It will probably be asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks
into the state, and thus save the expense of supplying by importation
of white settlers the vacancies they will leave? Deep-rooted
prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by
the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the
real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances
will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will
probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other
race. To these objections, which are political, may be added others,
which are physical and moral.
[Footnote 35: From Query No. 14 of the "Notes on the State of
Virginia," which, says Jefferson in an "advertisement," "were written
in Virginia in the year 1781 and somewhat corrected and enlarged in
the winter of 1782, in answer to queries proposed to the author by a
foreigner of distinction then residing among us."]
The first difference which strikes us is that of color. Whether the
black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane between the skin
and the scarf-skin, or in the scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds
from the color of the blood, the color of the bile, or from that of
some other secretion, the difference is fixt in nature, and is as real
as if its seat and cause were better known to us. And is this
difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or
less share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of
red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or less
suffusions of color in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony
which reigns in the countenances, that immovable veil of black which
covers all the emotions of the other race?
Add to these flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own
judgment in favor of the whites, declared by their preference of them,
as uniformly as is the preference of the orangutan for the black women
over those of his own species. The circumstance of superior beauty is
thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and
other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those of
color, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions
proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and
body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the
skin, which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odor. This great
degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less
so of cold than the whites.
Perhaps, too, a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus,
which a late ingenious experimentalist has discovered to be the
principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from
extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the
outer air, or obliged them in expiration to part with more of it. They
seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labor through the day,
will be induced by the slightest amusement to sit up till midnight, or
later, tho knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the morning.
They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome.
But this may perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which
prevents their seeing a danger till it be present. When present, they
do not go through it with more coolness or steadiness than the whites.
They are more ardent after their female; but love seems with them to
be more an eager desire than a tender, delicate mixture of sentiment
and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless
afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life to
us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with
them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of
sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition
to sleep when abstracted from their diversions, and unemployed in
labor. An animal, whose body is at rest and who does not reflect, must
be disposed to sleep, of course. Comparing them by their faculties of
memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they
are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could
scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the
investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull,
tasteless, and anomalous.
It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We
will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where
the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It
will be right to make great allowances for the difference of
condition, of education, of conversation, of the sphere in which they
move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America.
Most of them, indeed, have been confined to tillage, to their own
homes, and their own society; yet many have been so situated that they
might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters;
many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that
circumstance have always been associated with the white. Some have
been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the
arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have
had before their eyes samples of the best works from abroad.
The Indians, with no advantages of their kind, will often carve
figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They will
crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the
existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They
astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove
their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and
elevated. But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a
thought above the level of plain narration; never saw even an
elementary trait of painting or sculpture. In music they are more
generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time,
and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch. Whether
they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of
melody, or of complicated harmony is yet to be proved. Misery is often
the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks
is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar
oestrum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it kindles the senses
only, not the imagination.
There must doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of our
people produced by the existence of slavery among us. The whole
commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most
boisterous passions--the most unremitting despotism on the one part
and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and
learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. This quality is
the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is
learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent could find no
motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the
intemperance of passion toward his slave, it should always be a
sufficient one that his child is present.
But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms; the child looks
on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs, in the
circle of smaller slaves gives a loose to the worst of passions, and
thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, can not but be
stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who
can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.
And with what execrations should the statesman be loaded who,
permitting one-half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the
other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys
the morals of the one part and the _amor patriae_ of the other! For if
a slave can have a country in this world, it must be any other in
preference to that in which he is born to live and labor for another;
in which he must lock up the faculties of his nature, contribute as
far as depends on his individual endeavors to the evanishment of the
human race, or entail his own miserable condition on the endless
generations proceeding from him. With the morals of the people, their
industry is destroyed. For in a warm climate no man will labor for
himself who can make another labor for him. This is so true that of
the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen
to labor.