CHAPTER XVIII.

THE PRESENT AND PROBABLE FUTURE CONDITION OF THE THREE RACES WHICH

INHABIT THE TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES.

The principal part of the task which I had imposed upon myself is now

performed: I have shown, as far as I was able, the laws and manners of

the American democracy. Here I might stop; but the reader would perhaps

feel that I had not satisfied his expectations.

The absolute supremacy of democracy is not all that we meet with in

America; the inhabitants of the New World may be considered from more

than one point of view. In the course of this work, my subject has often

led me to speak of the Indians and the negroes; but I have never been

able to stop in order to show what places these two races occupy, in the

midst of the democratic people whom I was engaged in describing. I have

mentioned in what spirit, and according to what laws, the Anglo-American

Union was formed; but I could only glance at the dangers which menace

that confederation, while it was equally impossible for me to give a

detailed account of its chances of duration, independently of its laws

and manners. When speaking of the United republican States, I hazarded

no conjectures upon the permanence of republican forms in the New World;

and when making frequent allusion to the commercial activity which

reigns in the Union, I was unable to inquire into the future condition

of the Americans as a commercial people.

These topics are collaterally connected with my subject, without forming

a part of it; they are American, without being democratic; and to

portray democracy has been my principal aim. It was therefore necessary

to postpone these questions, which I now take up as the proper

termination of my work.

The territory now occupied or claimed by the American Union, spreads

from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific ocean. On the

east and west its limits are those of the continent itself. On the

south it advances nearly to the tropic, and it extends upward to the icy

regions of the north.[207]

The human beings who are scattered over this space do not form, as

in Europe, so many branches of the same stock. Three races naturally

distinct, and I might almost say hostile to each other, are discoverable

among them at the first glance. Almost insurmountable barriers had been

raised between them by education and by law, as well as by their origin

and outward characteristics; but fortune has brought them together on

the same soil, where, although they are mixed, they do not amalgamate,

and each race fulfils its destiny apart.

Among these widely differing families of men, the first which attracts

attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is

the white or European, the MAN pre-eminent; and in subordinate grades,

the negro and the Indian. These two unhappy races have nothing in

common; neither birth, nor features, nor language, nor habits. Their

only resemblance lies in their misfortunes. Both of them occupy an

inferior rank in the country they inhabit; both suffer from tyranny; and

if their wrongs are not the same, they originate at any rate with the

same authors.

If we reasoned from what passes in the world, we should almost say that

the European is to the other races of mankind, what man is to the lower

animals;--he makes them subservient to his use; and when he cannot

subdue, he destroys them. Oppression has at one stroke deprived the

descendants of the Africans of almost all the privileges of humanity.

The negro of the United States has lost all remembrance of his country;

the language which his forefathers spoke is never heard around him; he

abjured their religion and forgot their customs when he ceased to belong

to Africa, without acquiring any claim to European privileges. But he

remains half-way between the two communities; sold by the one, repulsed

by the other; finding not a spot in the universe to call by the name

of country, except the faint image of a home which the shelter of his

master's roof affords.

The negro has no family; woman is merely the temporary companion of his

pleasures, and his children are upon an equality with himself from the

moment of their birth. Am I to call it a proof of God's mercy, or

a visitation of his wrath, that man in certain states appears to be

insensible to his extreme wretchedness, and almost affects with a

depraved taste the cause of his misfortunes? The negro, who is plunged

in this abyss of evils, scarcely feels his own calamitous situation.

Violence made him a slave, and the habit of servitude gives him the

thoughts and desires of a slave; he admires his tyrants more than he

hates them, and finds his joy and his pride in the servile imitation of

those who oppress him: his understanding is degraded to the level of his

soul.

The negro enters upon slavery as soon as he is born; nay, he may have

been purchased in the womb, and have begun his slavery before he began

his existence. Equally devoid of wants and of enjoyment, and useless to

himself, he learns, with his first notions of existence, that he is the

property of another who has an interest in preserving his life, and that

the care of it does not devolve upon himself; even the power of thought

appears to him a useless gift of Providence, and he quietly enjoys the

privileges of his debasement.

If he becomes free, independence is often felt by him to be a heavier

burden than slavery; for having learned, in the course of his life, to

submit to everything except reason, he is too much unacquainted with

her dictates to obey them. A thousand new desires beset him, and he is

destitute of the knowledge and energy necessary to resist them: these

are masters which it is necessary to contend with, and he has learned

only to submit and obey. In short, he sinks to such a depth of

wretchedness, that while servitude brutalizes, liberty destroys him.

Oppression has been no less fatal to the Indian than to the negro race,

but its effects are different. Before the arrival of the white men in

the New World, the inhabitants of North America lived quietly in their

woods, enduring the vicissitudes, and practising the virtues and vices

common to savage nations. The Europeans, having dispersed the Indian

tribes and driven them into the deserts, condemned them to a wandering

life full of inexpressible sufferings.

Savage nations are only controlled by opinion and by custom. When the

North American Indians had lost their sentiment of attachment to their

country; when their families were dispersed, their traditions obscured,

and the chain of their recollections broken; when all their habits were

changed, and their wants increased beyond measure, European tyranny

rendered them more disorderly and less civilized than they were before.

The moral and physical condition of these tribes continually grew

worse, and they became more barbarous as they became more wretched.

Nevertheless the Europeans have not been able to metamorphose the

character of the Indians; and though they have had power to destroy

them, they have never been able to make them submit to the rules of

civilized society.

The lot of the negro is placed on the extreme limit of servitude, while

that of the Indian lies on the utmost verge of liberty; and slavery does

not produce more fatal effects upon the first, than independence upon

the second. The negro has lost all property in his own person, and he

cannot dispose of his existence without committing a sort of fraud:

but the savage is his own master as soon as he is able to act; parental

authority is scarcely known to him; he has never bent his will to

that of any of his kind, or learned the difference between voluntary

obedience and a shameful subjection; and the very name of law is unknown

to him. To be free, with him, signifies to escape from all the shackles

of society. As he delights in this barbarous independence, and would

rather perish than sacrifice the least part of it, civilisation has

little power over him.

The negro makes a thousand fruitless efforts to insinuate himself among

men who repulse him; he conforms to the taste of his oppressors, adopts

their opinions, and hopes by imitating them to form a part of their

community. Having been told from infancy that his race is naturally

inferior to that of the whites, he assents to the proposition, and is

ashamed of his own nature. In each of his features he discovers a trace

of slavery, and, if it were in his power, he would willingly rid himself

of everything that makes him what he is.

The Indian, on the contrary, has his imagination inflated with the

pretended nobility of his origin, and lives and dies in the midst of

these dreams of pride. Far from desiring to conform his habits to ours,

he loves his savage life as the distinguishing mark of his race, and he

repels every advance to civilisation, less perhaps from the hatred

which he entertains for it, than from a dread of resembling the

Europeans.[208] While he has nothing to oppose to our perfection in

the arts but the resources of the desert, to our tactics nothing but

undisciplined courage; while our well-digested plans are met by the

spontaneous instincts of savage life, who can wonder if he fails in this

unequal contest?

The negro who earnestly desires to mingle his race with that of the

European, cannot effect it; while the Indian, who might succeed to a

certain extent, disdains to make the attempt. The servility of the one

dooms him to slavery, the pride of the other to death.

I remember that while I was travelling through the forests which still

cover the state of Alabama, I arrived one day at the log house of a

pioneer. I did not wish to penetrate into the dwelling of the American,

but retired to rest myself for a while on the margin of a spring, which

was not far off, in the woods. While I was in this place (which was

in the neighborhood of the Creek territory), an Indian woman appeared,

followed by a negress, and holding by the hand a little white girl of

five or six years old, whom I took to be the daughter of the pioneer.

A sort of barbarous luxury set off the costume of the Indian; rings

of metal were hanging from her nostrils and ears; her hair, which was

adorned with glass beads, fell loosely upon her shoulders; and I saw

that she was not married, for she still wore the necklace of shells

which the bride always deposits on the nuptial couch. The negress was

clad in squalid European garments.

They all three came and seated themselves upon the banks of the

fountain; and the young Indian, taking the child in her arms, lavished

upon her such fond caresses as mothers give; while the negress

endeavored by various little artifices to attract the attention of

the young Creole. The child displayed in her slightest gestures a

consciousness of superiority which formed a strange contrast with her

infantine weakness; as if she received the attentions of her companions

with a sort of condescension.

The negress was seated on the ground before her mistress, watching her

smallest desires, and apparently divided between strong affection for

the child and servile fear; while the savage displayed, in the midst

of her tenderness, an air of freedom and of pride which was almost

ferocious. I had approached the group, and I contemplated them in

silence; but my curiosity was probably displeasing to the Indian woman,

for she suddenly rose, pushed the child roughly from her, and giving me

an angry look, plunged into the thicket.

I had often chanced to see individuals met together in the same place,

who belonged to the three races of men which people North America. I had

perceived from many different results the preponderance of the whites.

But in the picture which I have just been describing there was something

peculiarly touching; a bond of affection here united the oppressors with

the oppressed, and the effort of Nature to bring them together rendered

still more striking the immense distance placed between them by

prejudice and by law.

* * * * *

THE PRESENT AND PROBABLE FUTURE CONDITION OF THE INDIAN TRIBES WHICH

INHABIT THE TERRITORY POSSESSED BY THE UNION.

Gradual disappearance of the native Tribes.--Manner in which it takes

place.--Miseries accompanying the forced Migrations of the Indians.--The

Savages of North America had only two ways of escaping Destruction; War

or Civilisation.--They are no longer able to make War.--Reasons why they

refused to become civilized when it was in their Power, and why they

cannot become so now that they desire it.--Instance of the Creek

and Cherokees.--Policy of the particular States toward these

Indians.--Policy of the federal Government.

None of the Indian tribes which formerly inhabited the territory of New

England--the Narragansets, the Mohicans, the Pequots--have any existence

but in the recollection of man. The Lenapes, who received William Penn

a hundred and fifty years ago upon the banks of the Delaware, have

disappeared; and I myself met with the last of the Iroquois, who were

begging alms. The nations I have mentioned formerly covered the country

to the seacoast; but a traveller at the present day must penetrate more

than a hundred leagues into the interior of the continent to find

an Indian. Not only have these wild tribes receded, but they are

destroyed;[209] and as they give way or perish, an immense and

increasing people fills their place. There is no instance on record of

so prodigious a growth, or so rapid a destruction; the manner in which

the latter change takes place is not difficult to describe.

When the Indians were the sole inhabitants of the wilds whence they

have been expelled, their wants were few. Their arms were of their own

manufacture, their only drink was the water of the brook, and their

clothes consisted of the skin of animals, whose flesh furnished them

with food.

