During the more than two centuries of occupation of these southern lands
there appear sufficient data to form, perhaps, some definite ideas of the
success or failure of colonization, and the vague and doubtful process of
acclimation. These evidences, thus far, are decidedly in favor of the
black man. For he has multiplied with astonishing rapidity, and preserved
his physical forces, and during this long and brutalizing term of his
servitude he has not exhibited the ferocity of his master, save when
hunted down like the beasts of prey, as in Hayti; neither has he sunk so
low in the scale of true humanity as those who have held him in bondage.
The hungry and maimed soldier of the republic, escaping from the murderous
prison-dens of the rebels, always found a crust of bread, a protecting
shelter, and a kind word from the humblest and most oppressed of these
beings.
Never were they betrayed by the black man, although the reward was large.
Never were they denied assistance, although the penalty was death.
Although history seems to forbid, we are not of that class of men who
maintain that there are inferior races, intended by nature for servitude;
for we believe that every race contains the elements of greatness, and
that there is a common destiny to all. And we cherish the idea that there
is a better future even for the black man among the civilized nations of
the earth. The singular aptitude of the black man for music, which is the
language of the soul; his deep, sincere, immovable veneration for the
precepts, the faith, the hope of Christianity, do not indicate a race lost
to the nobler impulses, or to the benign influences of civilization, nor a
people abandoned and accursed by Providence. God has gifted every living
creature with the instinct of self-preservation; he has endowed all
animated creatures of the human form with the love of the beautiful, with
the desire of developing and perfecting their innate powers, and of
leaving on earth some act, some memorial worthy of imitation or
remembrance. He who declines to help his fellow-creature in the struggle
for social existence, in the effort for happiness, knowledge, and
immortality, is less than a man.
The problem of civilization is left mostly to the free will of men, and
God blasts and crumbles into dust only those nations who have abused the
gifts and privileges of nature, and who, when arriving at the height of
prosperity and power, have disregarded and despised those principles of
morality and religion which form the true base of all society. How all the
noble aspirations may be crushed and the instincts perverted; how from a
species of voluntary insanity, by our own fierce passions, and by a
strange desire of mutual destruction, men rush on to contest and to ruin,
is well illustrated by the past of the slave faction.