hybrids, mulattoes, etc., science protests against the fallacy which
the new pro-slavery apostles advocate. Facts confirm the deductions
of genuine science, and explode the fallacies of its counterfeit. The
Dominican Republic is almost entirely composed of a mulatto population,
which is now in its second or third generation, if not older. Neither
are these mulattoes dying out, but they are increasing by and
within themselves. No human white stallions are imported there from
slave-breeding regions to correct or keep up the breed.
If, however, there should still linger a presumption of the superiority
of the white over the black man, it must speedily vanish when the
arguments of the militant upholders of slavery--whether they be in
senatorial togas, in priestly robes, or in printer's ink--are subjected
to the analysis of impartial philosophy or common logic. A spurious and
depraved civilization is far more dangerous and degrading to society,
and more truly evidences positive mental inferiority, than does the
absence of civilization or the primitive savage condition. And this is
the more true when the subjects of such a spurious civilization have
within reach the elements of a genuine moral and social culture, but at
the same time spurn and depreciate them all. Such persons, whatever may
be their conventional position or ethnic descent, whatever the color
of their skin, the form of their skull, or the nature of their hair,
are singly and collectively inferior to the uncultivated and oppressed
and hence degraded negro; while in respect of justice, manhood, and all
that is ennobling, they make no approach to the millions of industrious
and intelligent farmers and free yeomanry, artisans, and mechanics of
the free states, still less with the higher manifestations of these
qualities in great and generous minds.
Neither in the Mosaic record, therefore, nor the native sense of
morality, still less in science, can any support be found for the
fallacies propounded by the apostles of American slavery. Science,
just and elevated in its intrinsic nature, deduces conclusions and
establishes laws with sublime impartiality, extenuating naught,
and setting down naught in malice. The normal character of every
science, always and forever, is _emancipatory_. Science emancipates
the mind from prejudices, falsehoods, and superstitions, and from the
tyranny exercised over man by the elements and forces of nature, as
well as from the far more malignant forces of social oppression. It
is doubtless this divine character of true science which makes it so
repulsive to the apostles of human degradation.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: The old colonial customs and legal regulations in
America, fully confirm the above statements. _White_ servants, with
or without indenture, were kept in bondage by their masters, as were
other chattels, and sometimes, though rarely, these servants were even
sold. Without, therefore, going back to any European origin, it may
be peremptorily asserted that it is comparatively a short time since
the sires of many haughty militant slavery defenders were bondsmen on
American soil.]
[Footnote 8: Flavius Josephus says, that under the Herods, Judea
contained double the population established by the census of David.
Perhaps this account is exaggerated; but, at any rate, it shows a great
and positive increase.]
VI.
NABATHEANS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Lassen, Quatremère, Laborde, Oppert, Chwolsohn, Perceval, etc._
In the gray morning of time, behind the obscurity hovering over the
origin of Assyria, and preceding even the first great epoch of Babylon,
dawns the fully-developed Nabathean civilization. In proportion as
scientific investigation imagines it has reached a positive epoch in
the ethnology and history of our race, a new cloud ever rises behind
it, which is but of this service--unerringly to indicate the limits of
the space already investigated. Thus legends, traditions, and tracings
sink helpless and hopeless into mythus, and the investigator is lost in
the "dark backward and abysm of time." The Eastern legends hanging over
Fore-Asia (or the lands between the Himalayas and Assyria), present
traditions of epochs and civilizations which had traversed the periods
of youth, maturity, and decline, before Brahmins, Assyrians, or Hebrews
even dawned on the historical horizon.
The Nabatheans are supposed to have been Shemites or pure Chaldeans.[9]
They dwelt in ancient Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and the
Tigris, and also in what afterward constituted a part of Syria and
Assyria; and their branches or colonies extended to Arabia and to
eastern Mesopotamia. They were probably the primitive white dwellers
in these regions, and the founders of Babylon and of her first--almost
pre-historic--epoch of glory, down to the time when they were conquered
by the Assyrians or by Aryanized Nabatheans and Chaldeans.