The Europeans introduced among the savages of North America firearms,

ardent spirits, and iron: they taught them to exchange for manufactured

stuffs the rough garments which had previously satisfied their untutored

simplicity. Having acquired new tastes, without the arts by which they

could be gratified, the Indians were obliged to have recourse to the

workmanship of the whites; but in return for their productions, the

savage had nothing to offer except the rich furs which still abounded in

his woods. Hence the chase became necessary, not merely to provide for

his subsistence, but in order to procure the only objects of barter

which he could furnish to Europe.[210] While the wants of the natives

were thus increasing, their resources continued to diminish. From the

moment when a European settlement is formed in the neighborhood of

the territory occupied by the Indians, the beasts of chase take the

alarm.[211] Thousands of savages, wandering in the forest and destitute

of any fixed dwelling, did not disturb them; but as soon as the

continuous sounds of European labor are heard in the neighborhood, they

begin to flee away, and retire to the west, where their instinct teaches

them that they will find deserts of immeasurable extent. "The buffalo is

constantly receding", say Messrs. Clarke and Cass in their Report of the

year 1829; "a few years since they approached the base of the Allegany;

and a few years hence they may even be rare upon the immense plains

which extend to the base of the Rocky mountains." I have been assured

that this effect of the approach of the whites is often felt at two

hundred leagues' distance from the frontier. Their influence is thus

exerted over tribes whose name is unknown to them, and who suffer the

evils of usurpation long before they are acquainted with the authors of

their distress.[212]

Bold adventurers soon penetrate into the country the Indians have

deserted, and when they have advanced about fifteen or twenty

leagues from the extreme frontiers of the whites, they begin to build

habitations for civilized beings in the midst of the wilderness. This

is done without difficulty, as the territory of a hunting nation is ill

defined; it is the common property of the tribe, and belongs to no one

in particular, so that individual interests are not concerned in the

protection of any part of it.

A few European families, settled in different situations at a

considerable distance from each other, soon drive away the wild animals

which remain between their places of abode. The Indians, who had

previously lived in a sort of abundance, then find it difficult to

subsist, and still more difficult to procure the articles of barter

which they stand in need of.

To drive away their game is to deprive them of the means of existence,

as effectually as if the fields of our agriculturists were stricken with

barrenness; and they are reduced, like famished wolves, to prowl through

the forsaken woods in quest of prey. Their instinctive love of their

country attaches them to the soil which gave them birth,[213] even after

it has ceased to yield anything but misery and death. At length they

are compelled to acquiesce, and to depart: they follow the traces of the

elk, the buffalo, and the beaver, and are guided by those wild animals

in the choice of their future country. Properly speaking, therefore, it

is not the Europeans who drive away the native inhabitants of America;

it is famine which compels them to recede; a happy distinction, which

had escaped the casuists of former times, and for which we are indebted

to modern discovery.

It is impossible to conceive the extent of the sufferings which attend

these forced emigrations. They are undertaken by a people already

exhausted and reduced; and the countries to which the new-comers betake

themselves are inhabited by other tribes which receive them with jealous

hostility. Hunger is in the rear; war awaits them, and misery besets

them on all sides. In the hope of escaping from such a host of enemies,

they separate, and each individual endeavors to procure the means

of supporting his existence in solitude and secrecy, living in the

immensity of the desert like an outcast in civilized society. The social

tie, which distress had long since weakened, is then dissolved; they

have lost their country, and their people soon deserts them; their very

families are obliterated; the names they bore in common are forgotten,

their language perishes, and all the traces of their origin disappear.

Their nation has ceased to exist, except in the recollection of the

antiquaries of America and a few of the learned of Europe.

I should be sorry to have my reader suppose that I am coloring the

picture too highly: I saw with my own eyes several of the cases of

misery which I have been describing; and I was the witness of sufferings

which I have not the power to portray.

At the end of the year 1831, while I was on the left bank of the

Mississippi, at a place named by Europeans Memphis, there arrived a

numerous band of Choctaws (or Chactas, as they are called by the

French in Louisiana). These savages had left their country, and were

endeavoring to gain the right bank of the Mississippi, where they

hoped to find an asylum which had been promised them by the American

government. It was then in the middle of winter, and the cold was

unusually severe; the snow had frozen hard upon the ground, and the

river was drifting huge masses of ice. The Indians had their families

with them; and they brought in their train the wounded and the sick,

with children newly born, and old men upon the verge of death. They

possessed neither tents nor wagons, but only their arms and some

provisions. I saw them embark to pass the mighty river, and never will

that solemn spectacle fade from my remembrance. No cry, no sob was heard

among the assembled crowd: all were silent. Their calamities were of

ancient date, and they knew them to be irremediable. The Indians had

all stepped into the bark which was to carry them across, but their dogs

remained upon the bank. As soon as these animals perceived that their

masters were finally leaving the shore, they set up a dismal howl, and

plunging all together into the icy waters of the Mississippi, they swam

after the boat.

The ejectment of the Indians very often takes place at the present

day, in a regular, and, as it were, a legal manner. When the European

population begins to approach the limit of the desert inhabited by a

savage tribe, the government of the United States usually despatches

envoys to them, who assemble the Indians in a large plain, and having

first eaten and drunk with them, accost them in the following manner:

"What have you to do in the land of your fathers? Before long you must

dig up their bones in order to live. In what respect is the country you

inhabit better than another? Are there no woods, marshes, or prairies,

except where you dwell? And can you live nowhere but under your own sun?

Beyond those mountains which you see at the horizon, beyond the lake

which bounds your territory on the west, there lie vast countries where

beasts of chase are found in great abundance; sell your land to us, and

go to live happily in those solitudes." After holding this language,

they spread before the eyes of the Indians fire-arms, woollen garments,

kegs of brandy, glass necklaces, bracelets of tinsel, ear-rings, and

looking-glasses.[214] If, when they have beheld all these riches,

they still hesitate, it is insinuated that they have not the means of

refusing their required consent, and that the government itself will not

long have the power of protecting them in their rights. What are they to

do? Half convinced and half compelled, they go to inhabit new deserts,

where the importunate whites will not let them remain ten years in

tranquillity. In this manner do the Americans obtain at a very low

price whole provinces, which the richest sovereigns of Europe could not

purchase.[215]

These are great evils, and it must be added that they appear to me to

be irremediable. I believe that the Indian nations of North America are

doomed to perish: and that whenever the Europeans shall be established

on the shores of the Pacific ocean, that race of men will be no

more.[216] The Indians had only the two alternatives of war or

civilization; in other words, they must either have destroyed the

Europeans or become their equals.

At the first settlement of the colonies they might have found it

possible, by uniting their forces, to deliver themselves from the small

bodies of strangers who landed on their continent.[217] They several

times attempted to do it, and were on the point of succeeding; but the

disproportion of their resources, at the present day, when compared

with those of the whites, is too great to allow such an enterprise to

be thought of. Nevertheless, there do arise from time to time among the

Indians men of penetration, who foresee the final destiny which awaits

the native population, and who exert themselves to unite all the tribes

in common hostility to the Europeans; but their efforts are unavailing.

Those tribes which are in the neighborhood of the whites are too much

weakened to offer an effectual resistance; while the others, giving way

to that childish carelessness of the morrow which characterizes savage

life, wait for the near approach of danger before they prepare to meet

it: some are unable, the others are unwilling to exert themselves.

It is easy to foresee that the Indians will never conform to

civilisation; or that it will be too late, whenever they may be inclined

to make the experiment.

Civilisation is the result of long social process which takes place in

the same spot, and is handed down from one generation to another, each

one profiting by the experience of the last. Of all nations, those

submit to civilisation with the most difficulty, which habitually live

by the chase. Pastoral tribes, indeed, often change their place of

abode; but they follow in regular order in their migrations, and often

return again to their old stations, while the dwelling of the hunter

varies with that of the animals he pursues.

Several attempts have been made to diffuse knowledge among the Indians,

without controlling their wandering propensities; by the Jesuits in

Canada, and by the puritans in New England;[218] but none of these

endeavors were crowned by any lasting success. Civilisation began in the

cabin, but it soon retired to expire in the woods; the great error of

these legislators of the Indians was their not understanding, that in

order to succeed in civilizing a people, it is first necessary to fix

it; which cannot be done without inducing it to cultivate the soil: the

Indians ought in the first place to have been accustomed to agriculture.

But not only are they destitute of this indispensable preliminary to

civilisation, they would even have great difficulty in acquiring it. Men

who have once abandoned themselves to the restless and adventurous

life of the hunter, feel an insurmountable disgust for the constant and

regular labor which tillage requires. We see this proved in the bosom

of our own society; but it is far more visible among peoples whose

partiality for the chase is a part of their natural character.

Independently of this general difficulty, there is another, which

applies peculiarly to the Indians; they consider labor not merely as an

evil, but as a disgrace; so that their pride prevents them from becoming

civilized, as much as their indolence.[219]

There is no Indian so wretched as not to retain, under his hut of bark,

a lofty idea of his personal worth; he considers the cares of industry

and labor as degrading occupations, he compares the husbandman to the ox

which traces the furrow; and even in our most ingenious handicraft,

he can see nothing but the labor of slaves. Not that he is devoid of

admiration for the power and intellectual greatness of the whites; but

although the result of our efforts surprises him, he contemns the means

by which we obtain it; and while he acknowledges our ascendency, he

still believes in his superiority. War and hunting are the only pursuits

which appear to him worthy to be the occupations of a man.[220] The

Indian, in the dreary solitude of his woods, cherishes the same ideas,

the same opinions, as the noble of the middle ages in his castle, and he

only requires to become a conqueror to complete the resemblance; thus,

however strange it may seem, it is in the forests of the New World,

and not among the Europeans who people its coasts, that the ancient

prejudices of Europe are still in existence.

More than once, in the course of this work, I have endeavored to explain

the prodigious influence which the social condition appears to exercise

upon the laws and the manners of men; and I beg to add a few words on

the same subject. When I perceive the resemblance which exists between

the political institutions of our ancestors, the Germans, and of the

wandering tribes of North America: between the customs described by

Tacitus, and those of which I have sometimes been a witness, I cannot

help thinking that the same cause has brought about the same results

in both hemispheres; and that in the midst of the apparent diversity of

human affairs, a certain number of primary facts may be discovered, from

which all the others are derived. In what we usually call the German

institutions, then, I am inclined only to perceive barbarian habits; and

the opinions of savages, in what we style feudal principles.

However strongly the vices and prejudices of the North American Indians

may be opposed to their becoming agricultural and civilized, necessity

sometimes obliges them to it. Several of the southern nations, and among

them the Cherokees and the Creeks,[221] were surrounded by Europeans,

who had landed on the shores of the Atlantic, and who, either descending

the Ohio or proceeding up the Mississippi, arrived simultaneously upon

their borders. These tribes have not been driven from place to place,

like their northern brethren; but they have been gradually enclosed

within narrow limits, like the game within the thicket before the

huntsmen plunge into the interior. The Indians, who were thus placed

between civilisation and death, found themselves obliged to live by

ignominious labor like the whites. They took to agriculture, and without

entirely forsaking their old habits or manners, sacrificed only as much

as was necessary to their existence.

