendants of the old Norman race in Virginia have changed
completely about, and though their ancestors were the main supporters of
kingly despotism, they are the originators and champions of democracy in
America.
In all the changes and mutations of human society, there is scarcely any
parallel to this change of ideas in Virginia, or to this extraordinary
transformation which has changed the descendants of the old Norman
aristocracy into the firmest and most reliable defenders of democracy.
Of course, the early colonists of Virginia were of all classes and
conditions of English society; not a few of them, perhaps, were
kidnapped young peasants, without friends or relatives to protect them
or to punish the base wretches who carried them over the sea and sold
them here, as elsewhere, in the American colonies. But it is undoubtedly
true that a larger, vastly larger body of “gentlemen” emigrated to
Virginia than to any other colony, and as these were all cadets, or
younger branches of the great houses in England, nearly all of which
were Norman in descent, and nearly all of which in the direct line
afterward perished in the wars of the commonwealth, it would seem
equally certain that if there be any Norman blood anywhere, it must now
be found, or mainly found, in Virginia.
The cause of this transformation, this radical and extraordinary change
of opinion, which has made the descendants of the proudest and most
despotic aristocracy ever known the authors and main supporters of
democracy, must be a potent one, and as far removed from the ordinary
causes which, in the progress of time, modify men’s opinions and habits,
as the results themselves are extraordinary and without parallel. As has
been remarked, all our ideas and mental habits are the result of
circumstances, the external influences that surround us, the changed
conditions of our existence, which give origin to new thoughts and new
modes of mental action. And when we take these things into view and
contemplate the changed conditions, the new and altogether different
circumstances that surrounded these Virginia descendants of the
cavaliers and gentlemen of England, then the causes are obvious—the new
ideas that sprung up in men’s minds, legitimate and consistent with the
extraordinary and indeed unparalleled circumstances under which they
lived. They were in juxtaposition with negroes, with an inferior race,
with widely different and subordinate social elements, and new thoughts,
new ideas, as well as altogether different habits, naturally and
necessarily followed. They saw these negroes were different beings from
themselves, not in color alone, or in other physical characteristics,
but in their mental qualities, their affections, their wants, in short,
in their _nature_ and the necessities of their social life, their
welfare and happiness, and indeed the welfare of this subordinate
element, demanded corresponding action, with, of course, corresponding
ideas and modes of thought. They saw that this negro was not
artificially or accidentally, but naturally different from themselves,
that God himself had made him different and given him different
faculties and different wants, and therefore designed him for different
purposes, and that it was an imperative and unavoidable duty as well as
necessity to adapt their social habits and legal and political
institutions to this state or condition of fixed and unalterable _fact_.
But this was not all, nor the limit to the new ideas that thus
originated in the changed conditions under which they were living. Their
traditions, the mental habits of their old cavalier ancestry, the ideas
they carried from the mother country, taught them to regard the person
of a king as something quite sacred, and to whom an absolute and
unquestioning obedience was always due, while the class of gentlemen,
the nobility, or aristocracy, that more immediately surrounded royalty
was deemed to be altogether superior and different from the vulgar
multitudes that made up the people. The celebrated formula of Archbishop
Laud, that “passive obedience and non-resistance” was the absolute and
universal duty of the people to the will of the king, expressed with
brevity and accuracy the prevalent sentiment of the cavaliers, and they
demanded from their special retainers the same unquestioning submission
which they themselves accorded to royalty. The ignorance of the great
mass of the people on one hand, and the actual power and tyranny of the
nobles on the other, sunk so deep into the common mind of England and
other European people during the middle ages, that though many
generations have passed since, the sentiment of superiority in one class
and of inferiority in the other, remains yet, and in England at this day
is nearly as potent as ever.
But the descendants of the cavaliers in Virginia were placed face to
face with _facts_ that utterly exploded those factitious sentiments that
had their origin in a certain condition of society, and not in nature or
in the natural relations of men. They were in juxtaposition with
negroes, with different and subordinate beings, human, it is true, like
themselves, but different human beings, just as pigeons, while birds
equally with robins, are different _birds_, or as hounds, though _dogs_,
were different dogs from spaniels or bull-dogs. This was a great,
starting, fixed _fact_, that no amount or extent of sentiment, theory,
or mental habit could explain away or modify, or avoid in any respect.
They saw this fact daily staring them in the face; they were compelled
to recognize it, to legislate for it, or for these people, to adapt
their social customs to it, in short, to conform to it, and therefore
were forced to cast aside their preconceived notions, the traditions and
mental habits of their ancestors, all their ideas of loyalty to a
creature like themselves and of their own class-superiority which they
had brought from the Old World. What was their fancied superiority over
their own humbler brethren, when contrasted with this _natural_
inferiority of the negro? What was the accident of education, of wealth,
of refinement of manners, or any other factitious, temporary, or
accidental thing worth, which separated them from their less fortunate
neighbors, when compared with the handiwork of nature, with the fixed
and impassable barriers that separated them both from negroes? What, in
short, were the petty distinctions of human pride, vanity, and accident,
in comparison with the ordinances of the Eternal?
Such were the facts that confronted them, such the external
circumstances that developed new ideas and new modes of thought in the
colonists of Virginia, such the potent _causes_ that changed the
descendants of English cavaliers into the earliest, most consistent, and
most reliable champions of democracy in America. The same causes, to a
certain extent, influenced the inhabitants of other colonies, and it
will be found that in precise proportion to the amount and the fixedness
of this negro element in any locality, there were clear, corresponding
views of liberty and equality among white men. Indeed, this is as true
now as ever before, and almost invariably there are sound and rational
views of liberty and of democratic institutions in precise proportion to
the presence, or imperfect and unsound notions in proportion to the
absence, of this negro element. Those States like Mississippi, Texas,
Arkansas, and Alabama, that have relatively the largest negro
population, are the most decidedly and consistently democratic, while
Massachusetts, Vermont, etc., with the fewest negroes among them, are
the most unsound in these respects, and however intelligent in regard to
other things, are certainly behind most of the great American
communities in political knowledge.
South Carolina, and perhaps some others, may seem exceptions to this
very general truth, but if so in reality, it is owing to peculiar
causes, such as the education of many of its people abroad, in Europe,
and at the North, etc., but even as regards that State, so exceptional
in many respects, land is more equally divided than in any other State,
and where such a fact obtains, the general tendency to equality in
citizenship must be strikingly manifested.
The great revolutionary movement of 1776 gave full expression to the new
modes of thought, the grand ideas, the glorious truths thus developed in
the mind of Virginia, and relatively in the other colonies, where this
_cause_, this negro element had anything like a stationary existence. It
was no accident or chance that made Mr. Jefferson the author of the
great idea, or rather the exponent of the idea embodied in the
Declaration of Independence, the grand and immortal truth, that all
white men are created equal, and therefore entitled to equal rights, or,
as he expressed it, to “life, liberty, and happiness.” True, some other
Virginian might have done this, and possibly some mind in the Middle
Provinces, New Jersey, or New York, might have formed a tolerably clear
conception of this great fixed and unchangeable truth that underlies the
whole superstructure of our political society; but no man in the
Northern Provinces could have risen to this mental elevation at that
period in our history; indeed comparatively few are even now capable of
it. Massachusetts and the neighboring colonies grasped the idea of
independence with great clearness, and urged it with an earnestness,
bravery, and indomitable perseverance certainly unsurpassed, if equalled
elsewhere, but it was independence of a foreign dominion, and not
independence of foreign ideas or of a hostile system. They were without
negroes, without any natural substratum in the social elements, without
any test or standard to determine men’s natural relations to each other,
and clinging to the mental habits of their British ancestors, they were
therefore incapable of forming those grand and truthful conceptions of
equality which Mr. Jefferson, and Virginians generally, under the
influences that have been stated, so clearly apprehended. The accidental
and artificial distinctions of society—family influence, wealth,
education, etc., were as in England, though, of course, not to the same
extent—the standards, the tests, the landmarks of the political as well
as the social order, and the phrase often used by New England writers of
our own day, that “representation was inseparable from taxation,” fully
expressed the mental habits and imperfect political conceptions of the
Northern mind. In England, except the titled aristocracy, the House of
Lords or Peerage, which pretends to rest on blood or birth (?), wealth
alone gives rights. The _man_ is nowhere, no part or portion, or element
even of the political system. In every county where he happens to have
property, he has a vote, but if without property, he has no voice
whatever, and, as observed, is not even an element of representation, as
are the negroes of the South. Taxation and representation, therefore,
are inseparable, so far as forms are concerned, in the British system,
though, as a fact, it is the working classes, who are not represented at
all, that must pay all the taxes in the end. The mental habits of the
North, in 1776, were fashioned on this model; they saw only those
accidental things that separate classes in England, as, wealth,
education, etc., and though they had an earnest desire for liberty, this
liberty was a vague, undefined, shadowy sentiment, rather than any
precise idea resting on fact as in Virginia. The immediate want and
common impulse of independence, however, impelled all parties to act
harmoniously for its accomplishment, and though the grand truths
presented by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence were far above
the then intellectual standard of the North, it did not conflict with
the mental habits of the Northern people sufficiently to interfere with
the common object. But when that object was accomplished—when the
foreign dominion was overthrown and the common independence secured, and
a new political system was to be created, then a conflict of ideas was
developed that was found to be so grave, that many good and patriotic
men for some time feared it could not be compromised. The leading men of
the North—the representative men—the men who desired independence from
foreign domination, but with, at best, vague notions of liberty, or of a
new political system—Hamilton, Adams, Morris, etc.—now came into serious
conflict with the democratic ideas of Virginia. They desired a monarchy
without a king, or a republic without the rule of the masses. The
general notion was, the British model without its defects, or the
British system without its corruptions, and so entirely were some wedded
to this, that they declared it, with all its corruptions, the best
government in the world.
The leaders very generally assumed, as they often expressed it, that
society was _naturally_ divided into the few and the many—the educated
minority, and the laboring majority—and as such was the actual social
condition of the population as well as the mental habits of the leaders,
it is not at all surprising that they sought to found a government on
such a basis. The agricultural population of the Northern and Middle
States were then very ignorant indeed, when compared with the present.