The Cherokees went further; they created a written language; established

a permanent form of government; and as everything proceeds rapidly

in the New World, before they had all of them clothes, they set up a

newspaper.[222]

The growth of European habits has been remarkably accelerated among

these Indians by the mixed race which has sprung up[223]: Deriving

intelligence from the father's side, without entirely losing the savage

customs of the mother, the half-blood forms the natural link between

civilisation and barbarism. Wherever this race has multiplied, the

savage state has become modified, and a great change has taken place in

the manners of the people.[224]

The success of the Cherokees proves that the Indians are capable of

civilisation, but it does not prove that they will succeed in it. The

difficulty which the Indians find in submitting to civilisation proceeds

from the influence of a general cause, which it is almost impossible

for them to escape. An attentive survey of history demonstrates that,

in general, barbarous nations have raised themselves to civilisation by

degrees, and by their own efforts. Whenever they derived knowledge from

a foreign people, they stood toward it in the relation of conquerors,

not of a conquered nation. When the conquered nation is enlightened, and

the conquerors are half savage, as in the case of the invasion of Rome

by the northern nations, or that of China by the Moguls, the power

which victory bestows upon the barbarian is sufficient to keep up his

importance among civilized men, and permit him to rank as their equal,

until he becomes their rival: the one has might on his side, the other

has intelligence; the former admires the knowledge and the arts of the

conquered, the latter envies the power of the conquerors. The barbarians

at length admit civilized man into their palaces, and he in turn opens

his schools to the barbarians. But when the side on which the physical

force lies, also possesses an intellectual preponderance, the conquered

party seldom becomes civilized; it retreats, or is destroyed. It may

therefore be said, in a general way, that savages go forth in arms to

seek knowledge, but that they do not receive it when it comes to them.

If the Indian tribes which now inhabit the heart of the continent could

summon up energy enough to attempt to civilize themselves, they might

possibly succeed. Superior already to the barbarous nations which

surround them, they would gradually gain strength and experience; and

when the Europeans should appear upon their borders, they would be in a

state, if not to maintain their independence, at least to assert their

right to the soil, and to incorporate themselves with the conquerors.

But it is the misfortune of Indians to be brought into contact with a

civilized people, which is also (it may be owned) the most avaricious

nation on the globe, while they are still semi-barbarian: to find

despots in their instructors, and to receive knowledge from the hand

of oppression. Living in the freedom of the woods, the North American

Indian was destitute, but he had no feeling of inferiority toward any

one; as soon, however, as he desires to penetrate into the social

scale of the whites, he takes the lowest rank in society, for he enters

ignorant and poor within the pale of science and wealth. After having

led a life of agitation, beset with evils and dangers, but at the same

time filled with proud emotions,[225] he is obliged to submit to a

wearisome, obscure, and degraded state, and to gain the bread which

nourishes him by hard and ignoble labor; such are in his eyes the only

results of which civilisation can boast: and even this much he is not

sure to obtain.

When the Indians undertake to imitate their European neighbors, and to

till the earth like the settlers, they are immediately exposed to a

very formidable competition. The white man is skilled in the craft of

agriculture; the Indian is a rough beginner in an art with which he is

unacquainted. The former reaps abundant crops without difficulty, the

latter meets with a thousand obstacles in raising the fruits of the

earth.

The European is placed among a population whose wants he knows and

partakes. The savage is isolated in the midst of a hostile people, with

whose manners, language and laws, he is imperfectly acquainted, but

without whose assistance he cannot live. He can only procure the

materials of comfort by bartering his commodities against the goods

of the European, for the assistance of his countrymen is wholly

insufficient to supply his wants. When the Indian wishes to sell the

produce of his labor, he cannot always meet with a purchaser, while the

European readily finds a market; and the former can only produce at a

considerable cost, that which the latter vends at a very low rate. Thus

the Indian has no sooner escaped those evils to which barbarous nations

are exposed, than he is subjected to the still greater miseries of

civilized communities; and he finds it scarcely less difficult to live

in the midst of our abundance, than in the depth of his own wilderness.

He has not yet lost the habits of his erratic life; the traditions of

his fathers and his passion for the chase are still alive within him.

The wild enjoyments which formerly animated him in the woods painfully

excite his troubled imagination; and his former privations appear to

be less keen, his former perils less appalling. He contrasts the

independence which he possessed among his equals with the servile

position which he occupies in civilized society. On the other hand,

the solitudes which were so long his free home are still at hand; a few

hours' march will bring him back to them once more. The whites offer him

a sum, which seems to him to be considerable, for the ground which he

has begun to clear. This money of the Europeans may possibly furnish him

with the means of a happy and peaceful subsistence in remote regions;

and he quits the plough, resumes his native arms, and returns to the

wilderness for ever.[226] The condition of the Creeks and Cherokees,

to which I have already alluded, sufficiently corroborates the truth of

this deplorable picture.

The Indians, in the little which they have done, have unquestionably

displayed as much natural genius as the peoples of Europe in their most

important designs; but nations as well as men require time to learn,

whatever may be their intelligence and their zeal. While the savages

were engaged in the work of civilisation, the Europeans continued to

surround them on every side, and to confine them within narrower limits;

the two races gradually met, and they are now in immediate juxtaposition

to each other. The Indian is already superior to his barbarous parent,

but he is still very far below his white neighbor. With their resources

and acquired knowledge, the Europeans soon appropriated to themselves

most of the advantages which the natives might have derived from the

possession of the soil: they have settled in the country, they have

purchased land at a very low rate or have occupied it by force, and the

Indians have been ruined by a competition which they had not the means

of resisting. They were isolated in their own country, and their race

only constituted a colony of troublesome aliens in the midst of a

numerous and domineering people.[227]

Washington said in one of his messages to congress, "We are more

enlightened and powerful than the Indian nations, we are therefore bound

in honor to treat them with kindness and even with generosity." But this

virtuous and high-minded policy has not been followed. The rapacity

of the settlers is usually backed by the tyranny of the government.

Although the Cherokees and the Creeks are established upon the territory

which they inhabited before the settlement of the Europeans, and

although the Americans have frequently treated with them as with foreign

nations, the surrounding states have not consented to acknowledge them

as an independent people, and attempts have been made to subject

these children of the woods to Anglo-American magistrates, laws, and

customs.[228] Destitution had driven these unfortunate Indians to

civilisation, and oppression now drives them back to their former

condition; many of them abandon the soil which they had begun to clear,

and return to their savage course of life.

If we consider the tyrannical measures which have been adopted by the

legislatures of the southern states, the conduct of their governors, and

the decrees of their courts of justice, we shall be convinced that the

entire expulsion of the Indians is the final result to which the efforts

of their policy are directed. The Americans of that part of the Union

look with jealousy upon the aborigines,[229] they are aware that these

tribes have not yet lost the traditions of savage life, and before

civilisation has permanently fixed them to the soil, it is intended

to force them to recede by reducing them to despair. The Creeks and

Cherokees, oppressed by the several states, have appealed to the central

government, which is by no means insensible to their misfortunes, and

is sincerely desirous of saving the remnant of the natives, and of

maintaining them in the free possession of that territory which the

Union is pledged to respect.[230] But the several states oppose so

formidable a resistance to the execution of this design, that the

government is obliged to consent to the extirpation of a few barbarous

tribes in order not to endanger the safety of the American Union.

But the federal government, which is not able to protect the Indians,

would fain mitigate the hardships of their lot; and, with this

intention, proposals have been made to transport them into more remote

regions at the public cost.

Between the 33d and 37th degrees of north latitude, a vast tract of

country lies, which has taken the name of Arkansas, from the principal

river that waters its extent. It is bounded on the one side by the

confines of Mexico, on the other by the Mississippi. Numberless

streams cross it in every direction; the climate is mild, and the

soil productive, but it is only inhabited by a few wandering hordes

of savages. The government of the Union wishes to transport the broken

remnants of the indigenous population of the south, to the portion of

this country which is nearest to Mexico, and at a great distance from

the American settlements.

We were assured, toward the end of the year 1831, that 10,000 Indians

had already gone to the shores of the Arkansas; and fresh detachments

were constantly following them; but congress has been unable to excite

a unanimous determination in those whom it is disposed to protect.

Some, indeed, are willing to quit the seat of oppression, but the most

enlightened members of the community refuse to abandon their recent

dwellings and the springing crops; they are of opinion that the work of

civilisation, once interrupted, will never be resumed; they fear that

those domestic habits which have been so recently contracted, may be

irrecoverably lost in the midst of a country which is still barbarous,

and where nothing is prepared for the subsistence of an agricultural

people; they know that their entrance into those wilds will be opposed

by inimical hordes, and that they have lost the energy of barbarians,

without acquiring the resources of civilisation to resist their attacks.

Moreover the Indians readily discover that the settlement which is

proposed to them is merely a temporary expedient. Who can assure them

that they will at length be allowed to dwell in peace in their new

retreat? The United States pledge themselves to the observance of the

obligation; but the territory which they at present occupy was formerly

secured to them by the most solemn oaths of Anglo-American faith.[231]

The American government does not indeed rob them of their lands, but it

allows perpetual incursions to be made on them. In a few years the same

white population which now flocks around them, will track them to the

solitudes of the Arkansas, they will then be exposed to the same evils

without the same remedies; and as the limits of the earth will at last

fail them, their only refuge is the grave.

The Union treats the Indians with less cupidity and rigor than the

policy of the several states, but the two governments are alike

destitute of good faith. The states extend what they are pleased to term

the benefits of their laws to the Indians, with a belief that the

tribes will recede rather than submit; and the central government, which

promises a permanent refuge to these unhappy beings, is well aware of

its inability to secure it to them.[232]

Thus the tyranny of the states obliges the savages to retire, the Union,

by its promises and resources facilitates their retreat; and these

measures tend to precisely the same end.[233] "By the will of our Father

in heaven, the governor of the whole world," said the Cherokees in their

petition to congress,[234] "the red man of America has become small, and

the white man great and renowned. When the ancestors of the people of

these United States first came to the shores of America, they found the

red man strong: though he was ignorant and savage, yet he received them

kindly, and gave them dry land to rest their weary feet. They met in

peace, and shook hands in token of friendship. Whatever the white man

wanted and asked of the Indian, the latter willingly gave. At that time

the Indian was the lord, and the white man the suppliant. But now the

scene has changed. The strength of the red man has become weakness. As

his neighbors increased in numbers, his power became less and less, and

now, of the many and powerful tribes who once covered the United States,

only a few are to be seen--a few whom a sweeping pestilence had left.

The northern tribes, who were once so numerous and powerful, are now

nearly extinct. Thus it has happened to the red man of America. Shall

we, who are remnants, share the same fate?

"The land on which we stand we have received as an inheritance from our

fathers who possessed it from time immemorial, as a gift from our common

Father in heaven. They bequeathed it to us as their children, and

we have sacredly kept it, as containing their remains. This right of

inheritance we have never ceded, nor ever forfeited. Permit us to ask

what better right can the people have to a country than the right of

inheritance and immemorial peaceable possession? We know it is said of

late by the state of Georgia and by the executive of the United States,

that we have forfeited this right; but we think it is said gratuitously.

At what time have we made the forfeit? What great crime have we

committed, whereby we must for ever be divested of our country and

rights? Was it when we were hostile to the United States, and took part

with the king of Great Britain, during the struggle for independence?

If so, why was not this forfeiture declared in the first treaty which

followed that war? Why was not such an article as the following inserted

in the treaty: 'The United States give peace to the Cherokees, but for

the part they took in the last war, declare them to be but tenants at

will, to be removed when the convenience of the states, within whose

chartered limits they live, shall require it?' That was the proper time

to assume such a possession. But it was not thought of, nor would our

forefathers have agreed to any treaty, whose tendency was to deprive

them of their rights and their country."

Such is the language of the Indians: their assertions are true, their

forebodings inevitable. From whichever side we consider the destinies

of the aborigines of North America, their calamities appear to be

irremediable: if they continue barbarous, they are forced to retire: if

they attempt to civilize their manners, the contact of a more civilized

community subjects them to oppression and destitution. They perish if

they continue to wander from waste to waste, and if they attempt to

settle, they still must perish; the assistance of Europeans is necessary

to instruct them, but the approach of Europeans corrupts and repels them

into savage life; they refuse to change their habits as long as their

solitudes are their own, and it is too late to change them when they are

constrained to submit.

The Spaniards pursued the Indians with blood-hounds, like wild beasts;

and they sacked the New World with no more temper or compassion than a

city taken by storm: but destruction must cease, and phrensy be stayed;

the remnant of the Indian population, which had escaped the massacre,

mixed with its conquerors and adopted their religion and manners.[235]

The conduct of the Americans of the United States towards the aborigines

is characterized, on the other hand, by a singular attachment to the

formalities of law. Provided that the Indians retain their barbarous

condition, the Americans take no part in their affairs: they treat them

as independent nations, and do not possess themselves of their hunting

grounds without a treaty of purchase; and if an Indian nation happens

to be so encroached upon as to be unable to subsist upon its territory,

they afford it brotherly assistance in transporting it to a grave

sufficiently remote from the land of its fathers.

The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by those

unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible shame, nor

did they even succeed in wholly depriving it of its rights; but the

Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose

with singular felicity; tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without

shedding blood, and without violating a single great principle of

morality in the eyes of the world.[236] It is impossible to destroy men

with more respect for the laws of humanity.

* * * * *

SITUATION OF THE BLACK POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES, AND DANGERS WITH

WHICH ITS PRESENCE THREATENS THE WHITES.

Why it is more difficult to abolish Slavery, and to efface all Vestiges

of it among the Moderns, than it was among the Ancients.--In the United

States the prejudices of the Whites against the Blacks seem to increase

in Proportion as Slavery is abolished.--Situation of the Negroes in

the Northern and Southern States.--Why the Americans abolish

Slavery.--Servitude, which debases the Slave, impoverishes the

Master.--Contrast between the left and the right Bank of the Ohio.--To

what attributable.--The black Race, as well as Slavery, recedes toward

the South.--Explanation of this fact.--Difficulties attendant upon

the Abolition of Slavery in the South.--Dangers to come.--General

Anxiety.--Foundation of a black Colony in Africa.--Why the Americans of

the South increase the Hardships of Slavery, while they are distressed

at its Continuance.

The Indians will perish in the same isolated condition in which they

have lived; but the destiny of the negroes is in some measure interwoven

with that of the Europeans. These two races are attached to each other

without intermingling; and they are alike unable entirely to separate

or to combine. The most formidable of all the ills which threaten the

future existence of the United States, arises from the presence of a

black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the causes

of the present embarrassments or of the future dangers of the United

States, the observer is invariably led to consider this as a primary

fact.

The permanent evils to which mankind is subjected are usually produced

by the vehement or the increasing efforts of men; but there is one

calamity which penetrated furtively into the world, and which was at

first scarcely distinguishable amid the ordinary abuses of power: it

originated with an individual whose name history has not preserved; it

was wafted like some accursed germ upon a portion of the soil, but it

afterward nurtured itself, grew without effort, and spreads naturally

with the society to which it belongs. I need scarcely add that this

calamity is slavery. Christianity suppressed slavery, but the Christians

of the sixteenth century re-established it--as an exception, indeed, to

their social system, and restricted to one of the races of mankind; but

the wound thus inflicted upon humanity, though less extensive, was at

the same time rendered far more difficult of cure.

It is important to make an accurate distinction between slavery itself

and its consequences. The immediate evils which are produced by slavery

were very nearly the same in antiquity as they are among the moderns;

but the consequences of these evils were different. The slave, among the

ancients, belonged to the same race as his master, and he was often the

superior of the two in education[237] and instruction. Freedom was the

only distinction between them; and when freedom was conferred, they were

easily confounded together. The ancients, then, had a very simple

means of avoiding slavery and its evil consequences, which was that of

enfranchisement; and they succeeded as soon as they adopted this

measure generally. Not but, in ancient states, the vestiges of servitude

subsisted for some time after servitude was abolished. There is a

natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been their

inferior, long after he has become their equal; and the real inequality

which is produced by fortune or by law, is always succeeded by an

imaginary inequality which is implanted in the manners of the people.

Nevertheless, this secondary consequence of slavery was limited to

a certain term among the ancients; for the freedman bore so entire

a resemblance to those born free, that it soon became impossible to

distinguish him from among them.

The greatest difficulty in antiquity was that of altering the law;

among the moderns it is of altering the manners; and, as far as we are

concerned, the real obstacles begin where those of the ancients left

off. This arises from the circumstance that, among the moderns, the

abstract and transient fact of slavery is fatally united to the physical

and permanent fact of color. The tradition of slavery dishonors the

race, and the peculiarity of the race perpetuates the tradition of

slavery. No African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the

New World; whence it must be inferred, that all the blacks who are now

to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen. Thus the

negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignominy to all his descendants;

and although the law may abolish slavery, God alone can obliterate the

traces of its existence.

The modern slave differs from his master not only in his condition,

but in his origin. You may set the negro free, but you cannot make him

otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all; we scarcely

acknowledge the common features of mankind in this child of debasement

whom slavery has brought among us. His physiognomy is to our eyes

hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost

inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the

brutes.[238] The moderns, then, after they have abolished slavery, have

three prejudices to contend against, which are less easy to attack, and

far less easy to conquer, than the mere fact of servitude: the prejudice

of the master, the prejudice of the race, and the prejudice of color.

It is difficult for us, who have had the good fortune to be born among

men like ourselves by nature, and equal to ourselves by law, to conceive

the irreconcilable differences which separate the negro from the

European in America. But we may derive some faint notion of them from

analogy. France was formerly a country in which numerous distinctions of

rank existed, that had been created by the legislation. Nothing can be

more fictitious than a purely legal inferiority; nothing more contrary

to the instinct of mankind than these permanent divisions which had

been established between beings evidently similar. Nevertheless these

divisions subsisted for ages; they still subsist in many places; and

on all sides they have left imaginary vestiges, which time alone can

efface. If it be so difficult to root out an inequality which solely

originates in the law, how are those distinctions to be destroyed which

seem to be founded upon the immutable laws of nature herself? When

I remember the extreme difficulty with which aristocratic bodies, of

whatever nature they may be, are commingled with the mass of the people;

and the exceeding care which they take to preserve the ideal boundaries

of their caste inviolate, I despair of seeing an aristocracy disappear

which is founded upon visible and indelible signs. Those who hope that

the Europeans will ever mix with the negroes, appear to me to delude

themselves; and I am not led to any such conclusion by my own reason, or

by the evidence of facts.

Hitherto, wherever the whites have been the most powerful, they have

maintained the blacks in a subordinate or a servile position; wherever

the negroes have been strongest, they have destroyed the whites; such

has been the only course of events which has ever taken place between

the two races.

I see that in a certain portion of the territory of the United States

at the present day, the legal barrier which separated the two races is

tending to fall away, but not that which exists in the manners of the

country; slavery recedes, but the prejudice to which it has given birth

remains stationary. Whosoever has inhabited the United States, must have

perceived, that in those parts of the Union in which the negroes are no

longer slaves, they have in nowise drawn nearer to the whites. On the

contrary, the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the states

which have abolished slavery, than in those where it still exists; and

nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never

been known.

It is true, that in the north of the Union, marriages may be legally

contracted between negroes and whites, but public opinion would

stigmatize a man who should connect himself with a negress as infamous,

and it would be difficult to meet with a single instance of such a

union. The electoral franchise has been conferred upon the negroes in

almost all the States in which slavery has been abolished; but if they

come forward to vote, their lives are in danger. If oppressed, they may

bring an action at law, but they will find none but whites among

their judges; and although they may legally serve as jurors, prejudice

repulses them from that office. The same schools do not receive the

child of the black and of the European. In the theatres, gold cannot

procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters; in the

hospitals they lie apart; and although they are allowed to invoke the

same Divinity as the whites, it must be at a different altar, and in

their own churches, with their own clergy. The gates of heaven are not

closed against these unhappy beings; but their inferiority is continued

to the very confines of the other world. When the negro is defunct, his

bones are cast aside, and the distinction of condition prevails even in

the equality of death. The negro is free, but he can share neither the

rights, nor the pleasure, nor the labor, nor the afflictions, nor the

tomb of him whose equal he has been declared to be; and he cannot meet

him upon fair terms in life or in death.

In the south, where slavery still exists, the negroes are less carefully

kept apart; they sometimes share the labor and the recreations of the

whites; the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain extent,

and although the legislation treats them more harshly, the habits of the

people are more tolerant and compassionate. In the south the master is

not afraid to raise his slave to his own standing, because he knows that

he can in a moment reduce him to the dust at pleasure. In the north,

the white no longer distinctly perceives the barrier which separates

him from the degraded race, and he shuns the negro with the more

pertinacity, because he fears lest they should be some day confounded

together.

Among the Americans of the south, nature sometimes reasserts her rights,

and restores a transient equality between the blacks and the whites; but

in the north, pride restrains the most imperious of human passions. The

American of the northern states would perhaps allow the negress to share

his licentious pleasures, if the laws of his country did not declare

that she may aspire to be the legitimate partner of his bed; but he

recoils with horror from her who might become his wife.

Thus it is, in the United States, that the prejudice which repels the

negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, and

inequality is sanctioned by the manners while it is effaced from the

laws of the country. But if the relative position of the two races which

inhabit the United States, is such as I have described, it may be asked

why the Americans have abolished slavery in the north of the Union,

why they maintain it in the south, and why they aggravate its hardships

there? The answer is easily given. It is not for the good of the

negroes, but for that of the whites, that measures are taken to abolish

slavery in the United States.

The first negroes were imported into Virginia about the year 1621.[239]

In America, therefore, as well as in the rest of the globe, slavery

originated in the south. Thence it spread from one settlement to

another; but the number of slaves diminished toward the northern states,

and the negro population was always very limited in New England.[240]

A century had scarcely elapsed since the foundation of the colonies,

when the attention of the planters was struck by the extraordinary

fact, that the provinces which were comparatively destitute of slaves,

increased in population, in wealth, and in prosperity, more rapidly than

those which contained the greatest number of negroes. In the former,

however, the inhabitants were obliged to cultivate the soil themselves,

or by hired laborers; in the latter, they were furnished with hands for

which they paid no wages; yet, although labor and expense were on

the one side, and ease with economy on the other, the former were in

possession of the most advantageous system. This consequence seemed to

be the more difficult to explain, since the settlers, who all belonged

to the same European race, had the same habits, the same civilisation,

the same laws, and their shades of difference were extremely slight.