Feudalism had not been long overthrown in England or Europe, and the
serf transformed into the peasant, and though the American farmer of
1776 was a great advance over the latter, he still largely partook of
that general apathy, stolidity, and ignorance which in all times, until
now, in our own favored land, have distinguished the tillers of the
soil. The large population at the North otherwise employed, the
mechanics, artisans, shop-keepers, laborers, etc., were generally, as in
the mother country, without representation in the provincial
legislatures, and as the interests of the educated classes, the
capitalists, merchants, lawyers, divines, etc., were supposed to be, and
were in fact, in conflict with those of the former, they always desired
strong governments to hold them in order. Indeed, the idea of mob
ascendency, of anarchy, the wild rule of the rabble, was the constant
terror of the Northern leaders, and in all the arguments of Hamilton,
the Adamses, etc., this was put prominently forward. Their rhetorical
formula was always the same—“the rule of the uneducated mass will
degenerate into license and anarchy, from which the country can only be
saved by the strong hand of some military chief, who, first a dictator,
will finally don the purple, and the _rôle_ so often played in the Old
World will be repeated in the New.” This notion and this reasoning was
legitimate—the consistent result of the social condition as well as the
offspring of the inherited traditions of the Northern mind. The
capitalists, all those who inherited wealth, the “well-born” and
educated class, in short, the few who had the power in their hands,
naturally sought, to preserve it and to build up a strong government;
which, while it specially benefited themselves, should always be able to
“preserve order”—that is, while founded on existing social distinctions,
was sufficiently strong to repress the efforts of the multitude to
change the social condition. They had no negroes, no natural substratum
in the social elements or natural distinctions of society. They had
nothing before their eyes but the results of chance, of the accidents of
life—nothing but wealth and education—nothing, in short, but the
_débris_ of the old societies—those class distinctions which in the Old
World constitute the basis of the political and social order, and their
mental habits, their opinions, their notions of government and its uses,
were, of course, in accord with these things, and their minds were
incapable of rising above the existing condition, of over-leaping the
barriers and escaping from the external circumstances that surrounded
them. There were, doubtless, individual exceptions—some men who were
deeply imbued with the grand idea promulgated by Jefferson in the
Declaration of Independence. There were many in the Middle States who
had an imperfect but advancing conception of this glorious truth, and
there was still a larger number, perhaps, who were groping in darkness
with a vague but earnest desire to embrace it. But the dominant thought,
the prevalent opinion, the general mental habit, was reflected by the
representative men, the great Northern leaders, Hamilton, Adams, Otis,
and their companions, who desired to found a government on the British
model, which, though it should be a great improvement over the former,
was to be based on the same foundation—for, to _their_ minds, their
mental habits, there was no other, or, at all events, no other _safe_
basis for government. They were honest and patriotic men—men of gifted
minds and large attainments—men sorely tried and tested by the hardships
and sufferings of a seven years’ war, through which they walked with
their lives in their hands, and the scaffold always frowning on them in
the distance, and the purity of intentions, the unselfish and patriotic
desires of such men, should never be questioned. They could not rise
above the circumstances that surrounded them; they could not comprehend
the grand idea of Mr. Jefferson; they saw before them only class
distinctions, the rich and the poor, the educated few and the toiling
many, and they desired to build the government on the _status quo_, and
therefore demanded a strong government, that should always be able to
restrain the multitude and keep them in subjection to their “rulers.”
On the contrary, as has been stated, Virginia had cast off the mental
habits of the Old World, the offspring had long since outgrown the
traditions of their ancestors; the descendants of English cavaliers had
changed entirely about in their opinions, and the children of those who
held to the doctrine of “passive obedience” and “non-resistance”
declared that “resistance to tyrants was obedience to God.” The cause or
the causes of this wonderful transformation of opinion, this radical
change in mental habitudes, which has made the descendants of the
supporters of royalty the originators and special champions of democracy
in America, have been already considered.
The presence of the negro, the existence in their midst of a different
race, was and is, and always must be, a test that shows us the
insignificance and indeed nothingness of those artificial distinctions
which elsewhere govern the world, and constitute the basis of the
political as well as the social order.
The importance of education, of cultivation, the refinement of mind and
manners, the possession of wealth, of family influence and social
distinction, may all be duly appreciated, as all have their value or
social consideration, but where there is a _natural_ substratum of
society, where a different and subordinate race are in juxtaposition,
where negroes exist in any considerable number and in natural relation
to the whites, then it naturally follows that the great natural
distinctions fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty become the
dividing lines and the fixed landmarks of the social order.
This radical change in the mental habits of all brought face to face
with the negro; this instinctive consciousness of their own natural
equality that accompanied their perception of the negro’s inferiority;
in short, this development of the democratic idea to which Mr. Jefferson
gave such grand expression in the Declaration of Independence, was and
is accompanied by corresponding uniformity or harmony of interests.
Agriculture, labor, production, was and is the one great dominating
interest of Virginia and of all other communities made up of these
diverse social elements. It is impossible to divide the interests of
“master” and “slave”—of the white man and negro—when placed in natural
relation to each other. It is the utmost interest of the master to treat
his “slave” kindly, to care for him in sickness, to feed him well, and
not to overwork or abuse him, and it is the utmost interest of the
latter to be faithful to the former. It is a sort of partnership, a
species of socialism, when the brain of one being and the hands of fifty
other beings labor for the common good, for the general welfare; and
though possible exceptions are found where a brutal master beats and
abuses his people, or a worthless “slave” runs off and hides in the
swamp, both alike injure themselves, the master gets less work from his
“slave,” and the “slave” brings upon himself a corresponding evil. The
so-called “non-slaveholder,” if an agriculturist, has the same interest;
he is also a producer, and can not separate his interests from the
“slaveholder,” which, perhaps, he was himself yesterday, and may be
again to-morrow. If he be a mechanic, a lawyer, physician, or merchant,
then, though not identified as a producer with the “slaveholder” or
“non-slaveholder,” and in a sense may be said to have different
interests, these interests do not and can not conflict with the former,
unless, as in the Northern States, government is called on to “protect
labor.” But as government is confined to its legitimate sphere in
Virginia and most other Southern States, and protects all, without
favors to any, there is then no conflict of interests, even when some
are engaged in widely different pursuits from the one great common
interest of production. There is, therefore, universal harmony in
Southern society; the interests of master and “slave” are entirely
indivisible, while those of the “non-slaveholder,” if engaged in
production, are similar, and as to all others, when they do not involve
the government, though the pursuits or interests be widely different,
there can be no social conflict.
The ideas of Jefferson, Madison, and their cotemporaries were naturally
formed by these circumstances, and after the revolutionary contest was
over and a common government was to be created, they naturally proposed
a system in harmony with the condition they represented. The North, as
has been said, with no social substratum or natural distinctions,
desired a government based on artificial distinctions, those separating
classes, the same substantially as in England, though, of course,
dispensing with a titled class, a king, and laws of primogeniture. It is
true all the States had a few negroes, and they were all in their normal
condition of so-called slavery, but their numbers were so inconsiderable
that they did not influence society or modify the mental habits of the
Northern people. All over, and especially in the New England States, the
same ideas were reflected by the representative men; they wanted a
government based on the _status quo_, on wealth, that should keep power
in the hands of the few who then exercised it, and with sufficient force
to hold the multitude in subjection. They proposed an executive for
life, who should also appoint the governors of the States, that senators
should serve ten years, and various other projects of similar
character—all ending in or embodying the same common idea, that is, a
government for the few at the expense of the many.
The Southern men, on the contrary, proposed a government embodying
_their_ idea—the idea of democracy, and that should reflect the advanced
opinion and living spirit of their own society, rather than a thing
based on the model of Britishism, and involving substantially the
principles of the old European order. While they duly appreciated
education, cultivation, and other accidental social distinctions, those
whose ideas were advanced by juxtaposition with negroes, or with this
natural line of demarcation, would not listen to the creation of a
central government that tended in any respect to place power in the
hands of a class, or that enabled the few, however indirectly it might
be, to govern the many. The contest, both in the convention and before
the people, assumed the form of a contest for a strong or a weak
government—a government that should be supreme, like the British
Parliament, or a government of delegated powers, which, while carefully
defined, should be extremely limited in its functions or scope of
action. But back of all this were the fundamental ideas—the British and
the American—the spirit of the old societies and the spirit of the new
order—of British oligarchy and of American democracy.
Massachusetts and Virginia were respectively the head-quarters and
embodiments of this conflict, this struggling of ideas, these tendencies
to return to the past or to advance into the future, and it is as
remarkable, perhaps, to find the former arrayed on the side of power and
privilege, as that the descendants of the cavaliers should now be the
champions of democracy, and the advocates of the broadest liberty. But,
as has been observed, our ideas are the results of accident, our
opinions originate in the circumstances that surround us, and therefore
while the mental habits of the North were only slightly modified from
those of the mother country, those of the South, under wholly different
conditions—conditions, in fact, utterly unknown to the English mind—were
radically different.
The Northern masses, as has been remarked, were then ignorant and
helpless, and the agricultural class, though advanced considerably
beyond the same class in England, as the tillers of the soil had then
barely escaped from the old feudal slavery or serfdom, were utterly
powerless and without defenders in the great civil contest that
succeeded the revolution. As against the advocates of strong
government—those who represented the governing class—they could make no
resistance whatever, except a physical and revolutionary one. The right
of suffrage was very limited, and, indeed, as in England at this time,
property and not population was the basis of representation, and
therefore the vast majority had no voice nor representation whatever.
Under such circumstances, it is obvious and beyond question that if a
similar state of things had existed at the South, a government would
have been formed on the British model—a republic, doubtless, but a
bastard one—with powers so extensive and absolute that, as we now
witness in Europe, nothing but revolution and physical force could ever
enable the masses to overthrow it or to regain their natural liberty.
But the planters of the South, unlike the farmers of the North, were an
educated class, and fully competent to compete with the great leaders of
the Northern oligarchy. Their ideas were widely advanced beyond those of
the Northern farmer, but their _interests_ were identical—those of
agriculture, of production, of labor, of democracy, of manhood against
privilege, and therefore they naturally fought the battle against strong
government and class distinctions. The government actually adopted was,
with the exception of a life tenure in its judicial department,
substantially that which was originally advised by the leading minds of
the South, and which, instead of being supreme and absolute over the
States, as desired by the Northern leaders, was, with certain
well-defined exceptions, as utterly powerless and indeed disconnected
with the States as the government of England, or any other foreign
power. And perhaps no higher or more patriotic example can be found in
all history than that of the graceful assent and acceptance of the
Northern leaders, when they consented to adopt the present system. As
has been said, it was no selfish or base spirit that prompted their
desire for a strong government. They saw that the great body of the
people were ignorant; all history and all experience warranted them, as
they believed, in retaining power in the hands of the few who then
possessed it—in a word, they could not rise above the circumstances that
surrounded them, or act otherwise than in conformity with their mental
habits. But when fairly beaten in the convention and the great forum of
popular discussion—for when the ideas of Jefferson and other Southern
leaders were brought before the Northern masses, thousands of earnest
and enthusiastic apostles of these new and glorious truths sprung up in
every direction—then Hamilton and his associates generously assented to
the adoption of the present system, and became its warmest advocates.
They in no respect changed their views of government, but they became
convinced that these views were then impracticable, and however
unquestioned their ascendency at the North, that the Southern States
would never consent to any union on such basis, and as a federal union
on almost any terms was essential to the maritime States, they had the
magnanimity to accede to the Southern or democratic view embodied in the
present government, and to become, as has been said, the warmest
advocates for its adoption before the people. But if this patriotic and
high-minded course of Hamilton and the great leaders of Northern
opinion, which thus, it may be said, secured to the country and to the
world the noblest government ever known in human annals, is worthy of
the esteem and admiration of posterity, what a stupendous and boundless
benefit Jefferson, Madison, George Mason, and their associates, who not
alone assented to, but who originated this government, have conferred
upon posterity, and indeed the race itself!
For the first time in human history the grand idea of equality, of an
equal freedom or of equal rights, was declared to be the sole foundation
of government, and made the vital principle of the political order, the
starting-point of a new and more glorious civilization than was ever
before dreamed of in the annals of mankind. Christ had promulgated the
Divine command, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or
recognize in all other men the same rights that you claim for
yourselves; but however faithful some may have been to this command in a
religious sense, all the “Christian” governments that have ever existed,
or that exist now, are in utter conflict with it, and therefore the
government created in 1776, which embodied this glorious truth and
clothed it with the flesh and blood and body and bones of material
power, is unquestionably the most important worldly event that has ever
happened in human affairs. The revolt against England, its success, the
subsequent independence, the creation of a new government, the beginning
of an independent national existence, might all occur without any
radical change of principles or any revolution of ideas, as indeed it is
certain would have been the case if the views of Hamilton and other
Northern leaders had been embodied in the new government. But the grand
idea of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards
embodied in the federal government, was the starting-point of a
revolution the greatest, most beneficent, most radical, and most
important, that has ever happened in the history of the race—a
revolution, moreover, that has gone on ever since, and must continue
until all the governments of the Old World are overthrown, and society
reorganized on the basis of the great, indestructible, and immortal
truth that underlies our own—that fixed, natural, and unchangeable
equality which God has stamped forever on the organism of the race. If,
therefore, we compare the services of Jefferson, Madison, and their
associates with those of other men in other times or other lands, it
will be seen that they rise to a dignity and importance immeasurably
greater than even the most elevated and most glorious among the
benefactors of mankind. How paltry, in comparison, the Barons of
Runymede, who overthrew a tyrant king that had oppressed their order!
How mean and selfish Brutus and his follow-conspirators, when slaying
the man they envied as well as feared! How insignificant even Hampden
and the great leaders of revolution in England, who fought to defend
themselves from the increasing oppression of a ruling class, when
compared with Jefferson and his associates, who proclaimed an idea and
organized a basis for the freedom of the race—for the equal rights of
all whom God had made equal!
But great, and, when compared with what others may have done, immense as
may be the benefits conferred by Jefferson and his associates on
mankind, they only did their duty, and honestly represented the ideas
and desires of their constituencies. Or, in other words, they merely
expressed the opinions and reflected the mental habits that had their
origin in the social condition, and followed as a necessary consequence
of juxtaposition with negroes. If there had been no negroes in
Virginia—no widely different race with its different capacities and
different wants to provide for, in short, if there had been no natural
distinctions, then those accidental and artificial things—wealth,
education, family pride, etc.—which separate classes would have remained
as elsewhere, the basis of political as well as social order. The
descendants of English cavaliers, with their traditions and mental
habits, would, perhaps, be somewhat liberalized, for their condition was
widely changed from that of their ancestors, but without negroes,
without the presence of natural distinctions, without those lines of
demarcation fixed forever by the hand of God for society to repose upon,
they would have remained the most aristocratic community in America.
Neither Thomas Jefferson, nor any of the great controlling minds of the
day, would have been heard of; or, at all events, would not have figured
in that grand _rôle_ where history has always placed them—the authors of
a new idea and the founders of a new political system.
They _might_ have had, as Sir Thomas Moore and Algernon Sidney, and,
indeed, men of all ages have had, feeble glimmerings of the great truth
promulgated in 1776. All who belong to the race or species are created
equal; and this great, fixed, and eternal fact, embedded in the physical
and mental organism of the race, has always been dimly perceived, but
without juxtaposition with a different race, without the actual presence
of the negro, without the constant daily perception of those natural
distinctions that separate races, in contrast with the artificial
distinctions of classes of their own race, neither Jefferson nor any one
else could have risen to the level of the grand truth embodied in the
Declaration of Independence. They _might_ have been distinguished actors
in the great drama of independence, but that, as an historical event,
would not have differed from a score of similar events where one people
or portion of a people have separated and set up an independent
government. The overthrow of the Moorish dominion in Spain—of the rule
of the Spaniards in Holland—and the recent independence of Belgium, are
parallel events, and many others might be named where foreign dominion
has been overthrown and new governments set up without resulting in any
change or progress of ideas, or without working out any fundamental
revolution in human affairs. And if Jefferson, Madison, and their
associates had had the same mental habits as Hamilton, Adams, and others
of the North, it is obvious that independence would not have been
accompanied by a revolution in ideas. As has been said, a more liberal
system than that of the mother country would have been established, but
a new system, a radical and fundamental change in the political order—a
new starting-point in the progress of the race—a government founded on
the universal equality of the citizenship as actually established, it is
obvious would have been impossible. And as the public men of a country
can never rise above the level of the average opinion or the ordinary
mental habits of the people, it is equally obvious that Jefferson and
his associates would never have done so, and therefore, if there had not
been a condition of things that gave origin to new ideas and new habits
of thought in the people of Virginia and elsewhere where these widely
different social elements were in juxtaposition, then it is equally
obvious that the world would never have heard of them in 1776, and
whatever time and circumstances might have brought about in the future,
no _revolution_ at that time would have been possible.
In conclusion, therefore, that is repeated in direct terms which has
been rather inferred than directly stated. The presence of the _negro on
this continent, our juxtaposition with a widely different and inferior
race, and the existence of natural distinctions or natural lines of
demarcation in human society, originating of necessity new ideas and
modes of thought, has been the happiest conjunction that has ever
occurred in human affairs, and has led directly to the establishment of
a new system and a new civilization based on foundations of everlasting
truth—the legal and political equality of the race, or of all those whom
the Almighty Creator has Himself made equal_.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ALLIANCE OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS.
In the foregoing chapter it has been shown how “slavery,” or the
presence of the negro element in our midst, has given origin to the
American idea of democracy—to more expanded and truthful conceptions of
our true relations to each other—to mental habits which led Mr.
Jefferson to promulgate the grand idea of equality in 1776—to make that
great movement a revolution of ideas as well as a war of independence—to
render the latter a mere preliminary for ushering in a new political
system based on the equal rights of citizenship and the starting-point
of a new civilization widely and radically different in its fundamental
idea from anything ever before known in the political experience of
mankind. It has been shown that Hamilton and Jefferson, the respective
leaders and exponents of the opposing ideas and tendencies of the time,
merely reflected the mental habits that belonged to the different social
conditions then existing, or of the different constituencies which they
represented, and after the great contest for independence which they
passed through harmoniously was closed and a new system of government
was to be created, that the ideas of Jefferson generally prevailed and
the present government embodying these ideas was established.
It has been shown, moreover, that both of these great men and those who
acted with them were equally honest and equally patriotic; that neither,
nor any of them could rise above the level of opinion in their
respective sections, for then they would no longer have been
representative men or able to influence the people; that the opinions of
Hamilton reflected the mental habits of the North which clung to the
forms and spirit of the British system founded on artificial
distinctions, while Jefferson, reflecting with equal fidelity the mental
habits that originate in a different social condition—where a
subordinate race is in juxtaposition—advocated a democratic system
resting on the fixed and indestructible laws of nature. And in view of
all these historical facts and inductive facts the conclusion was deemed
irresistible that the presence of the negro element in our midst, the
existence of a natural substratum in the social elements which thus
secured the liberty of our own race—the legal and political equality of
white men—was the happiest event or conjunction of circumstances that
has ever happened in the history of mankind. But while the great
northern leaders thus consented to the establishment of a democratic
system they were driven on by their own tendencies as well as the mental
habits of their people to neutralize its forces and to pervert its
spirit. At that period suffrage was extremely limited, while the
agricultural class in the Northern States—compared with the present—may
be said to have been extremely ignorant.
The northern or federal party were thus enabled to get possession of the
new government and to give it such direction as their opinions and
interests doubtless seemed to demand. The President himself—the
illustrious Washington—was without decided political convictions. His
instincts and his family traditions, it is believed, inclined him in the
direction of the northern party, while the local tendencies of
opinion—the general mental habits of the Virginians to regard the
distinctions of race as the legitimate basis of political
order—generally restrained him, and in the mighty conflict of opinion
kept him in a neutral position. He formed his cabinet out of wholly
incongruous materials, made Jefferson Secretary of State, and Hamilton
Secretary of the Treasury, and selecting other exponents of the
conflicting opinions, sought to neutralize the contending forces by an
equal selection of subordinates from the hostile camps.
The public credit, the restoration of commercial confidence was the
first and most pressing want of the country as well as of the new
government, and in this Hamilton found a pretext for adopting the
British system of finance which he foresaw would enable his party to
recover to a great extent the ground lost in the creation of the
government, and in practice, whatever might be the theory entertained,
restore it or closely approximate it to his darling model—that favorite
British system which he and his associates believed to be an embodiment
of political wisdom. The idea of the British aristocracy that government
is an instrument designed for their benefit was deeply implanted in the
northern mind, and is so still.
In England it is a practice which the idea has simply originated in.
Official employments, pensions and special legislation or monopolies in
England, embrace all or nearly all the ruling class, and therefore, the
idea that government is established for their benefit necessarily
follows. This idea of government is generally embraced by the northern
mind even in our own times, and the habit of looking to this vast and
beneficent power as the source of pecuniary benefits to the people, if
not to a class, is almost universal among the northern people.
Hamilton, brought up under the British system, was deeply imbued with
it, and, placed in power, it was natural enough that he and his
associates should construe the Constitution in a way to give it effect.
The state debts that were contracted for carrying on the war were
assumed by the new government and formed a basis for a national bank
which was soon established, and the rapid restoration of public credit
that followed the restoration of public order and a settled society in a
young and vigorous country was claimed by the federal writers as a proof
of the wisdom of their policy and the extraordinary ability of their
leader.
Mr. Jefferson opposed this policy from the beginning in all its
aspects—the adoption of the British system of finance, the assumption of
state debts, the creation of a national bank, in short, the entire
programme of federal policy. He held with the state-rights democracy of
our day, that the central government was a factitious and limited
government, whose powers were derived, not from the collective people
but from the people of the several or _United States_, that the
Constitution should be literally construed, and the practice under it
strictly confined to the plainly enumerated objects, and, therefore,
that the creation of a national bank, assumption of state debts, etc.,
were unconstitutional in principle and dangerous in practice.
Hamilton and his party, on the contrary, held that the financial policy
they adopted was not only the wisest that was possible under the
circumstances, but that the consequences likely to follow—the
consolidation of power and prestige of the central government—would be
of the greatest possible value to the people. Indeed, the old contest
between Massachusetts and Virginia—the conflict of ideas—the warfare of
widely different mental habits which preceded and ushered in the
government were renewed and accompanied by a bitterness of spirit quite
unknown in the former case. Hamilton, impelled by the opinions of the
North, assumed in practice, if not in theory always, that the central
government sprung from the collective or the American people instead of
the people of the States, and was almost unlimited in its powers, and he
doubtless believed that the more extended its powers, the safer and more
stable would become the country and the more prosperous the people. He
had failed to obtain such a government as he especially desired—a
government after the English model—republican in form but aristocratic
in fact, a government based on those artificial distinctions which the
mental habits of the North were accustomed to regard as the only safe
foundation, and now in power, with the prestige of the great name of
Washington to support his policy, he doubtless believed himself a
patriot, and as performing vital service to his country and to
posterity, when he thus construed the Constitution and consolidated the
powers of the federal system.
Indeed, the fear of the people—of a reckless and disorderly
multitude—was the abiding sentiment of the great northern leaders, and
the consolidation, power, and grandeur of a central government that
should restrain them was the object of all their efforts. Thus, the very
objects the federalists aimed at—doubtless from patriotic motives, for
there being no laws of primogeniture there was no permanent class to be
benefited by their policy—were the very things that Mr. Jefferson and
his friends contemplated as the greatest danger to the country. Hamilton
desired to construe the Constitution in a way to build up an enormous
central power that should hold in check the tendencies to disruption and
disorder, while Jefferson believed that the greater the assumption and
the consolidation of power in the federal system the greater the danger
to the freedom of the States and to the people.
Or, in other words, the federalists believed that the more the central
power was enlarged the greater the scope and strength of the federal
government—the more certain were the States to be kept from disunion and
the restless multitudes from anarchy, while Jefferson and his party
believed that this assumption of power in the central government would
result in the overthrow of the government itself if there was no other
way of obtaining redress and of preserving on the part of the States and
the people of the States the liberties which they fought for in 1776.
Such was the great civil contest that sprung up under the administration
of Washington, but which was constantly restrained by the presence of
that great man, who, without any very decided leanings as regarded the
parties to it, was, moreover, eminently practical and earnestly disposed
to favor conciliation and peace rather than commit himself to the
abstract opinions of either side. It was only, therefore, during the
succeeding administration of Adams that this fundamental conflict of
ideas—this conflict which involved the very foundations of government
itself, and which, back of the immediate actors that figured in the
scene, originated in the different mental habits that spring of
necessity from different social conditions, reached its culmination and
prepared the way for that final solution which the great civil
revolution of 1800 afterwards accomplished.