Time, however, continued to advance; and the Anglo Americans, spreading

beyond the coasts of the Atlantic ocean, penetrated farther and farther

into the solitudes of the west; they met with a new soil and an unwonted

climate; the obstacles which opposed them were of the most various

character; their races intermingled, the inhabitants of the south went

up toward the north, those of the north descended to the south; but in

the midst of all these causes, the same result recurred at every step;

and in general, the colonies in which there were no slaves became more

populous and more rich than those in which slavery flourished. The more

progress was made, the more was it shown that slavery, which is so cruel

to the slave, is prejudicial to the master.

But this truth was most satisfactorily demonstrated when civilisation

reached the banks of the Ohio. The stream which the Indians had

distinguished by the name of Ohio, or Beautiful river, waters one of

the most magnificent valleys which have ever been made the abode of man.

Undulating lands extend upon both shores of the Ohio, whose soil affords

inexhaustible treasures to the laborer; on either bank the air is

wholesome and the climate mild; and each of them forms the extreme

frontier of a vast state: that which follows the numerous windings of

the Ohio upon the left is called Kentucky; that upon the right bears

the name of the river. These two states only differ in a single respect;

Kentucky has admitted slavery, but the state of Ohio has prohibited the

existence of slaves within its borders.[241]

Thus the traveller who floats down the current of the Ohio, to the spot

where that river falls into the Mississippi, may be said to sail between

liberty and servitude; and a transient inspection of the surrounding

objects will convince him which of the two is most favorable to mankind.

Upon the left bank of the stream the population is rare; from time to

time one descries a troop of slaves loitering in the half-desert fields;

the primeval forest recurs at every turn; society seems to be asleep,

man to be idle, and nature alone offers a scene of activity and of life.

From the right bank, on the contrary, a confused hum is heard, which

proclaims the presence of industry; the fields are covered with abundant

harvests; the elegance of the dwellings announces the taste and activity

of the laborer; and man appears to be in the enjoyment of that wealth

and contentment which are the reward of labor.[242]

The state of Kentucky was founded in 1775, the state of Ohio only twelve

years later; but twelve years are more in America than half a century in

Europe, and, at the present day, the population of Ohio exceeds that of

Kentucky by 250,000 souls.[243] These opposite consequences of slavery

and freedom may readily be understood; and they suffice to explain many

of the differences which we remark between the civilisation of antiquity

and that of our own time.

Upon the left bank of the Ohio labor is confounded with the idea of

slavery, upon the right bank it is identified with that of prosperity

and improvement; on the one side it is degraded, on the other it is

honored; on the former territory no white laborers can be found, for

they would be afraid of assimilating themselves to the negroes; on the

latter no one is idle, for the white population extends its activity and

its intelligence to every kind of employment. Thus the men whose task

it is to cultivate the rich soil of Kentucky are ignorant and lukewarm;

while those who are active and enlightened either do nothing, or pass

over into the state of Ohio, where they may work without dishonor.

It is true that in Kentucky the planters are not obliged to pay wages

to the slaves whom they employ; but they derive small profits from

their labor, while the wages paid to free workmen would be returned with

interest in the value of their services. The free workman is paid, but

he does his work quicker than the slave; and rapidity of execution is

one of the great elements of economy. The white sells his services, but

they are only purchased at the times at which they may be useful; the

black can claim no remuneration for his toil, but the expense of his

maintenance is perpetual; he must be supported in his old age as well

as in the prime of manhood, in his profitless infancy as well as in

the productive years of youth. Payment must equally be made in order to

obtain the services of either class of men; the free workman receives

his wages in money; the slave in education, in food, in care, and in

clothing. The money which a master spends in the maintenance of his

slaves, goes gradually and in detail, so that it is scarcely perceived;

the salary of the free workman is paid in a round sum, which appears

only to enrich the individual who receives it; but in the end the

slave has cost more than the free servant, and his labor is less

productive.[244]

The influence of slavery extends still farther; it affects the character

of the master, and imparts a peculiar tendency to his ideas and his

tastes. Upon both banks of the Ohio, the character of the inhabitants is

enterprising and energetic; but this vigor is very differently exercised

in the two states. The white inhabitant of Ohio, who is obliged to

subsist by his own exertions, regards temporal prosperity as the

principal aim of his existence; and as the country which he occupies

presents inexhaustible resources to his industry, and ever-varying lures

to his activity, his acquisitive ardor surpasses the ordinary limits of

human cupidity: he is tormented by the desire of wealth, and he boldly

enters upon every path which fortune opens to him; he becomes a sailor,

pioneer, an artisan, or a laborer, with the same indifference, and he

supports, with equal constancy, the fatigues and the dangers incidental

to these various professions; the resources of his intelligence are

astonishing, and his avidity in the pursuit of gain amounts to a species

of heroism.

But the Kentuckian scorns not only labor, but all the undertakings which

labor promotes; as he lives in an idle independence, his tastes are

those of an idle man; money loses a portion of its value in his eyes;

he covets wealth much less than pleasure and excitement; and the energy

which his neighbor devotes to gain, turns with him to a passionate love

of field sports and military exercises; he delights in violent bodily

exertion, he is familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed from

a very early age to expose his life in single combat. Thus slavery not

only prevents the whites from becoming opulent, but even from desiring

to become so.

As the same causes have been continually producing opposite effects for

the last two centuries in the British colonies of North America, they

have established a very striking difference between the commercial

capacity of the inhabitants of the south and that of the north. At the

present day, it is only the northern states which are in possession

of shipping, manufactures, railroads, and canals. This difference is

perceptible not only in comparing the north with the south, but in

comparing the several southern states. Almost all the individuals who

carry on commercial operations, or who endeavor to turn slave-labor to

account in the most southern districts of the Union, have emigrated from

the north. The natives of the northern states are constantly spreading

over that portion of the American territory, where they have less to

fear from competition; they discover resources there, which escaped the

notice of the inhabitants; and, as they comply with a system which they

do not approve, they succeed in turning it to better advantage than

those who first founded, and who still maintain it.

Were I inclined to continue this parallel, I could easily prove that

almost all the differences, which may be remarked between the characters

of the Americans in the southern and in the northern states, have

originated in slavery; but this would divert me from my subject, and my

present intention is not to point out all the consequences of servitude,

but those effects which it has produced upon the prosperity of the

countries which have admitted it.

The influence of slavery upon the production of wealth must have been

very imperfectly known in antiquity, as slavery then obtained throughout

the civilized world, and the nations which were unacquainted with

it were barbarous. And indeed Christianity only abolished slavery

by advocating the claims of the slave; at the present time it may be

attacked in the name of the master; and, upon this point, interest is

reconciled with morality.

As these truths became apparent in the United States, slavery receded

before the progress of experience. Servitude had begun in the south, and

had thence spread toward the north; but it now retires again. Freedom,

which started from the north, now descends uninterruptedly toward the

south. Among the great states, Pennsylvania now constitutes the

extreme limit of slavery to the north; but even within those limits

the slave-system is shaken; Maryland, which is immediately below

Pennsylvania, is preparing for its abolition; and Virginia, which

comes next to Maryland, is already discussing its utility and its

dangers.[245]

No great change takes place in human institutions, without involving

among its causes the law of inheritance. When the law of primogeniture

obtained in the south, each family was represented by a wealthy

individual, who was neither compelled nor induced to labor; and he was

surrounded, as by parasitic plants, by the other members of his family,

who were then excluded by law from sharing the common inheritance,

and who led the same kind of life as himself. The very same thing then

occurred in all the families of the south that still happens in the

wealthy families of some countries in Europe, namely, that the younger

sons remain in the same state of idleness as their elder brother,

without being as rich as he is. This identical result seems to be

produced in Europe and in America by wholly analogous causes. In

the south of the United States, the whole race of whites formed an

aristocratic body, which was headed by a certain number of privileged

individuals, whose wealth was permanent, and whose leisure was

hereditary. These leaders of the American nobility kept alive the

traditional prejudices of the white race in the body of which they were

the representatives, and maintained the honor of inactive life. This

aristocracy contained many who were poor, but none who would work; its

members preferred want to labor; consequently no competition was set on

foot against negro laborers and slaves, and whatever opinion might be

entertained as to the utility of their efforts, it was indispensable to

employ them, since there was no one else to work.

No sooner was the law of primogeniture abolished than fortunes began

to diminish, and all the families of the country were simultaneously

reduced to a state in which labor became necessary to procure the means

of subsistence: several of them have since entirely disappeared; and

all of them learned to look forward to the time at which it would

be necessary for every one to provide for his own wants. Wealthy

individuals are still to be met with, but they no longer constitute a

compact and hereditary body, nor have they been able to adopt a line of

conduct in which they could persevere, and which they could infuse into

all ranks of society. The prejudice which stigmatized labor was in the

first place abandoned by common consent; the number of needy men was

increased, and the needy were allowed to gain a laborious subsistence

without blushing for their exertions. Thus one of the most immediate

consequences of the partible quality of estates has been to create a

class of free laborers. As soon as a competition was set on foot between

the free laborer and the slave, the inferiority of the latter became

manifest, and slavery was attacked in its fundamental principles, which

is, the interest of the master.

As slavery recedes, the black population follows its retrograde course,

and returns with it to those tropical regions from which it originally

came. However singular this fact may at first appear to be, it may

readily be explained. Although the Americans abolish the principle of

slavery, they do not set their slaves free. To illustrate this remark I

will quote the example of the state of New York. In 1788, the state of

New York prohibited the sale of slaves within its limits; which was an

indirect method of prohibiting the importation of blacks. Thenceforward

the number of negroes could only increase according to the ratio of the

natural increase of population. But eight years later a more decisive

measure was taken, and it was enacted that all children born of slave

parents after the 4th of July, 1799, should be free. No increase could

then take place, and although slaves still existed, slavery might be

said to be abolished.

From the time at which a northern state prohibited the importation of

slaves, no slaves were brought from the south to be sold in its markets.

On the other hand, as the sale of slaves was forbidden in that state,

an owner was no longer able to get rid of his slaves (who thus became a

burdensome possession) otherwise than by transporting him to the south.

But when a northern state declared that the son of the slave should be

born free, the slave lost a large portion of his market value, since his

posterity was no longer included in the bargain, and the owner had then

a strong interest in transporting him to the south. Thus the same law

prevents the slaves of the south from coming to the northern states, and

drives those of the north to the south.

The want of free hands is felt in a state in proportion as the number of

slaves decreases. But in proportion as labor is performed by free hands,

slave-labor becomes less productive; and the slave is then a useless or

an onerous possession, whom it is important to export to those southern

states where the same competition is not to be feared. Thus the

abolition of slavery does not set the slave free, but it merely

transfers him from one master to another, and from the north to the

south.

The emancipated negroes, and those born after the abolition of slavery,

do not, indeed, migrate from the north to the south; but their situation

with regard to the Europeans is not unlike that of the aborigines of

America; they remain half civilized, and deprived of their rights in

the midst of a population which is far superior to them in wealth and in

knowledge; where they are exposed to the tyranny of the laws,[246] and

the intolerance of the people. On some accounts they are still more to

be pitied than the Indians, since they are haunted by the reminiscence

of slavery, and they cannot claim possession of a single portion of the

soil: many of them perish miserably,[247] and the rest congregate in the

great towns, where they perform the meanest offices, and lead a wretched

and precarious existence.

But even if the number of negroes continued to increase as rapidly as

when they were still in a state of slavery, as the number of whites

augments with twofold rapidity since the abolition of slavery, the

blacks would soon be, as it were, lost in the midst of a strange

population.

A district which is cultivated by slaves is in general more scantily

peopled than a district cultivated by free labor: moreover, America is

still a new country, and a state is therefore not half peopled at the

time when it abolished slavery. No sooner is an end put to slavery, than

the want of free labor is felt, and a crowd of enterprising adventurers

immediately arrive from all parts of the country, who hasten to profit

by the fresh resources which are then opened to industry. The soil is

soon divided among them, and a family of white settlers takes possession

of each tract of country. Besides which, European emigration is

exclusively directed to the free states; for what would be the fate of a

poor emigrant who crosses the Atlantic in search of ease and happiness,

if he were to land in a country where labor is stigmatized as degrading?

Thus the white population grows by its natural increase, and at the

same time by the immense influx of emigrants; while the black population

receives no emigrants, and is upon its decline. The proportion which

existed between the two races is soon inverted. The negroes constitute a

scanty remnant, a poor tribe of vagrants, which is lost in the midst of

an immense people in full possession of the land; and the presence of

the blacks is only marked by the injustice and the hardships of which

they are the unhappy victims.

In several of the western states the negro race never made its

appearance; and in all the northern states it is rapidly declining. Thus

the great question of its future condition is confined within a narrow

circle, where it becomes less formidable, though not more easy of

solution.

The more we descend toward the south, the more difficult does it become

to abolish slavery with advantage: and this arises from several physical

causes, which it is important to point out.

The first of these causes is the climate: it is well known that in

proportion as Europeans approach the tropics, they suffer more from

labor. Many of the Americans even assert, that within a certain latitude

the exertions which a negro can make without danger are fatal to

them;[248] but I do not think that this opinion, which is so favorable

to the indolence of the inhabitants of southern regions, is confirmed

by experience. The southern parts of the Union are not hotter than the

south of Italy and of Spain;[249] and it may be asked why the European

cannot work as well there as in the two latter countries. If slavery has

been abolished in Italy and in Spain without causing the destruction of

the masters, why should not the same thing take place in the Union? I

cannot believe that Nature has prohibited the Europeans in Georgia and

the Floridas, under pain of death, from raising the means of subsistence

from the soil; but their labor would unquestionably be more irksome and

less productive[250] to them than the inhabitants of New England. As the

free workman thus loses a portion of his superiority over the slave in

the southern states, there are fewer inducements to abolish slavery.

All the plants of Europe grow in the northern parts of the Union; the

south has special productions of its own. It has been observed that

slave labor is a very expensive method of cultivating corn. The farmer

of corn-land in a country where slavery is unknown, habitually retains a

small number of laborers in his service, and at seed-time and harvest

he hires several additional hands, who only live at his cost for a short

period. But the agriculturist in a slave state is obliged to keep a

large number of slaves the whole year round, in order to sow his fields

and to gather in his crops, although their services are only required

for a few weeks; but slaves are unable to wait till they are hired, and

to subsist by their own labor in the meantime like free laborers;

in order to have their services, they must be bought. Slavery,

independently of its general disadvantages, is therefore still more

inapplicable to countries in which corn is cultivated than to those

which produce crops of a different kind.

The cultivation of tobacco, of cotton, and especially of the sugar-cane,

demands, on the other hand, unremitting attention: and women and

children are employed in it, whose services are of but little use in

the cultivation of wheat. Thus slavery is naturally more fitted to the

countries from which these productions are derived.

Tobacco, cotton, and the sugar-cane, are exclusively grown in the

south, and they form one of the principal sources of the wealth of those

states. If slavery were abolished, the inhabitants of the south would

be constrained to adopt one of two alternatives: they must either change

their system of cultivation, and then they would come into competition

with the more active and more experienced inhabitants of the north; or,

if they continued to cultivate the same produce without slave labor,

they would have to support the competition of the other states of the

south, which might still retain their slaves. Thus, peculiar reasons

for maintaining slavery exist in the south which do not operate in the

north.

But there is yet another motive which is more cogent than all the

others; the south might indeed, rigorously speaking, abolish slavery,

but how should it rid its territory of the black population? Slaves

and slavery are driven from the north by the same law, but this twofold

result cannot be hoped for in the south.

The arguments which I have adduced to show that slavery is more natural

and more advantageous in the south than in the north, sufficiently prove

that the number of slaves must be far greater in the former districts.

It was to the southern settlements that the first Africans were brought,

and it is there that the greatest number of them have always been

imported. As we advance toward the south, the prejudice which sanctions

idleness increases in power. In the states nearest to the tropics there

is not a single white laborer; the negroes are consequently much

more numerous in the south than in the north. And, as I have already

observed, this disproportion increases daily, since the negroes are

transferred to one part of the Union as soon as slavery is abolished in

the other. Thus the black population augments in the south, not only by

its natural fecundity, but by the compulsory emigration of the negroes

from the north; and the African race has causes of increase in the south

very analogous to those which so powerfully accelerate the growth of the

European race in the north.

In the state of Maine there is one negro in three hundred inhabitants;

in Massachusetts, one in one hundred; in New York, two in one hundred;

in Pennsylvania, three in the same number; in Maryland, thirty-four;

in Virginia, forty-two; and lastly, in South Carolina, fifty-five per

cent.[251] Such was the proportion of the black population to the whites

in the year 1830. But this proportion is perpetually changing, as it

constantly decreases in the north and augments in the south.

It is evident that the most southern states of the Union cannot abolish

slavery without incurring very great dangers, which the north had no

reason to apprehend when it emancipated its black population. We

have already shown the system by which the northern states secure the

transition from slavery to freedom, by keeping the present generation

in chains, and setting their descendants free; by this means the negroes

are gradually introduced into society; and while the men who might

abuse their freedom are kept in a state of servitude, those who are

emancipated may learn the art of being free before they become their own

masters. But it would be difficult to apply this method in the south. To

declare that all the negroes born after a certain period shall be free,

is to introduce the principle and the notion of liberty into the heart

of slavery; the blacks, whom the law thus maintains in a state of

slavery from which their children are delivered, are astonished at so

unequal a fate, and their astonishment is only the prelude to their

impatience and irritation. Thenceforward slavery loses in their eyes

that kind of moral power which it derived from time and habit; it is

reduced to a mere palpable abuse of force. The northern states had

nothing to fear from the contrast, because in them the blacks were few

in number, and the white population was very considerable. But if

this faint dawn of freedom were to show two millions of men their true

position, the oppressors would have reason to tremble. After having

enfranchised the children of their slaves, the Europeans of the southern

states would very shortly be obliged to extend the same benefit to the

whole black population.

In the north, as I have already remarked, a two-fold migration ensues

upon the abolition of slavery, or even precedes that event when

circumstances have rendered it probable; the slaves quit the country to

be transported southward; and the whites of the northern states as well

as the emigrants from Europe hasten to fill up their place. But these

two causes cannot operate in the same manner in the southern states.

On the one hand, the mass of slaves is too great for any expectation of

their ever being removed from the country to be entertained; and on

the other hand, the Europeans and the Anglo-Americans of the north are

afraid to come to inhabit a country, in which labor has not yet been

reinstated in its rightful honors. Besides, they very justly look upon

the states in which the proportion of the negroes equals or exceeds that

of the whites, as exposed to very great dangers; and they refrain from

turning their activity in that direction.

Thus the inhabitants if the south would not be able, like their northern

countrymen, to initiate the slaves gradually into a state of freedom,

by abolishing slavery; they have no means of perceptibly diminishing

the black population, and they would remain unsupported to repress its

excesses. So that in the course of a few years, a great people of free

negroes would exist in the heart of a white nation of equal size.

The same abuses of power which still maintain slavery, would then become

the source of the most alarming perils, which the white population of

the south might have to apprehend. At the present time the descendants

of the Europeans are the sole owners of the land; the absolute masters

of all labor; and the only persons who are possessed of wealth,

knowledge, and arms. The black is destitute of all these advantages,

but he subsists without them because he is a slave. If he were free, and

obliged to provide for his own subsistence, would it be possible for

him to remain without these things and to support life? Or would not the

very instruments of the present superiority of the white, while slavery

exists, expose him to a thousand dangers if it were abolished?

As long as the negro remains a slave, he may be kept in a condition

not very far removed from that of the brutes; but, with his liberty,

he cannot but acquire a degree of instruction which will enable him to

appreciate his misfortunes, and to discern a remedy for them. Moreover,

there exists a singular principle of relative justice which is very

firmly implanted in the human heart. Men are much more forcibly struck

by those inequalities which exist within the circles of the same class,

than with those which may be remarked between different classes. It is

more easy for them to admit slavery, than to allow several millions

of citizens to exist under a load of eternal infamy and hereditary

wretchedness. In the north, the population of freed negroes feels these

hardships and resents these indignities; but its members and its powers

are small, while in the south it would be numerous and strong.

As soon as it is admitted that the whites and the emancipated blacks

are placed upon the same territory in the situation of two alien

communities, it will readily be understood that there are but two

alternatives for the future; the negroes and the whites must either

wholly part or wholly mingle. I have already expressed the conviction

which I entertain as to the latter event.[252] I do not imagine that the

white and the black races will ever live in any country upon an equal

footing. But I believe the difficulty to be still greater in the

United States than elsewhere. An isolated individual may surmount the

prejudices of religion, of his country, or of his race, and if this

individual is a king he may effect surprising changes in society; but a

whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself. A despot who should

subject the Americans and their former slaves to the same yoke, might

perhaps succeed in commingling their races; but as long as the American

democracy remains at the head of affairs, no one will undertake so

difficult a task; and it may be foreseen that the freer the white

population of the United States becomes, the more isolated will it

remain.[253]

I have previously observed that the mixed race is the true bond of union

between the Europeans and the Indians; just so the mulattoes are the

true means of transition between the white and the negro; so that

wherever mulattoes abound, the intermixture of the two races is not

impossible. In some parts of America the European and the negro races

are so crossed by one another, that it is rare to meet with a man who is

entirely black or entirely white: when they are arrived at this point,

the two races may really be said to be combined; or rather to have been

absorbed in a third race, which is connected with both, without being

identical with either.