The federalists, or, more properly, the centralists, had construed the
Constitution in a way to make the government in practice substantially
what they believed it should have been in theory. They had adopted the
British system of finance, had created a national debt and a national
bank, which, as in England, was to be the agency for the deposit and
disbursement of the public revenue, and, from the necessities of the
case, a vast and overshadowing monopoly which was to hold the credit of
the States, and of every individual in the States, at its mercy. In
fact, the States were rapidly sinking into mere dependencies and subject
provinces of the vast and overshadowing power of the central government,
which, not content with its usurpations over the States—tending, in
practice, to almost obliterate the lines of State sovereignty—even
sought to strike down the liberty of the individual citizen, and in its
alien and sedition laws to exercise absolute powers. These laws
authorized the president to imprison and punish citizens and others as
his fears or caprices might dictate, with few, if any, greater
safeguards for the citizen than in absolute governments of the Old
World.
The federal party embodied the British idea of government, and their
notions of liberty differed little, if any, from those of the mother
country. _Liberty_ in England consists in the equal protection of person
and property in an ordinary sense, but, as liberty, in fact, consists in
an equal citizenship or an equal voice in the creation of laws that all
are called on to obey, of course those who have no vote or voice in
these laws are, to that extent, slaves. It was the policy of the
federalists to limit this great natural right of suffrage, and in all
the States where they were in the ascendency they sought to do so, as
indeed was legitimate and consistent with their fundamental idea of
government. Equally consistent and legitimate was their habit of
expecting pecuniary benefits from government, for this, as has been
said, was the practice in England, and the idea or theory that sprung
from it was deeply engraved on the northern mind. While the federalists,
therefore, sought to consolidate power in the hands of the federal
government and to weaken the States, all the selfish and mercenary
interests of the day were naturally attracted to a party whose public
policy thus favored and invited their coöperation.
The conflict of labor and capital—the frightful antagonism between those
whose labor produces all wealth and those who own the wealth produced by
past generations of laborers—is at the bottom of all the revolutions and
civil commotions of modern times, for it involves the whole subject of
government, as well as all those mighty social evils which so disfigure
and deform European society. In England this conflict has, in one sense,
reached its utmost limit—while in another respect it may be said to be
least active or less palpable than anywhere else.
The few who own the wealth produced by past generations are the
wealthiest in the world, while the many who produce all the wealth of
the present are undoubtedly the poorest!
_Those who produce every thing enjoy nothing, while those who produce
nothing enjoy every thing!_ A political economist of great eminence has
made an estimate of the present wealth of England, and declared that, if
equally divided, every man, woman, and child in England would have ten
thousand pounds, or fifty thousand dollars, and yet supposes that there
are ten millions of people who never own a dollar beyond their daily
support! The land is owned by some thirty-five thousand proprietors,
many of whom have large parks containing many thousand acres, filled
with game and left untilled, while millions of men and women of their
own race—their own kind—are without a single foot of that which God
designed for the common sustenance and comfort of all! Education, moral
development, and happiness must go hand in hand with these things, of
course; indeed, it is a truth that should always be recognized when
estimating the well-being of masses of men, that their moral and
physical well-being are necessarily inseparable.
No one, however ignorant or prejudiced in favor of Britishism, or
“British liberty,” can suppose for a moment that such stupendous results
as these, or that such a social condition as that of England, could ever
be brought about by natural causes. They are all of the same race, with
the same natural capacities as well as wants, and if there be any
difference, or any natural inferiority, it is within the governing
class, whose intermarriage among the landed aristocracy has deteriorated
their blood, and reduced them below the normal standard.
It is the government, therefore—the contrivance or political machine
which has worked out these tremendous results—that has dug this mighty
chasm between beings whom the Almighty has created alike, and therefore
forbidden any governmental distinction.
The notion that government should benefit their condition,
therefore—should make them richer and happier—originates in the fact
itself in England, and those who, like the federalists, formed all their
ideas of government after the British model, sought naturally enough to
wield it for these supposed beneficent purposes. There was the same
social conflict, in a degree, at the North as in England. It was the
interest of the capitalist or employer to get all the labor possible
with as little expense as might be, while the laborer would naturally
seek to get as high wages as possible, and in return give as little
labor as possible.
The capitalists, the men of wealth, the professional classes, merchants,
indeed all classes of Northern society, except the agricultural class,
were attracted to the federal party, and, in addition, speculators and
projectors of every kind were naturally drawn in the same direction.
These classes, embracing all the wealth, and cultivation, and social
influence of the day, rallied in support of the federal party, which,
with the government in its hands, with the prestige of power, and nearly
all of the intellectual men of the time on its side, was irresistible,
so far as the North was concerned. The producing classes, the farmers
and laborers—those only that were naturally opposed to its policy, or
whose real interests were in conflict with its policy—were then
comparatively helpless. The right of suffrage was exceedingly limited,
and though the agricultural class largely outnumbered the others, they
were ignorant, without guides, and indeed quite helpless in the grasp of
the federal leaders. The federal party, as has been stated, had, by so
construing the constitution, usurped power that rendered the government
substantially such as they originally desired to establish, and the
masses, without intelligent leaders, were powerless to resist. And any
one intelligently contemplating the condition of things in the Northern
States during the administration of the elder Adams, must be
irresistibly forced to the conclusion that the masses—the laboring and
producing classes—were wholly unable to relieve themselves from the
oppressions of this party, short of a physical revolution and an appeal
to arms. They were largely in the majority, but the right of suffrage
being mainly confined to property-holders, laborers, mechanics,
artisans, etc., were, as in England, disfranchised; while the
agricultural classes, though greatly advanced, no doubt, beyond the same
classes in the Old World, were yet extremely illiterate and ignorant,
and therefore powerless. The policy of the federalists was absolutely
the same as in England—that is, the government was a machine or
instrument through which the few who produce nothing were to enjoy every
thing, and the many, who produce every thing, were to enjoy nothing. In
a new country, with cheap lands and virgin soils, it might be many
centuries before the awful results now manifested in England could be
worked out, but the process was the same—the same causes were in
operation, and the same results would surely follow—differing only in
degree.
Nor, had the Union been confined to the Northern States, was there any
reasonable prospect before the masses of overthrowing the oppression
foisted on them, by a resort to revolution and physical force. They were
the immense majority, it is true, but without leaders, without education
or intelligence, or prestige of any kind, their doom was sealed, their
subjection certain, their slavery inevitable. It would have been the old
story over again—the revolt of the people against their oppressors in
1776 to be again subjected to other oppressions in 1796—a change from
one master to another; though, doubtless, as all the efforts of the race
have been in the direction of progress, a certain advance towards a
better condition. But, fortunately for mankind and the cause of free
institutions, a widely different state of things existed in Virginia and
other States in the South.
As fully considered in another place, the negro element was here
stationary, and in numbers so considerable that rules and regulations
were necessary in regard to it. It had to be provided for; its
capacities, its wants, its necessities, in short, harmonized with the
wants and well-being of the dominant race. The colonial legislatures, as
the State legislatures of the present day, were constantly called on to
enact laws and establish regulations for this subordinate social
element, as well as for themselves, and therefore habits of thought grew
up that gave them widely different notions of government from those of
the people in the North.
There was no social conflict; all had the same interests, and if one man
inherited wealth, and another had nothing but his labor to depend on,
they never came in conflict, for the former never sought the aid of the
government to benefit himself at the expense of his less fortunate
neighbor. In the North, if a citizen inherited ten thousand dollars, he
invested it in some special corporation—a bank, a manufacturing company,
or something else—that had its origin in special legislation, and
perhaps doubly increased his income, which, of course, was drawn from
the laborer, the producer, the class that creates all wealth.
In Virginia, on the contrary, if a citizen inherited ten thousand
dollars, he invested it in lands, in the industrial capacities of
negroes, in short, in labor; and though he may never have labored an
hour with his own hands himself, he became of necessity a producer, with
the same common, universal, and indivisible interests of all other
producers and laborers, and therefore never sought the aid of
government. Indeed, the government could not nor can not at this time
legislate for the benefit—special benefit—of the planter of the South,
or the farmer or producer at the North; and from the day it was created
to this moment, there has never been an act of Congress or of the
federal government that specifically benefited the South. Congress
_might_, it is true, “protect” cotton or wheat, or other of the great
staples which the producers of both sections furnish, but it would be a
“protection” quite as useless to the parties interested as it would be
harmless in its results to other classes and interests among us.
The clear mind of Jefferson grasped these bonds of industrial interest
between the southern planter and northern farmer—the slaveholder of the
South and the laborer of the North—at a very early period, and declared
them “natural allies” in the great conflict then pending. The planter or
“slaveholder” of the South asked nothing from government but its
protection. He had grown up under a condition of things where there was
no social conflict of any kind. There were no opposing interests—no
class distinctions—nothing to appeal to his selfishness or to blind his
judgment. Society was _naturally_ divided, not into the rich and poor as
elsewhere, but into whites and negroes, and, as the latter was owned by
the former there was no contradiction, no motive or possible inducement
to employ the government as an instrument for the special benefit of any
body. The old European notion of government, therefore, that clung and
still clings to the northern mind, that government should regulate the
religion, the commerce, the industry, etc., of the country, was
exploded, and the modern and true American idea that it should simply
protect all alike and give favor to none became the general idea of the
populations of the South; and, indeed, of the great agricultural
populations of the Central States so far as it then could find
expression. And, when this was the general notion of Virginia and other
States at the South as regards their own legitimate government, of
course they would not permit the federal and factitious government
resting on delegated and strictly defined limitations of power, to be
perverted in its spirit and transformed by its practice into a machine,
as in England, to benefit others at their expense. The Southern States,
therefore, especially Virginia and Kentucky, met in their legislatures,
consulted with other States, and, in the celebrated Kentucky and
Virginia resolutions of 1798, made a declaration of principles, and
pledged themselves to a policy that will always serve as the true
landmarks of our State and federative systems so long as the republic,
or, indeed, American freedom itself lasts to bless the world and
illuminate mankind.
These resolutions offered a common platform for the agricultural
States—for the producing classes of all sections—for the masses, the
millions, in short, for all men who believed in the American idea of
government and demanded equal rights for all and favors for none.
Thus the Middle States, the great agricultural populations of the North,
who, unaided and alone were powerless in the grasp of the federal party,
led as that party was by the intellect, and sustained by the wealth and
social prestige of the North, found themselves naturally allied with the
agricultural populations of the South who were led by men quite the
equals in general attainments, and vastly the superiors in political
knowledge, of the great northern leaders. These men—Jefferson, Madison,
George Clinton, and their associates—had already conquered in the great
intellectual contest that had preceded the creation of the government,
and though in the great battle now pending, the centralists occupied
vantage ground, for their banks, state debts, and consolidated federal
powers, attracted to their standards all the selfish interests and
mercenary influences in the country, the former again carried the day,
and in the great civil revolution of 1800 restored the government, as
Mr. Jefferson expressed it, to “the republican tack.” This restoration
of the federal government to its original purposes was surely second
only to the revolution of 1776 in importance, and without it it is
obvious that the fruits of the former must measurably have been lost. As
has been seen, the northern masses were at that time wholly unable to
contend with the opposing minority which embraced within its ranks the
wealth, talent, education, and social influence of the day. And though
largely in the majority as regards numbers, it was powerless even as
regards physical force, for it was without leaders to direct its
energies or to cope successfully with that brilliant array of able and
accomplished civilians and soldiers that gathered about the
administration and directed the councils of the federal party. If the
rule of the federalists in the course of time became personally
oppressive—if that personal “freedom” which in England permits the
_subject_ to enjoy locomotion as he pleases and protects his person from
violence were stricken down, then it may be supposed that the northern
masses would have resisted, and, perhaps, in the progress of the future
have overthrown such government.
But the government actually established by the federalists—by the false
construction of the Constitution, and the usurpations in practice which
would have kept the producing classes—the toiling millions—in the same
or similar subjection to a ruling oligarchy, as is now witnessed in
England, and which, in the course of time, would render them equally
abject, poverty-stricken, ignorant, and miserable, would seem to be, in
view of all the circumstances then existing, beyond their power to
change or reform by a civil revolution like that which did occur in
1800, or to overthrow by the strong hand of physical force. The great
civil revolution, therefore, when able and accomplished statesmen of the
South, the equals in talent, and vastly superior to any class in
Christendom in political knowledge, led the northern producing classes
through the great conflict then pending, and overthrowing the
centralists restored the government to its original purity and
simplicity, must be deemed, as has been said, only second in importance
to the great event of 1776.
And the social condition in the South, the so-called slavery, which
invariably renders the southern planter the natural ally of the northern
farmer, must be considered, as it obviously is in fact, the sole, or at
all events the leading cause for the successful working of democratic
institutions, as it was originally the sole and unquestionable cause
that originated the great American idea of government embodied in the
Declaration of Independence. Nor are the consequences of that condition
of so-called slavery—the existence of a subordinate social element at
the South which has thus, with more or less directness, worked out the
equality, freedom, and happiness of the laboring classes of the
North—limited to our own land or to our own people. As has been
observed, the conflict of capital and labor is the great question of the
day—the question that is at the bottom of all the European revolutions
of modern times, and its solution must, of necessity, involve the
destruction of every government now in existence except our own.
_Capital_ in the old world has the education and intelligence as well as
the government on its side against the people, and the simple fact that,
in half of the American States, capital and labor are united,
inseparable, and indissoluble, is of transcendent importance to the
future liberation of the laboring millions of Europe.
Here—for the first time in the experience of the race—wealth,
cultivation, and intellectual power are arrayed on the side of
production and in defence of the rights of labor, not by a warfare on
northern capital, as it is sometimes charged, but by demanding that
government shall not legislate for the latter at the expense of the
former. Nor is the subordinate element—the inferior race in our midst,
which, in the providence of God has thus been made the mediate or
immediate cause of such vast and boundless benefit to the freedom,
progress, and well-being of the superior race—without participation in
these benefits. God has designed all His creatures for happiness, and
this happiness is always secured when they are in their true position,
and in natural relations to each other; and when the condition of the
negro is compared with his African state—the existing population with
their African progenitors—then it is seen that the progress and
happiness of the inferior has matched _pari passu_ with those of the
superior race.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.
There are something like twelve millions of negroes in America, on the
mainland and the adjacent islands—as large a proportion, perhaps, in
view of their industrial adaptation, as there are of the Caucasian or
dominant race; and, therefore, whatever may be the contingencies or the
wants of the future, there would seem to be no necessity now for any
further importation of these people. Of the twelve millions, there are
between four and five millions in their normal condition at the South.
There are, perhaps, half a million of so-called free negroes, about
equally divided between North and South. There are about four millions
in Brazil, Cuba, and Porto Rico of so-called slaves, but really in a
widely different condition from that common to the South. Finally, there
are between three and four millions of so-called free negroes in the
tropics, in Jamaica, Hayti, and the other islands, with some thousands,
however, scattered about the coast towns, and in the _terra caliente_ of
the mainland. The free negro, in the American Union, as has been stated,
is destined to extinction. It is only a question of time, when this doom
will be accomplished. The census returns, and the universal experience,
recognize this deplorable truth; but beyond them, and independent of any
demonstration whatever, their extinction is a necessity—is as legitimate
and unavoidable as any other _effect_ or effects linked by inevitable
necessity with their predetermining cause or causes. They are not merely
turned loose—abandoned to their fate without masters or protectors to
look after them, but they are assumed to be Caucasians, _black_-white
men, creatures like ourselves, with the same capacities, and the same
wants, and though no one assumes to do so individually, _society_ forces
them to live up to the theory in question, and, as this is impossible,
as no human force or forces can set aside the ordinances of the Eternal,
it destroys them. If, for example, laws were passed to change the color,
the hair, the form of the limbs, or any _physical_ quality of the negro,
and the whole power of the State was brought to bear upon him to compel
him to be like the white man in these respects, it is obvious that
nothing could be accomplished save the destruction of the unhappy
creature. The capacities, the wants, the moral and intellectual nature
of the negro, differ from our own to the precise extent that his
physical nature or bodily structure differs from ours, and, therefore,
Northern society, or rather that monstrous and malignant philanthropy
which in its ignorance and blind impiety deems itself kind and
beneficent, necessarily destroys the object of its solicitude when it
strives to give him the rights of the white man, or to force him to
change his moral and intellectual nature into that of the white man.
If all the children of the age of ten, in a given community, were turned
from their homes into the street and left without their natural
protectors to care and provide for their wants, they would perish in
time, of course, if we could suppose them to remain at this age or
condition. But if, in addition to this abandonment of these helpless
ones, a theory were set up that they _had_ all the capabilities of the
adult, and should, therefore, enjoy the rights and perform the duties of
men and women, they would, of necessity, perish still more rapidly. If a
dog, or horse, or other domestic animal were turned loose or lost its
owner, it would sooner or later perish, but if some deluded
“philanthropist” should set up the assumption that his bull-dog, for
instance, was entitled to the rights and should enjoy the life of the
hound, and therefore attempt to force it to exhibit the same qualities,
the scent, sight, or swiftness that God has given the latter, he would,
of course, destroy the poor thing with far greater rapidity than if he
had simply turned it loose to shift for itself. Similar results do
attend and must attend that malignant philanthropy and blind impiety
which would impose the rights or force the duties of the white man on
the differently organized and differently endowed negro. In Virginia and
Maryland he is simply turned loose without any guide or protector or
white man’s rights whatever, not even the right of free locomotion
common to British subjects, and, therefore, lives longer, for there is
no especial violence attempted—no direct effort made to force him to
live out the life or to manifest the nature of widely different beings.
But in Canada and Massachusetts, where white manhood is held so cheaply
that the negro is supposed to be entitled to the same rights, and direct
efforts are made to compel him to fulfill the same duties, where the
little Prince of Wales in his recent visit declared that _he_ would not
recognize those distinctions of race that originate in the mind of the
Eternal and are fashioned by the hand of Omnipotence, which no amount or
extent of human force, folly, impiety, or crime can obliterate even to
the millionth part of a primordial atom, and which millions of years
after those paltry distinctions of human invention which transform this
common-place lad into an imaginary superiority over his fellows shall
have disappeared, then he rapidly and miserably perishes.
The tendency to extinction, therefore, is always accelerated or
diminished in exact proportion as “impartial freedom” is thrust upon
him—as he is permitted “to enjoy equal rights” with the white man, or as
ignorance and folly, in their blind and cruel kindness and exterminating
goodness, strive to force him to manifest the nature and live the life
of a different being. This assertion, doubtless, startles the reader, as
it once certainly would have startled the writer himself. We are all so
accustomed to mental habits directly in conflict with this assertion,
that it is somewhat difficult to lift our minds out of them and to take
true cognizance of the facts, and inductive facts, that daily confront
us.
The negro _is_ a different being from the white man, and therefore, of
necessity, was designed by the Almighty Creator to live a different
life, and to disregard this—to shut our eyes and blindly beat our brains
against the decree—the eternal purpose of God himself, and force this
negro to live _our life_, necessarily destroys him, for surely human
forces can not dominate or set aside those of Omnipotence. Nor is the
negro the sole sufferer from this blind impiety, this audacious attempt
to disregard the distinctions and to depart from the purposes of the
Almighty Creator. The large “free” negro populations of Maryland and
Virginia are the great drawbacks on their prosperity, and if the hundred
thousand or so of these people were supplanted by the same number of
white laborers, or, indeed, the same number of “slave” negroes, a wide
and beneficent change would rapidly follow. Furthermore, they are
vicious as well as idle and non-productive, and every one of them a
disturbing force—a dangerous element—which, in conjunction with those
hideous wretches maddened with a monstrous theory like those miscreants
at Harper’s Ferry, are always liable to be made instruments of fearful
mischief. The consequences of the fifty thousand “free” negroes in
juxtaposition with the three millions of white people in New York are
barely perceptible, but as scarcely one in fifty of these people are
engaged in productive labor, they are a considerable burden upon the
laboring and producing citizens. True, they do not see it or feel it—and
multitudes of honest and laborious citizens in the rural districts are
profoundly interested in the “cause of freedom,” while thus contributing
a certain portion of each day’s labor for the support of some fifty
thousand non-productive negroes. Again, in the cities and larger towns,
the vices and immoralities of the whites have an extended association
with this free negro element.
The negro in his normal condition has attractive qualities. He is not
degraded, for none of God’s creatures are naturally degraded, and his
fidelity and affection for his master and his master’s family, sometimes
reach a dignity that would reflect honor on the white man. Nor is there
any prejudice or hatred between the races when they are in true relation
to each other. One may travel for months, perhaps years, in the South,
and never witness a collision or the slightest disturbance between them;
but, on the contrary, they will often see a kindly feeling displayed
even when the negro is not owned by those who exhibit it. The negro is
in a social position and relation that accords with his nature, his
wants, the purposes that God has adapted him to, in short, lives out his
own life, and therefore, all that is good, that is healthy in his moral
nature as in his physical nature, is duly manifested. But at the North,
where he is thrust from his natural sphere and forced to live out the
life of a different being, he exhibits the same moral defects that he
does in his physical nature. He is a social monstrosity—and though his
subordinate nature renders him less likely to commit great crimes than
the superior white man, the tendencies to petty immoralities are almost
universal. Some, indeed, bred up in well-regulated families, and others
who are nearly white, escape the general demoralization of this people,
but the instances are probably few—the moral defects march hand in hand
with the physical, and, as they tend continually to disease and death,
so, too, do they tend to universal immorality. And as it would be
strange, indeed, if Providence visited the sins of the dominant race on
these poor creatures alone, they are extensively associated, as has been
observed, with the vices of the whites. With feeble perceptions of moral
obligations, with strong tendencies to animal indulgences of every kind,
and an utter repugnance to productive labor, they congregate in the
cities; and the social exclusion to which they are exposed, as well as
the absence of moral sentiment among them, renders them, to a wide
extent, the instruments of the vices and corruptions of the whites.
Thus, it is not alone the negro’s non-productiveness—the burden, the
absolute tax imposed on the laboring classes—but the demoralization of
this abnormal element, of this social monstrosity, that is inflicted on
society as the legitimate and unavoidable punishment for having placed
the negro in an abnormal condition. God created him a negro—a different
and inferior being, and, therefore, designed him for a different and
inferior social position. Society, or the State, has ignored the work of
the Almighty, and declared that he should occupy the same position and
live out the life of the white man; and the result is, the laboring and
producing classes are burdened with his support, and society, to a
certain extent, poisoned by his presence. To the negro it is
death—necessarily death, as it always must be to all creatures, human or
animal, forbidden to live the life God has blessed them with, or to live
in accord with the conditions He has imposed on them. The ultimate doom
of the poor creatures, therefore, is only a question of time. The great
“anti-slavery” imposture of our times, which has rested on popular
ignorance of a few fundamental truths in ethnology and political
economy, has at last culminated, and few, if any more of these people
will ever be turned loose, or manumitted as it has been called. Whether
they will be restored to society and to usefulness at the North may be
doubted, but necessity as well as humanity will doubtless prompt such a
policy at the South; but, in any event, it is absolutely certain that,
as a class, they will become extinct, and a hundred years hence it is
reasonable to suppose that no such social monstrosity as a “free negro”
will be found in America.
But another and far more embarrassing question is presented by free
negroism outside of the American Union, and that now confronts us in
Cuba, Jamaica, Hayti, Mexico, and on the whole line of our Southern
border. This is the danger, the sole danger of the so-called slavery
question, and it involves possibilities that are fearful to think of,
though scarcely dangerous at all if our own people were truly
enlightened on the general subject.