Of all the Europeans the English are those who have mixed least with the

negroes. More mulattoes are to be seen in the south of the Union than in

the north, but still they are infinitely more scarce than in any other

European colony: Mulattoes are by no means numerous in the United

States; they have no force peculiar to themselves, and when quarrels

originating in differences of color take place, they generally side

with the whites, just as the lacqueys of the great in Europe assume the

contemptuous airs of nobility to the lower orders.

The pride of origin, which is natural to the English, is singularly

augmented by the personal pride which democratic liberty fosters among

the Americans: the white citizen of the United States is proud of his

race, and proud of himself. But if the whites and the negroes do not

intermingle in the north of the Union, how should they mix in the south?

Can it be supposed for an instant, that an American of the southern

states, placed, as he must for ever be, between the white man with all

his physical and moral superiority, and the negro, will ever think of

preferring the latter? The Americans of the southern states have two

powerful passions, which will always keep them aloof; the first is the

fear of being assimilated to the negroes, their former slaves; and the

second, the dread of sinking below the whites, their neighbors.

If I were called upon to predict what will probably occur at some future

time, I should say, that the abolition of slavery in the south, will,

in the common course of things, increase the repugnance of the white

population for the men of color. I found this opinion upon the analogous

observation which I already had occasion to make in the north. I there

remarked, that the white inhabitants of the north avoid the negroes with

increasing care, in proportion as the legal barriers of separation are

removed by the legislature; and why should not the same result

take place in the south? In the north, the whites are deterred from

intermingling with the blacks by the fear of an imaginary danger; in the

south, where the danger would be real, I cannot imagine that the fear

would be less general.

If, on the one hand, it be admitted (and the fact is unquestionable),

that the colored population perpetually accumulates in the extreme

south, and that it increases more rapidly than that of the whites; and

if, on the other hand, it be allowed that it is impossible to foresee

a time at which the whites and the blacks will be so intermingled as to

derive the same benefits from society; must it not be inferred, that the

blacks and the whites will, sooner or later, come to open strife in the

southern states of the Union? But if it be asked what the issue of the

struggle is likely to be, it will readily be understood, that we are

here left to form a very vague surmise of the truth. The human mind may

succeed in tracing a wide circle, as it were, which includes the course

of future events; but within that circle a thousand various chances

and circumstances may direct it in as many different ways; and in

every picture of the future there is a dim spot, which the eye of the

understanding cannot penetrate. It appears, however, to be extremely

probable, that, in the West India islands the white race is destined

to be subdued, and the black population to share the same fate upon the

continent.

In the West India islands the white planters are surrounded by an

immense black population; on the continent, the blacks are placed

between the ocean and an innumerable people, which already extends over

them in a dense mass from the icy confines of Canada to the frontiers

of Virginia, and from the banks of the Missouri to the shores of the

Atlantic. If the white citizens of North America remain united, it

cannot be supposed that the negroes will escape the destruction with

which they are menaced; they must be subdued by want or by the sword.

But the black population which is accumulating along the coast of

the gulf of Mexico, has a chance of success, if the American Union is

dissolved when the struggle between the two races begins. If the federal

tie were broken, the citizens of the south would be wrong to rely upon

any lasting succor from their northern countrymen. The latter are

well aware that the danger can never reach them; and unless they are

constrained to march to the assistance of the south by a positive

obligation, it may be foreseen that the sympathy of color will be

insufficient to stimulate their exertions.

Yet, at whatever period the strife may break out, the whites of the

south, even if they are abandoned to their own resources, will enter

the lists with an immense superiority of knowledge and of the means of

warfare: but the blacks will have numerical strength and the energy of

despair upon their side; and these are powerful resources to men who

have taken up arms. The fate of the white population of the southern

states will, perhaps, be similar to that of the Moors in Spain. After

having occupied the land for centuries, it will perhaps be forced to

retire to the country whence its ancestors came, and to abandon to the

negroes the possession of a territory, which Providence seems to have

more peculiarly destined for them, since they can subsist and labor in

it more easily than the whites.

The danger of a conflict between the white and the black inhabitants of

the southern states of the Union--a danger which, however remote it may

be, is inevitable--perpetually haunts the imagination of the Americans.

The inhabitants of the north make it a common topic of conversation,

although they have no direct injury to fear from the struggle; but they

vainly endeavor to devise some means of obviating the misfortunes which

they foresee. In the southern states the subject is not discussed: the

planter does not allude to the future in conversing with strangers; the

citizen does not communicate his apprehensions to his friends: he seeks

to conceal them from himself: but there is something more alarming in

the tacit forebodings of the south, than in the clamorous fears of the

northern states.

This all-pervading disquietude has given birth to an undertaking which

is but little known, but which may have the effect of changing the fate

of a portion of the human race. From apprehension of the dangers which

I have just been describing, a certain number of American citizens have

formed a society for the purpose of exporting to the coast of Guinea,

at their own expense, such free negroes as may be willing to escape from

the oppression to which they are subject.[254] In 1820, the society to

which I allude formed a settlement in Africa, upon the 7th degree

of north latitude, which bears the name of Liberia. The most recent

intelligence informs us that two thousand five hundred negroes are

collected there; they have introduced the democratic institutions

of America into the country of their forefathers; and Liberia has a

representative system of government, negro-jurymen, negro-magistrates,

and negro-priests; churches have been built, newspapers established,

and, by a singular change in the vicissitudes of the world, white men

are prohibited from sojourning within the settlement.[255]

This is indeed a strange caprice of fortune. Two hundred years have now

elapsed since the inhabitants of Europe undertook to tear the negro

from his family and his home, in order to transport him to the shores of

North America; at the present day, the European settlers are engaged in

sending back the descendants of those very negroes to the continent from

which they were originally taken; and the barbarous Africans have been

brought into contact with civilisation in the midst of bondage, and have

become acquainted with free political institutions in slavery. Up to the

present time Africa has been closed against the arts and sciences of the

whites; but the inventions of Europe will perhaps penetrate into those

regions, now that they are introduced by Africans themselves. The

settlement of Liberia is founded upon a lofty and a most fruitful idea;

but whatever may be its results with regard to the continent of Africa,

it can afford no remedy to the New World.

In twelve years the Colonization society has transported two thousand

five hundred negroes to Africa; in the same space of time about seven

hundred thousand blacks were born in the United States. If the colony

of Liberia were so situated as to be able to receive thousands of new

inhabitants every year, and if the negroes were in a state to be sent

thither with advantage; if the Union were to supply the society with

annual subsidies,[256] and to transport the negroes to Liberia, there

is little chance that the negro population of the United States would

change.

In the South, however, this leaves two choices: either for the whites

to remain in communities with the negroes, and to intermingle with them;

or, remaining isolated from them, to keep them in a state of slavery

as long as possible. All intermediate measures seem to me likely to

terminate, and that shortly, in the most horrible of civil wars, and

perhaps in the extirpation of one or other of the two races. Such is the

view which the Americans of the south take of the question, and they

act consistently with it. As they are determined not to mingle with the

negroes, they refuse to emancipate them.

Not that the inhabitants of the south regard slavery as necessary to the

wealth of the planter; for on this point many of them agree with their

northern countrymen in freely admitting that slavery is prejudicial to

their interests; but they are convinced that, however prejudicial it may

be, they hold their lives upon no other tenure. The instruction which is

now diffused in the south has convinced the inhabitants that slavery is

injurious to the slave-owner, but it has also shown them, more clearly

than before, that no means exist of getting rid of its bad consequences.

Hence arises a singular contrast; the more the utility of slavery is

contested, the more firmly is it established in the laws; and while

the principle of servitude is gradually abolished in the north, that

self-same principle gives rise to more and more rigorous consequences in

the south.

The legislation of the southern states, with regard to slaves, presents

at the present day such unparalleled atrocities, as suffice to show how

radically the laws of humanity have been perverted, and to betray the

desperate position of the community in which that legislation has

been promulgated. The Americans of this portion of the Union have not,

indeed, augmented the hardships of slavery; they have, on the contrary,

bettered the physical condition of the slaves. The only means by which

the ancients maintained slavery were fetters and death; the Americans of

the south of the Union have discovered more intellectual securities

for the duration of their power. They have employed their despotism and

their violence against the human mind. In antiquity, precautions were

taken to prevent the slave from breaking his chains; at the present day

measures are adopted to deprive him even of the desire of freedom. The

ancients kept the bodies of their slaves in bondage, but they placed

no restraint upon the mind and no check upon education; and they

acted consistently with their established principle, since a natural

termination of slavery then existed, and one day or other the slave

might be set free, and become the equal of his master. But the Americans

of the south, who do not admit that the negroes can ever be commingled

with themselves, have forbidden them to be taught to read or to write,

under severe penalties; and as they will not raise them to their own

level, they sink them as nearly as possible to that of the brutes.

The hope of liberty had always been allowed to the slave to cheer the

hardships of his condition. But the Americans of the south are well

aware that emancipation cannot but be dangerous, when the freed man can

never be assimilated to his former master. To give a man his freedom,

and to leave him in wretchedness and ignominy, is nothing less than to

prepare a future chief for a revolt of the slaves. Moreover, it has long

been remarked, that the presence of a free negro vaguely agitates the

minds of his less fortunate brethren, and conveys to them a dim notion

of their rights. The Americans of the south have consequently taken

measures to prevent slave-owners from emancipating their slaves in most

cases; not indeed by a positive prohibition, but by subjecting that step

to various forms which it is difficult to comply with.

I happened to meet with an old man, in the south of the Union, who had

lived in illicit intercourse with one of his negresses, and had had

several children by her, who were born the slaves of their father. He

had indeed frequently thought of bequeathing to them at least their

liberty; but years had elapsed without his being able to surmount the

legal obstacles to their emancipation, and in the meanwhile his old

age was come, and he was about to die. He pictured to himself his sons

dragged from market to market, and passing from the authority of a

parent to the rod of the stranger, until these horrid anticipations

worked his expiring imagination into phrensy. When I saw him he was a

prey to all the anguish of despair, and he made me feel how awful is the

retribution of Nature upon those who have broken her laws.

These evils are unquestionably great; but they are the necessary and

foreseen consequences of the very principle of modern slavery. When the

Europeans chose their slaves from a race differing from their own, which

many of them considered as inferior to the other races of mankind,

and which they all repelled with horror from any notion of intimate

connexion, they must have believed that slavery would last for ever;

since there is no intermediate state which can be durable, between the

excessive inequality produced by servitude, and the complete equality

which originates in independence. The Europeans did imperfectly feel

this truth, but without acknowledging it even to themselves. Whenever

they have had to do with negroes, their conduct has either been dictated

by their interest and their pride, or by their compassion. They first

violated every right of humanity by their treatment of the negro;

and they afterward informed him that those rights were precious and

inviolable. They affected to open their ranks to the slave, but the

negroes who attempted to penetrate into the community were driven back

with scorn; and they have incautiously and involuntarily been led to

admit of freedom instead of slavery, without having the courage to be

wholly iniquitous, or wholly just.[257]

If it be impossible to anticipate a period at which the Americans of the

south will mingle their blood with that of the negroes, can they allow

their slaves to become free without compromising their own security? And

if they are obliged to keep that race in bondage, in order to save their

own families, may they not be excused for availing themselves of the

means best adapted to that end? The events which are taking place in the

southern states of the Union, appear to be at once the most horrible

and the most natural results of slavery. When I see the order of nature

overthrown, and when I hear the cry of humanity in its vain struggle

against the laws, my indignation does not light upon the men of our

own time who were the instruments of these outrages; but I reserve my

execration for those who, after a thousand years of freedom, brought

back slavery into the world once more.