In a previous chapter it has been shown how climatic and industrial laws
govern our mixed populations, and, without the slightest interference of
government, the negro element goes just where its own welfare as well as
that of the white citizenship and the general interests of civilization
demand its presence. This law of industrial adaptation has carried it
from northern ports into the Central States, from the latter to the
Border States, and is now, with even increased activity, carrying it
from Virginia, etc., into the Gulf States, and thus permitted to go on,
with all obstacles removed from the path of its progress, a time will
come when the negro population of the New World will be within the
centre of existence where it was created, and where the Almighty Creator
has provided for its well-being. A sectional party in the North, taking
advantage of popular ignorance, and actually enacting a law prohibiting
it to exist anywhere where white labor is best adapted, could not by
that sole act do any practical injury to the social order of the South.
Such an act would indeed be a violation of the spirit of the federal
compact, and, as an adjunct of the hostile policy of the foreign enemies
of republican institutions, its moral bearings would be full of
mischief; but, disconnected or disunited with the British free negro
policy, it would be harmless, for, as Mr. Webster once declared, it
would only be a “reënactment of the will of God.” But, as already
observed, the danger of this whole question lies beyond the boundaries
of the American Union, and if it be true that we have a considerable
number in our midst disaffected to democratic institutions—then every
man opposed to the existing condition, or so-called slavery, is, however
ignorant of it, to a certain extent an instrument of the enemies of
these institutions; and the policy of any such party, as well as the
action of any among us, whether in concert with, or independently of any
such party, for the same common object or end, becomes treason, and
treason the most wicked and revolting that the mind can conceive of, for
it involves the natural supremacy of the white man over the negro, as
well as the permanence, peace, and prosperity of our republican system.
The Spanish, still less the Portuguese conquerors of America, have never
exhibited that healthy natural instinct which preserves the integrity of
races, so universally as the Anglo-Americans have done. They have
intermixed and amalgamated with the Indians or Aboriginals with little
hesitation; and though they have always manifested a certain repugnance
to an equality with the still more subordinate negro, they have largely
intermixed, and therefore, extensively deteriorated and ruined
themselves.
In Brazil there are nearly four millions of negroes that are called
slaves, but held more by the bonds of pecuniary interest than they are
by nature, as with us. There is a large mulatto and mongrel population,
often highly educated, possessing vast wealth, with, of course, all the
advantage? that these things give when society does not rest on natural
distinctions. A mulatto or mongrel in Virginia or Mississippi may be
left to take cure of himself, or be a so-called freeman, but he can
never be a citizen—can never in any thing whatever be legally endowed
with the social attributes, any more than he can with the natural
attributes, of the white man. But in Brazil, and, indeed, in Cuba, the
mulatto, mongrel, or negro may by law become a citizen, may own slaves,
may, in short, be artificially invested with all the “rights” by the
government that nature—that God himself has withheld or forbidden. The
white man in Cuba is a slave to a foreign dominion, and this same
foreign power, while it withholds from him his natural rights, forces
the negro by the same arbitrary power into legal equality with him. The
arbitrary force is less in Brazil, but the low grade of manhood in the
white element, its extensive affiliation and consequent deterioration
with the subject race, has rendered them incapable of either
comprehending liberty or of enjoying free institutions. The negro that
was a slave once becomes a citizen, with all the legal rights of the
white man, and, if he inherits wealth, educates his children, etc., then
these artificial and accidental things, instead of the distinctions of
nature, become the line of demarcation in society. If a planter has a
family of children by his negro slaves, and educates them and leaves
them his wealth, then they become influential citizens, makers of the
government, etc., and leaders of fashion, perhaps, in Rio Janeiro and
other cities. The white man is so degraded, the instinct of race so
perverted, the sense of superiority so obtuse—in short, the nature of
the Caucasian so completely corrupted by extensive affiliations with the
subject race, that natural distinctions are no longer a line of
demarcation, and wealth, accident, etc., as in Europe, and as the
Federalists once desired, are the basis of the political and social
order. It is somewhat different in Cuba, for here the American instinct
of race and the high appreciation of manhood common to all societies
based on the order of nature have a certain influence. But even in Cuba,
in our own neighborhood, within a few hours’ sail of our coast, society
rests upon an artificial basis, and what is called slavery rather
involves pecuniary considerations than a question of races.
The social condition, therefore, or so-called slavery may be overthrown
any day in Brazil or Cuba, for, resting on a basis of property instead
of the distinctions of nature common with us, there is no permanent
security for the social safety, and in view of the policy of England on
this subject and its influence in Brazil, we should not be surprised at
any moment to hear that a revolution had broken out, and that slavery
was overthrown in every portion of the Brazilian empire. This result
which may happen at any moment, and which circumstances alone may
protract for an indefinite period, would seem to be ultimately
inevitable—for the white element is every day becoming more deteriorated
and feeble; and, without the mental and moral power, without the healthy
instinct of the race to buoy it up amid such corrupt and corrupting
tendencies, without that high sense of manhood which makes the American
“slaveholder” the perfect type and complete embodiment of the strength
and power of the great master race of mankind, without, in short, the
natural superiority of the white man to restrain this negro and mongrel
population, it is certain sooner or later to escape from all legal
restraint, and any hour the whole social fabric may collapse into utter
and hopeless ruin. It will be well for Americans who desire to preserve
American institutions and American civilization to heed this and ponder
well on the uncertain and rotten foundations of social order in Brazil
and Cuba, and which, already fatally undermined, may at any moment, as
has been said, collapse into a huge mass of free negroism, and thus
become a portion of that diseased, monstrous, and nameless condition
which ignorance, and folly, and imposture, and hatred to American
democracy have combined to pervert language as well as stultify reason
and call freedom.
Elsewhere it has been shown that the negro isolated in Africa is in a
natural condition, for he multiplies himself, but that he is in his
normal, healthy, educated or civilized condition at the South, for he
then multiplies with vastly greater rapidity than in a state of
isolation, and consequently, _must_ be more in harmony with those fixed
and eternal decrees that God has ordained for the government of all His
creatures. It has also been shown that the negro abandoned and left to
himself in Virginia, etc., dies out, but, of course, less rapidly than
at the North where the notion prevails that he is the same being as
themselves, and therefore, in their efforts to make him manifest the
same qualities, or, in other words, to force on him the same “rights,”
he rapidly tends to extinction. But there is still another phase of free
negroism vastly more extended and more dangerous to republican
institutions and the future civilization of America.
The negro is a creature of the tropics, and his labor is essential to
the cultivation of tropical and tropicoid products, which, in turn, are
essential to the happiness and well-being of all mankind. But, as has
been shown, his _mental_ organism renders him incapable—as absolutely
and inevitably as the _physical_ organism of the white man renders _him_
incapable of tropical production. In the brief space allowed in this
work to the consideration of this vital and most momentous truth, the
author could only present a few leading facts in its support, but these
_facts_ are so overwhelming that no rational or honest mind in
Christendom will venture to dispute the truth in question. Furthermore
it may be stated without chance or possibility of historical
contradiction, that in the entire experience of mankind no single
instance has ever been known when the isolated negro or the labor of the
white man has cultivated the soil or grown the products of the tropics.
The mind of the white man and the body of the negro—the intellect of the
most elevated and the industrial capacities of the most subordinate of
all the known human races, therefore, constitute the elements and motive
forces of tropical civilization. Every mind capable of reasoning at all
will know that civilization is impossible without production, and
production in the great tropical centre of our continent being forever
absolutely and necessarily impossible without negro labor guided,
controlled, and managed by the higher intelligence of the white man—it
is therefore absolutely certain that the social relation which English
writers have taught the world to regard as a condition of slavery, is
simply that social adaptation of the industrial forces of the
subordinate race, essential, not alone to their own welfare but to the
welfare of all mankind, and without which there can no more exist what
we call civilization in a large portion of America than there can be
life without food or light without the sun. This is obvious, and indeed
unavoidable to those who are in actual juxtaposition with negroes. But
in Europe where there are white men only, and where negroes, Indians,
Malays, etc., are in the popular imagination beings like themselves
except in the complexion, and only need to be civilized, as they
suppose, to be like others, it was an easy matter to excite a public
feeling hostile to the prosperity of the people of the tropics. The
theory, or rather dogma of a single race, that all mankind was a unit,
and negroes, Indians, etc., had a common origin and common nature, and
therefore common rights, had been set up by English writers during the
conflict with the American colonies; and Dr. Johnson, with his usual
coarseness of expression, had declared that “the Virginia slaveholders
were the loudest yelpers for liberty”—thus, in utter unconsciousness,
paying them a compliment when he believed he was inflicting a sarcasm of
peculiar virulence.
The doctrine of the Declaration of Independence had reacted in Europe,
and the French Revolution, which followed so closely on the American,
threatened to overthrow the whole social fabric in the Old World and to
reconstruct its governments on the basis of the great American idea
promulgated by Jefferson. To counteract these tendencies, the English
statesmen of the day sought to distract the attention of the people from
their own wrongs to the fancied wrongs of the negro—and Wilberforce, Dr.
Johnson, and other tory leaders and writers, originated that world-wide
delusion and imposture which, in the name of freedom, has probably done
more damage to freedom than all other influences combined, within the
last seventy years. The assumption of a single race—that the negro was a
_black_-white man, and therefore entitled to all the rights of white
men, naturally attracted the attention and aroused the sympathies of the
English masses, and when the supposed wrongs of the negro in America
were contrasted with their own, the latter, doubtless, seemed utterly
insignificant in comparison.
The English government, therefore, entered on an “anti-slavery” policy,
which, beginning with the abrogation of the “slave trade” has continued
ever since, and though it has impoverished, and, in fact, destroyed some
of the finest provinces of the British empire, it is as avowed, defined,
and energetic at this moment, perhaps even more so than at any other
period since it was commenced. Mr. Calhoun and others have supposed that
the so-called emancipation of negroes in the British West India Islands
originated in a spirit of commercial rivalry, and in order to monopolize
tropical production in their East Indian possessions that they were
willing to sacrifice utterly their West Indian colonies. There can be no
doubt that British statesmen universally believed that the example they
were about to give us in this respect would be followed by universal
“emancipation” in the United States, as, indeed, it has been followed by
all the European governments owning American possessions. But while this
was expected by every body in England, and thus far may be said to have
been the prime motive of their action, it is not reasonable to assume
that British statesmen were prompted by a spirit of commercial rivalry
or believed for a moment that they were concocting a grand scheme for
securing a monopoly of tropical products. The policy begun by Pitt forty
years previous, naturally and necessarily culminated in the
“emancipation” of 1832, though the desire to neutralize the popular
excitement then prevailing in respect to parliamentary reform, doubtless
hastened the action of the government. English statesmen may be unable,
and probably are unable to explain the motives for their “anti-slavery”
policy, but they never mistake or fail to recognize its vital importance
to the preservation of their system. Democracy and aristocracy are
necessarily antagonistic in all their tendencies, and the progress,
strength, and extension of the former necessarily involve the downfall
and destruction of the latter. And, as it is the South—the
“slaveholders,” the States, and the people whose social life rests upon
natural distinctions that have always struck the deadliest blows at the
British system, and, as declared by the old tory, Dr. Johnson, eighty
years ago, have been the warmest supporters of liberty, British
statesmen, in their turn, desired to break down a condition thus
dangerous and thus in conflict with their own.
Indeed, they can not avoid making war upon the social order of the
South. It is a necessity that exists in the nature of things, and
springs spontaneously from the circumstances that constitute the
opposing conditions, and therefore, from 1776 to 1860 this warfare,
openly or secretly, on the battle-field, or the still more dangerous
arena of public opinion, has been uninterrupted. Their system is based
on artificial distinctions—on things of human invention; ours on natural
distinctions—those fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty; and so
long as England is an American power her policy must be in conflict with
our own. If it could ever be successful—if the twelve millions of
negroes on this continent could ever be forced from their normal
condition of subordination into a legal equality with the whites—then it
is obvious democratic institutions would be rendered impracticable. A
simple statement of the facts involved would seem to be sufficient to
convince every American mind not corrupted by British opinions, that the
British “anti-slavery” policy is part and parcel of the British system,
and therefore must go on as it has gone on until it either overthrows
our republican institutions, or England, and indeed all other European
governments and European influences are driven from the New World. The
_causes_ of West Indian “emancipation,” therefore, lie deeper and are
far wider in their scope, and immeasurably more deadly in their
consequences than any temporary schemes of commercial rivalry, as
suggested by Mr. Calhoun, to monopolize tropical products.
They strike at the national life—at the heart of republicanism, at the
fundamental principle that underlies our system, at the everlasting
truth that all who belong to the race are created free and equal; and
should it ever be successful, should our people ever become so corrupted
in opinion, and so debauched in their instincts as to assent to the
British “anti-slavery” policy and “abolish slavery”—distort and
transform themselves into equality with negroes, then it could not be
long before the forms as well as the spirit of republicanism would
disappear from the New World, and whatever might happen in the course of
centuries, all that Washington and Jefferson and the glorious spirits of
1776 labored for would be lost to mankind.
While British and monarchical writers, therefore, have labored to
corrupt the nation at the heart—to delude the reason and debauch the
instincts of our people—to teach them that the negro was a man like
themselves, and that the instincts which God gave them for their
guidance in these respects were unworthy prejudices—that to retain this
inferior and different being in a subordinate social position
corresponding with his wants and our own welfare was wrong—an evil, a
sin—in short, “enslaving him”—while European writers and their dupes
among us were thus at work corrupting the intellect of a great people,
the British government have steadily labored to reduce their teachings
to practice and to “abolish slavery” in all their American possessions.
It has been estimated that something like five hundred millions of money
have been expended within the last seventy years to carry out the
British “anti-slavery” policy, to abolish the natural supremacy of the
white man over the negro, to obliterate the distinctions fixed by the
Almighty Creator, and equalize those _He_ has created unequal. This vast
expenditure is wrung, of course, from the toil, and sweat, and misery of
the English laboring classes, and to pay the annual interest on it every
laborer in England is compelled to give a certain portion of every day’s
toil, which is thus taken from the mouths of his children to carry on a
policy at war with liberty in America, but which through the monstrous
delusions of the day is represented to be the noblest philanthropy! An
aristocracy, a class, a mere fraction of the people, have laid this
enormous burden on their brethren, their own race—those whom God created
their equals—in order to obliterate the distinctions by which the
Almighty has separated white men and negroes; or, in other words, to
preserve _their_ distinctions—those which they have invented, which
separate themselves from their brethren, the British aristocracy have
mortgaged the bodies and souls of unborn generations of their kind in an
impious and fruitless effort to destroy the distinctions that separate
races, and equalize white men and negroes in America. The interest for a
single year on this enormous sum, this mighty burden laid on the working
classes of England, expended on popular education, would doubtless react
in a wide-spread revolution and the utter annihilation of those who,
under the pretence of philanthropy, or of liberating negroes in America,
have imposed these stupendous burdens on the people.
A few years since, an awful dispensation of Providence in a neighboring
island swept away in a brief space of time something like three millions
of people—but, if the annual interest paid on the debt contracted under
pretence of benefiting negroes in America had been applied to the relief
of the Irish, probably all or nearly all of these unfortunate white
people might have been saved. Indeed, it is reasonable to suppose that,
if the money taken from Irish laborers within the last seventy years and
expended for the assumed benefit of the negro had been applied to their
relief during the famine in Ireland, few if any would have perished, and
that awful calamity never would have disfigured the annals of mankind.
It is the practice of some ignorant and superficial people among us to
glorify this stupendous misery inflicted on the ignorant and helpless of
their own race under the pretence of benefiting the negro. If it had
done so—if, instead of an almost equal mischief to the negro, it had
done him a boundless good—the crime against their own helpless and
miserable people—the poor, ignorant, overworked, and under-fed laboring
millions of their own race—would still scarcely find its parallel in the
history of human wrongs. But it inflicted a still greater crime on the
white people of the islands for it has doomed them to extinction—not
absorption by the negro blood, as already explained, but entire
extinction—that result being simply a question of time. Such, briefly
considered, are the causes and the results, so far as the dominant race
are concerned, of the British “anti-slavery” policy, which, beginning in
the latter part of the last century, has been steadily and vigorously
persisted in, and is, probably, in the face of all its failures in
respect to its avowed objects, more energetic and active at this moment
than ever before. All the islands are now, whether owned by England or
other European powers, substantially turned over to the negro. The
governments are simply means for working out this ultimate result.
England, for example, sends out to Jamaica a governor, secretary, and a
few other officials, perhaps to carry on the government of that island.
The governor probably selects his council from the white element, for
the reason that the intelligence of the negro is incompetent to the
functions attached, and in respect to the more important official
positions generally, they are, from the same cause, filled by white men,
or by those of predominating white blood. But the policy of the
government is to place power in the hands of the blacks, and therefore
all the subordinate official positions are filled by these people, as,
indeed, all the higher and more important places would be if there was
sufficient intelligence to perform the functions properly.
A foreign power—an aristocracy of the Old World—employs a machinery, a
contrivance, or thing called a government, to exterminate the white
population in these islands, and to turn them over to the rule of the
negro. Under the English system, political or official position, unlike
ours, carries with it social importance, and a negro who is a member of
the legislature or a magistrate in Jamaica is elevated, in a social
sense, above the white who holds no official position, no matter what
his claims may be in other respects. With the same legal and political
rights, the same schools, and with largely predominating numbers, and
most of the official positions in their hands, which, under the British
system always gives social importance, the whole operation of the
government is employed to elevate the negro in the social scale, and to
depress the white man. Of course, intermarriage or affiliation—that
hideous admixture of the blood of different races which God has
eternally forbidden, and so fearfully punishes with extinction—is a
direct and necessary consequence of this governmental policy.
A short time since the Queen of England knighted a negro, and as this
factitious elevation placed him in a social position, quite above the
untitled white man of Jamaica, the white woman of fashion would,
doubtless, smother the instincts God gave for her guidance, and
desecrate her womanhood by an alliance with this creature whom God made
inferior, but whom a woman, four thousand miles distant, was pleased to
make her equal. The government, therefore—all the governments of the
British Islands, and, indeed of all other European powers, are simply
instruments that are employed to elevate the negro and to depress the
white man to a common level, to equalize races, to obliterate
distinctions fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty, and make the
negro the equal of the white man. It is no negative or _laissez faire_
policy—no neutral or indifferent desire to apply a theory and leave it
to work itself out—no mere abstract declaration that all are equal, and
therefore should be left free to ascend or descend in the social scale
according to their merits; but, on the contrary, the government is an
active and all-potent machinery, in constant operation to _force_ the
negro up, and the white man down, to a common level. And it is probable
that people in England look upon this policy as just and proper. The
negroes largely predominate in number—why should they not have most of
the offices? They have been wronged and oppressed, and are without
education, and therefore the higher places must be filled by white men;
but why should not they enjoy all the places they are fit for? Such,
doubtless, is the notion of those in Europe, who, utterly ignorant of
the negro, suppose him a man like themselves, except in his color. But
human ignorance and impiety can not change His eternal decrees or alter
the works of the Almighty. A middle-aged, respectable woman in England
may “Knight” a negro, and declare that _she_ thus makes him superior to
the common throng of white men, but the black skin, and woolly hair, and
flat nose, and gross organism, and semi-animal instinct, fixed by the
hand of the Eternal, remains just the same, unaltered and unalterable
forever. All that is possible with the middle-aged woman in question,
and those who surround her, is to corrupt, to debauch, to destroy, to
exterminate, to murder their own blood, to doom the white people of
those islands to a fate more horrible than the universal slaughter that
swept away the whites of San Domingo. The process of extinction now
rapidly destroying the white population of these islands has been
already considered, but it may be stated again in this place, for it
involves such tremendous consequences that it should be shouted in the
ears of the world with the voice of an earthquake. The legal and
political equality of the negro necessarily carries after it social
equality wherever they predominate in numbers, and when there are no
social distinctions of race or blood recognized, when that instinct
which God has given us to protect the integrity of the organism, is
debauched and trampled under foot—when, in short, the “prejudice against
color” is lost, then such depraved creatures do not hesitate to form
those hideous alliances that generate mulatto offspring. And when the
whole force of government is brought to bear against the “prejudice”
that revolts at social equality—the hideous affiliation, the monstrous
admixture of blood, the vile obscenity that they may term marriage,
follows with equal certainty. But the result of this admixture—the
wretched progeny—the diseased and sterile offspring—has a determinate
limit, and it is solely a question of time when it becomes wholly
extinct. Any one reflecting a moment on this subject—that is, any
American whose instincts are healthy and true—would surely prefer that
his offspring should perish from the earth rather than to mix their
blood with that of the negro; and as the white blood in Jamaica, etc.,
is rapidly mixing with the negro, and without foreign addition to the
white element it must soon be universally tainted with the base alloy;
and as all mongrels must of necessity ultimately perish, it is certain
that the fate of the white people of these islands is vastly more
deplorable than was that of those suddenly swept from existence in the
Island of Hayti.
The policy of England in this respect is universally adopted in the
other islands. The first step was a war upon the “slave trade”—then
“emancipation,” then the active employment of the government to enforce
the theory of a single race by forcing the negro up and the white man
down to an abhorrent, but, of course, impossible level; for those they
have transformed into a hideous kind of equality must finally perish,
and in the whole tropical centre of the continent, ultimately become
extinct. Meanwhile labor, production, and civilization are tending to
the same common extinction with the white blood. In Jamaica, Barbadoes,
and some other islands where there is yet a considerable white
population, the negro, despite the influence of the government, is kept
in a certain restraint. He labors little, it is true, but with little
patches of land he grows bananas and other products that in that genial
clime enable him to live in a certain comfort (to him), and thus—while
the same being would rapidly perish in Massachusetts—to multiply
himself. The horrible traffic in Mongols or coolies, since the negro was
released from labor in the islands, has enabled the owners of some of
the former flourishing plantations to continue their cultivation, and to
furnish in some places almost their former products, and thus to deceive
the world and to delude those who desire to be deluded in respect to the
non-productiveness of the free negro.
But, as has been shown, the negro neither does nor can labor, in our
sense of the word. His dominating sensualism forbids such a thing, while
his limited intellect, like that of the child, renders him unable to
labor for a remote result, or deny himself immediate indulgence, in
order to acquire an ultimate good. In his natural state, and isolated
from the white man, he calls into exercise his powerful senses for his
immediate wants, and with no winter or barren seasons to contend
against, and favored with a soil with its many and nutritious fruits
growing spontaneously all about him, he has little more to do than to
pluck and eat. In this way he lives, multiplies himself, and enjoys an
animal existence, which to us seems miserable enough certainly, and, in
comparison with his condition at the South, is indeed miserable enough;
but to this he is rapidly tending in the West Indian Islands, and the
whole power of the British and other European governments are rapidly
forcing him into this condition.
In Hayti he is now nearing this final condition—this inherent and
original Africanism to which he is tending in the whole of tropical
America. Seventy years ago the mulattoes rebelled against the whites;
they excited and impelled the negroes to join them; the whites—only
twenty-five thousand—were immolated or driven from the island. Then came
the conflict among themselves; the mulattoes and mongrels in turn were
massacred, or sought shelter in San Domingo, the Spanish part of the
island, and the negroes, masters of the field, with their natural
tendencies unchecked, without guides or masters, have finally culminated
in _Solouque_—a typical negro—a serpent worshipper and _Obi-man_, as
chief or emperor.