Whatever may be the efforts of the Americans of the south to maintain

slavery, they will not always succeed. Slavery, which is now confined to

a single tract of the civilized earth, which is attacked by Christianity

as unjust, and by political economy as prejudicial, and which is now

contrasted with democratic liberties and the information of our age,

cannot survive. By the choice of the master or the will of the slave,

it will cease; and in either case great calamities may be expected to

ensue. If liberty be refused to the negroes of the south, they will

in the end seize it for themselves by force; if it be given, they will

abuse it ere long.

* * * * *

WHAT ARE THE CHANCES IN FAVOR OF THE DURATION OF THE AMERICAN UNION, AND

WHAT DANGERS THREATEN IT.

Reasons why the preponderating Force lies in the States rather than in

the Union.--The Union will only last as long as all the States choose

to belong to it.--Causes which tend to keep them united.--Utility of

the Union to resist foreign Enemies, and to prevent the Existence

of Foreigners in America.--No natural Barriers between the several

States.--No conflicting Interests to divide them.--Reciprocal Interests

of the Northern, Southern, and Western States.--Intellectual ties of

Union.--Uniformity of Opinions.--Dangers of the Union resulting from the

different Characters and the Passions of its Citizens.--Character of the

Citizens in the South and in the North.--The rapid growth of the

Union one of its greatest Dangers.--Progress of the Population to

the Northwest.--Power gravitates in the same Direction.--Passions

originating from sudden turns of Fortune.--Whether the existing

Government of the Union tends to gain strength, or to lose

it.--Various signs of its Decrease.--Internal Improvement.--Waste

Lands.--Indians.--The Bank.--The Tariff.--General Jackson.

The maintenance of the existing institutions of the several states

depends in some measure upon the maintenance of the Union itself. It is

therefore important in the first instance to inquire into the probable

fate of the Union. One point may indeed be assumed at once; if

the present confederation were dissolved, it appears to me to be

incontestable that the states of which it is now composed would not

return to their original isolated condition; but that several Unions

would then be formed in the place of one. It is not my intention to

inquire into the principles upon which these new Unions would probably

be established, but merely to show what the causes are which may effect

the dismemberment of the existing confederation.

With this object I shall be obliged to retrace some of the steps which

I have already taken, and to revert to topics which I have before

discussed. I am aware that the reader may accuse me of repetition, but

the importance of the matter which still remains to be treated is my

excuse; I had rather say too much, than say too little to be thoroughly

understood, and I prefer injuring the author to slighting the subject.

The legislators who formed the constitution of 1789 endeavored to confer

a distinct and preponderating authority upon the federal power. But they

were confined by the conditions of the task which they had undertaken

to perform. They were not appointed to constitute the government of a

single people, but to regulate the association of several states; and,

whatever their inclinations might be, they could not but divide the

exercise of sovereignty in the end.

In order to understand the consequences of this division, it is

necessary to make a short distinction between the affairs of government.

There are some objects which are national by their very nature, that is

to say, which affect the nation as a body, and can only be intrusted to

the man or the assembly of men who most completely represent the entire

nation. Among these may be reckoned war and diplomacy. There are other

objects which are provincial by their very nature, that is to say, which

only affect certain localities, and which can only be properly treated

in that locality. Such, for instance, is the budget of municipality.

Lastly, there are certain objects of a mixed nature, which are national

inasmuch as they affect all the citizens who compose the nation, and

which are provincial inasmuch as it is not necessary that the nation

itself should provide for them all. Such are the rights which regulate

the civil and political condition of the citizens. No society can exist

without civil and political rights. These rights therefore interest all

the citizens alike; but it is not always necessary to the existence and

the prosperity of the nation that these rights should be uniform, nor

consequently, that they should be regulated by the central authority.

There are, then, two distinct categories of objects which are submitted

to the direction of the sovereign power; and these categories occur in

all well-constituted communities, whatever the basis of the political

constitution may otherwise be. Between these two extremes, the objects

which I have termed mixed may be considered to lie. As these objects

are neither exclusively national nor entirely provincial, they may be

attained by a national or a provincial government, according to the

agreement of the contracting parties, without in any way impairing the

contract of association.

The sovereign power is usually formed by the union of separate

individuals, who compose a people; and individual powers or collective

forces, each representing a very small portion of the sovereign

authority, are the sole elements which are subjected to the general

government of their choice. In this case the general government is more

naturally called upon to regulate, not only those affairs which are

of essential national importance, but those which are of a more local

interest; and the local governments are reduced to that small share of

sovereign authority which is indispensable to their prosperity.

But sometimes the sovereign authority is composed of preorganized

political bodies, by virtue of circumstances anterior to their union;

and in this case the provincial governments assume the control, not only

of those affairs which more peculiarly belong to their province, but of

all, or of a part of the mixed affairs to which allusion has been made.

For the confederate nations which were independent sovereign states

before their Union, and which still represent a very considerable share

of the sovereign power, have only consented to cede to the general

government the exercise of those rights which are indispensable to the

Union.

When the national government, independently of the prerogative inherent

in its nature, is invested with the right of regulating the affairs

which relate partly to the general and partly to the local interest,

it possesses a preponderating influence. Not only are its own rights

extensive, but all the rights which it does not possess exist by its

sufferance, and it may be apprehended that the provincial governments

may be deprived of their natural and necessary prerogatives by its

influence.

When, on the other hand, the provincial governments are invested

with the power of regulating those same affairs of mixed interest, an

opposite tendency prevails in society. The preponderating force resides

in the province, not in the nation; and it may be apprehended that the

national government may in the end be stripped of the privileges which

are necessary to its existence.

Independent nations have therefore a natural tendency to centralization,

and confederations to dismemberment.

It now only remains for us to apply these general principles to the

American Union. The several states were necessarily possessed of the

right of regulating all exclusively provincial affairs. Moreover these

same states retained the right of determining the civil and political

competency of the citizens, of regulating the reciprocal relations of

the members of the community, and of dispensing justice; rights which

are of a general nature, but which do not necessarily appertain to the

national government. We have shown that the government of the Union is

invested with the power of acting in the name of the whole nation, in

those cases in which the nation has to appear as a single and undivided

power; as, for instance, in foreign relations, and in offering a common

resistance to a common enemy; in short, in conducting those affairs

which I have styled exclusively national.

In this division of the rights of sovereignty, the share of the Union

seems at first sight to be more considerable than that of the states;

but a more attentive investigation shows it to be less so. The

undertakings of the government of the Union are more vast, but their

influence is more rarely felt. Those of the provincial government are

comparatively small, but they are incessant, and they serve to keep

alive the authority which they represent. The government of the Union

watches the general interests of the country; but the general interests

of a people have a very questionable influence upon individual

happiness; while provincial interests produce a most immediate effect

upon the welfare of the inhabitants. The Union secures the independence

and the greatness of the nation, which do not immediately affect private

citizens; but the several states maintain the liberty, regulate the

rights, protect the fortune, and secure the life and the whole future

prosperity of every citizen.

The federal government is very far removed from its subjects, while the

provincial governments are within the reach of them all, and are ready

to attend to the smallest appeal. The central government has upon its

side the passions of a few superior men who aspire to conduct it; but

upon the side of the provincial governments are the interests of all

those second-rate individuals who can only hope to obtain power within

their own state, and who nevertheless exercise the largest share of

authority over the people because they are placed nearest to its level.

The Americans have therefore much more to hope and to fear from the

states than from the Union; and, in conformity with the natural tendency

of the human mind, they are more likely to attach themselves to the

former than to the latter. In this respect their habits and feelings

harmonize with their interests.

When a compact nation divides its sovereignty, and adopts a confederate

form of government, the traditions, the customs, and the manners of the

people are for a long time at variance with their legislation; and the

former tend to give a degree of influence to the central government

which the latter forbids. When a number of confederate states unite to

form a single nation, the same causes operate in an opposite direction.

I have no doubt that if France were to become a confederate republic

like that of the United States, the government would at first display

more energy than that of the Union; and if the Union were to alter

its constitution to a monarchy like that of France, I think that the

American government would be a long time in acquiring the force

which now rules the latter nation. When the national existence of the

Anglo-Americans began, their provincial existence was already of long

standing; necessary relations were established between the townships and

the individual citizens of the same states; and they were accustomed

to consider some objects as common to them all, and to conduct other

affairs as exclusively relating to their own special interests.

The Union is a vast body, which presents no definite object to

patriotic feeling. The forms and limits of the state are distinct and

circumscribed, since it represents a certain number of objects which are

familiar to the citizens and beloved by all. It is identified with the

very soil, with the right of property and the domestic affections, with

the recollections of the past, the labors of the present, and the hopes

of the future. Patriotism, then, which is frequently a mere extension of

individual egotism, is still directed to the state, and is not excited

by the Union. Thus the tendency of the interests, the habits, and the

feelings of the people, is to centre political activity in the states,

in preference to the Union.

It is easy to estimate the different forces of the two governments, by

remarking the manner in which they fulfil their respective functions.

Whenever the government of a state has occasion to address an

individual, or an assembly of individuals, its language is clear and

imperative; and such is also the tone of the federal government in its

intercourse with individuals, but no sooner has it anything to do with a

state, than it begins to parley, to explain its motives, and to justify

its conduct, to argue, to advise, and in short, anything but to command.

If doubts are raised as to the limits of the constitutional powers

of each government, the provincial government prefers its claims with

boldness, and takes prompt and energetic steps to support it. In

the meanwhile the government of the Union reasons, it appeals to the

interests, to the good sense, to the glory of the nation; it temporizes,

it negotiates, and does not consent to act until it is reduced to the

last extremity. At first sight it might readily be imagined that it

is the provincial government which is armed with the authority of the

nation, and that congress represents a single state.

The federal government is, therefore, notwithstanding the precautions

of those who founded it, naturally so weak, that it more peculiarly

requires the free consent of the governed to enable it to subsist. It is

easy to perceive that its object is to enable the states to realize with

facility their determination of remaining united; and, as long as this

preliminary consideration exists, its authority is great, temperate, and

effective. The constitution fits the government to control individuals,

and easily to surmount such obstacles as they may be inclined to

offer, but it was by no means established with a view to the possible

separation of one or more of the states from the Union.

If the sovereignty of the Union were to engage in a struggle with

that of the states at the present day, its defeat may be confidently

predicted; and it is not probable that such a struggle would be

seriously undertaken. As often as steady resistance is offered to the

federal government, it will be found to yield. Experience has hitherto

shown that whenever a state has demanded anything with perseverance

and resolution, it has invariably succeeded; and that if a separate

government has distinctly refused to act, it was left to do as it

thought fit.[258]