When the French expedition, under the command of General Le Clerc,
failed to recover the island in 1803, and the Haytians, though their
independence was not recognized by the French republic, were able,
through the aid of the British, to assume the position of an independent
power, they commenced a national existence peculiarly favored in many
respects. The mulattoes—generally the children of French masters—were
many of them highly educated, having been sent to Paris for this purpose
in childhood. They had the sympathy of the French people, and indeed of
the whole world on their side, for the worst tyrants and oppressors of
Europe, while laboring with all their might to crush out the liberty of
white men, were then as now deeply interested in the freedom of the
black. Moreover, they had the physical as well as the moral support of
England, and without a single enemy in the world to embarrass their
progress. But though without foreign enemies or wars of any kind to
check their advance, with the finest climate and most fertile soil in
the world, they have rapidly collapsed into their natural Africanism.
Internal commotions, as now in Mexico, began at once among the mongrels,
and bloodshed and misery of every kind prevailed until this element was
necessarily destroyed, and the stolid, idle, and useless savagism of
Africa became the essential characteristic of these people. Two causes
alone have held in check the tendencies to Africanism—the white blood
and the surrounding civilization. The mongrel element, though constantly
diminishing in numbers, naturally governed, until it became so feeble
that _Solouque_, a typical negro and an embodiment of Africanism, of
fetichism, and a worshiper of Obi, seized the supreme power and
inaugurated savagism. Accident of some kind or other has recently pushed
this worthy aside and placed one _Jeffrard_, a _griffe_, or “colored
man,” or mulatto, in power, who calls himself president, but he will
doubtless soon give place to some negro chief. Nevertheless, there is a
considerable infusion of white blood still in Hayti, and therefore, the
true negro condition—the natural condition when isolated, the condition
it has always been in and that it always must remain in when isolated
from the Caucasian man—is not yet entirely restored. Again, the
surrounding civilization—the contact with Europeans and Americans that
commerce or trade in fruits growing almost spontaneously together, with
the few adventurous spirits always attracted to such a fertile soil as
Hayti would, perhaps, always give to its people a somewhat different
external character from the African type.
But if we can be permitted to suppose the absence of these things—the
utter extinction of the Caucasian innervation and absolute isolation of
the negro as in Africa—then, in the tropics, the same climate with
similar soils, in short, similar circumstances to those surrounding him
in Africa, of course, the negro type, the negro nature, the negro being,
would be the same as it always has been and is now in Africa. On the
coast, where he is brought in contact with the white man, where there
are a good many with white blood in their veins, who therefore retain to
some extent the habitudes of the superior race, the traditions and
historic recollections of their former masters are preserved. But in the
interior, where the negro is permitted to live out his African
tendencies, he has lost all knowledge of the events of seventy years
ago. History, religion, even the French language has disappeared, and in
their place there is Obiism and African dialects, while probably not one
in a thousand has any perception, knowledge, or recollection whatever of
_Christophe_, _Dessalines_, or others of those notorious chiefs who a
little over half a century since filled the island with the terror of
their names. As observed, the utter extinction of the Caucasian
innervation and absolute isolation of the negro in Hayti, would of
necessity end in complete Africanism, and to this end, this final
culmination of savagism the whole British and European policy is now
necessarily tending. It is true, the existence of a white government by
mere juxtaposition as well as the prestige of power, holds in check the
strong tendencies to Africanism, but the policy—the official employment
of negroes always carrying with it under the monarchical _regime_ social
importance—tends powerfully to degrade the white blood and induce
amalgamation, to drag after it, of course, that inevitable extinction of
the mongrel progeny which the Almighty has decreed forever and
everywhere.
Thus, the British “anti-slavery” policy tends rapidly and constantly to
the restoration of Africanism, to savagery—to the building up of a
mighty barbarism in the very heart of the American continent—to the
establishment of a huge heathenism that shall spread itself over fifty
degrees of the most fertile and beautiful portion of the New World.
This, then, is the legitimate termination of that wide-spread delusion
of modern times, which has drawn into its fatal and monstrous embrace
multitudes of honest and well-meaning men, and while it already has
worked out evils so stupendous as to be almost beyond our powers of
computation to measure them, and never in an instance, direct or
indirect, done the slightest good whatever, at this moment it threatens
to inflict even greater evils on the world than those it has hitherto
cursed it with. The process through which all this mischief is worked
out can not or need not be mistaken—a man may run and read it, and
though a fool understand it. It is this: 1st. The dogma of a single
race—that the negro is a _black_-white man. 2d. The “anti-slavery”
policy of Pitt, nominally to put down the “slave trade.” 3d.
“Emancipation”—and whites and negroes declared equal. 4th. The policy of
European governments to elevate negroes and depress whites, inducing
social equality and consequent amalgamation. 5th. Absorption of the
white blood by mongrelism. 6th. Sterility and extinction of the mixed
element. 7th. Restoration of the African type and consequent savagism—a
huge heathenism—indeed, Africa itself literally lifted up and planted
down in the center of the New World—thus erecting a mighty barbarism
directly in the path of American civilization; and which, in all coming
time, as the ally or instrument of European monarchists, shall beat back
the waves of democracy, and dwarf the growth and limit the power of the
American Republic.
The “free negro” in our midst perishes; but in the tropics, in his own
climate, he poisons and destroys the white blood, and then relapses into
his inherent and organic Africanism, toward which he is rapidly impelled
by the British “anti-slavery policy.” If that policy could ever be
successful—if fifty degrees of latitude in the heart of this continent
should ever be permanently turned over to free negroism, or ever
occupied by a huge barbarism—which should not alone render the fairest
portion of the New World a barren waste, but interrupt that great law of
progress which impels us onward, to carry our system, our republican
idea of government, and our civilization, over the whole “boundless
continent,” then, indeed, might the friends of freedom despair of the
future. But it is not possible that the rising civilization of America
is to be thus broken down by the monarchists of the Old World. The law
of progress—of national growth, of very necessity—that has carried us to
the Gulf of Mexico and to the Pacific Ocean, will continue to impel us
onward, and to restore the rapidly perishing civilization of the great
tropical center of the continent. All humane and good men desire that
this grand result shall be worked out by moral causes, by the exposure
of the monstrous delusion in regard to negroes that has been productive
of so much evil; but either through an appeal to reason or to the
sword—through the operation of natural causes or through bloodshed and
national suffering—the final end _must be_ the restoration of the negro
to his normal condition, and consequent restoration of civilization in
the finest portion of our great continent.
CHAPTER XXIV.
CONCLUSION.
It has been shown in the foregoing pages of this work how that
providential arrangement of human affairs, in which the negro is placed
in natural juxtaposition with the white man, has resulted in the freedom
of the latter and the general well-being of both. It has been seen how a
subordinate and widely different social element in Virginia and other
States, naturally gave origin to new ideas and new modes of thought,
which, thrusting aside the mental habits and political notions brought
from the Old World, naturally culminated in the grand idea of 1776, and
the establishment of a new political existence, based on the natural,
organic, and everlasting equality of the race. It has been seen,
moreover, how the great civil revolution of 1800, which, under the lead
of Mr. Jefferson, restored the purity and simplicity of republican
principles, saved the Northern laboring and producing classes from the
rule of an oligarchy, otherwise unavoidable, however it might have been
disguised by republican formulas.
It is scarcely necessary to appeal to the political history of the
country since 1800 to demonstrate the vital importance—indeed, the
measureless benefit—of what, by an absurd perversion of terms, has been
called negro slavery, to the freedom, progress, and prosperity of the
laboring and producing classes of the North, and, indeed, to all
mankind. It is seen that the existence of an inferior race—the presence
of a natural substratum in the political society of the New World—has
resulted in the creation of a new political and social order, and
relieved the producing classes from that abject dependence on capital
which in Europe, and especially in England, renders them mere beasts of
burthen to a fraction of their brethren. The simple but transcendent
fact, that capital and labor are united at the South—that the planter,
or so-called slaveholder, is, _per se_ and of necessity, the defender of
the rights of the producing classes—this simple fact is the key to our
political history, and the hinging-point of our party politics for half
a century past.
The Southern planter and Northern farmer—the producing classes—a
Southern majority and a Northern minority—have governed the country,
fought all its battles, acquired all its territories, and conducted the
nation step by step to its present position of strength, power, and
grandeur. Just as steadily a Northern majority and a Southern minority
have opposed this progress, and labored blindly, doubtless, to return to
the system of the federalists, indeed to the European idea of class
distinctions, and to render the government an instrument for the benefit
of the few at the expense of the many.
They have sought to create national banks; demanded favors for those
engaged in manufactures; for others engaged in Northern fisheries; for
the benefit of bands of jobbers and speculators, under pretence of
internal improvements; in short, the Northern majority have labored
continually to render the government, as in England, an instrument for
benefiting classes at the expense of the great body of the people.
All these efforts, however, have been defeated by the union of Northern
and Southern producers, and mainly by the latter. A large majority of
the votes in Congress against special legislation and schemes of
corruption have been those of so-called slaveholders; and in those
extraordinary instances when Northern representatives of agricultural
constituencies have proved faithless, and these schemes “worked” through
Congress, “slaveholders” in the Presidential chair have interposed the
veto, and saved the laboring and producing classes from this dangerous
legislation, and the government from being perverted into an instrument
of mischief.
Such has been our political and current party history, and from the
nature and necessities of things, every “extension of slavery,” or every
expansion of territory, must in the future, as it has in the past,
strengthen the cause of the producing classes, and give greater scope
and power to the American idea of government.
The acquisition of Louisiana, of Florida, of Texas, etc., of those great
producing States on the Gulf Coast, has nearly overwhelmed the
anti-republican tendencies of the North, and rendered almost powerless
those combinations of capital and speculation which have always
endangered the purity and simplicity of our republican system, and thus
the rights and safety of the laboring and producing millions everywhere.
Indeed, it is a truth, a simple fact, that can not be too often
repeated, that in precise proportion to the amount or extent of
so-called “slaveholding”—of the number of negroes in their normal
condition—is freedom rendered secure to the white millions of the North.
And when in the progress of time Cuba and Central America, and the whole
tropical center of the continent is added to the Union and placed in the
same relation to New York and Ohio that Mississippi, Alabama, etc., are
now, then it is evident that the democratic or American idea of
government will be securely established forever, and the rights and
interests of the producing millions who ask nothing from government but
its protection, will be no longer endangered by those anti-republican
tendencies which in the North have so long conflicted with the natural
development of our system, and struggled so long and fiercely against
its existence.
If this freedom and prosperity of the white man rested on wrong or
oppression of the negro, then it would be valueless, for the Almighty
has evidently designed that all His creatures should be permitted to
live out the life to which He has adapted them. But when all the facts
are considered, and the negro population of the South contrasted with
any similar number of their race now or at any other time in human
experience, then it is seen that, relatively considered, they are,
perhaps, benefited to even a greater extent than the white population
themselves.
The efforts, as has been shown, to reverse the natural order of
things—to force the negro into the position of the white man—are not
merely failures, but frightful cruelties—cruelties that among ourselves
end in the extinction of these poor creatures, while in the tropics it
destroys the white man and impels the negro into barbarism.
In conclusion, therefore, it is clear, or will be clear to every mind
that grasps the facts of this great question, with the inductive facts,
or the unavoidable inferences that belong to them, that any American
citizen, party, sect, or class among us, so blinded, bewildered, and
besotted by foreign theories and false mental habits as to labor for
negro “freedom”—to drag down their own race, or to thrust the negro from
his normal condition, is alike the enemy of both, a traitor to his blood
and at war with the decrees of the Eternal.
THE END.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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