According to ancient eastern writers, they invented and taught to their
neighbors the art of tilling the soil, and from this circumstance
they are said to have derived their name. At all events they were
the primitive cultivators of these lands, and agriculture seems
to have been their principal pursuit and mode of livelihood. This
highly-flourishing Nabathean civilization underlaid the Assyrian
and second Babylonian civilizations, and powerfully influenced the
primitive Hebrew writers. _Arphaxad_, mentioned in Genesis, signifies
in Chaldaic, _stronghold_, _city_, _civilization_, and this, too, at
the earliest so-called patriarchal epoch. To the Nabatheans belongs the
great work of irrigating Euphratia, by which these heretofore barren
and uncultivated plains were made, for more than forty centuries, the
most fertile region of the ancient world. It is asserted, too, by the
oldest authorities, that their language was highly developed at a time
when the other Shemitic tribes and nations only lisped their rude
tongue, or attempted to spell the symbols invented, in all probability,
by the Nabatheans. Some attribute to them the invention of the
arrow-headed characters, while others suppose that the Assyrians (of
whom hereafter), first devised them, or at all events, first applied
this Tartar invention for the use and preservation of the Nabathean
language. Fragments from the writings of Kouthai--a Nabathean, who
lived long before the destruction of Nineveh--show that most of the
sciences, such as mathematics, astronomy, chronology, etc., were
cultivated by them to a high degree, and that they were great lovers of
music and other fine arts.
Their historical records are far richer and more complete than any
other existing records which relate to those distant and as yet all but
incomprehensible epochs and events. In these relics many details of the
early life of that time are embodied, principally relating, however,
to agriculture, and from which, doubtless, the Greek writers, as
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Strabo, derived their knowledge of the
superiority and paramount importance of Nabathean agricultural science,
on which, as already remarked, their whole civilization was based.
Nowhere, however, in these venerable Nabathean fragments is _slavery_
or the _slave_ ever mentioned, and still less as constituting the basis
of domestic husbandry and field labor; but _freemen_ and _freeholders_
only are alluded to as cultivating the land and reaping the rewards of
their toil; thus furnishing an additional and most forcible proof that
human _slavery is not coeval with the existence of society_.
Indeed, it may be stated as a general rule, clearly confirmed by
history, that agriculture never can flourish under slave labor, nor
even under villanage. It never did so in antiquity and it never has
done so in modern times. In proportion as Egypt, Syria and Assyria fell
a prey to political servitude and her twin-sister, or rather generator,
domestic slavery, did their agriculture deteriorate and decay. In
proportion as the nations of modern Europe have emerged from slavery
and serfdom, has agriculture become a civilizing agency, progressive,
rational and scientific. England, Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium
and Flanders, are living witnesses thereof; and, on the other side,
Poland, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Danubian Principalities--all
possessed of the most fertile soils--scarce emerge from social,
political and rural barbarity. The Moors and the Moriscoes were not
slaves when they cultivated Andalusia in a manner never equalled. And
what a wide difference between the agriculture of the free and slave
sections of the United States! and that too, though the region of slave
culture enjoys advantages both in climate and soil. The halting and
uncertain advances made in the slave country, are but dimly breaking
rays from the free, enlightened northern states.
Thus do the oldest and the newest teach one lesson and tend to one
result.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 9: In contradistinction to Aryanized Shemites or Chaldeans,
known as Assyrians and Babylonians of the second epoch, and modern
Kurdes.
Ethnology and comparative philology everywhere discover similar
bifurcations almost at the sources of ethnic life. These bifurcations
are explained by natural growth and by the fusion of various tribes
and nations. Thus Baktrya, Persia and Media present us with Aryas
and Indo-Scythes or Aryanized Tartars. So, too, all primitive races
divide and subdivide in the same manner within themselves. The Shemites
divided into Chaldeans and Canaanites, and then into Arabs, Hebrews,
etc. The Aryas divided first into two groups--the eastern, from which,
in turn, sprang the Zend and Sanscrit-speaking Aryas or Iranians and
Hindus--and the western group, ancestors of the various European races.
Of these latter, one branch immigrated into Greece and Italy, there
giving rise again to Ionians and Dorians, Italiots and Latins, and the
Greek and Latin languages; while another formed the Gaels or Gadheals
and Kimri, the Gadhealic and the Brizonec being the principal dialects.
Then we have their offshoots--as Belgæ, Kimbro-Belgæ, Finnic-Belgæ,
etc. So also the Slavic stem, split into Serb, Wendish, etc.]
VII.
ASSYRIANS AND BABYLONIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Rawlinson, Duncker, Oppert, M. von Niebuhr, etc._
The mighty empire of the Assyrians, which constitutes one of the first
links in the chain of positive history, has hitherto been best known by
the great catastrophes which finally closed its existence. The Hebrew
Scriptures testify to the wealth, the luxury, and the military power
of the Assyrians; but neither these nor the fragments in other ancient
historical writers, dispel the obscurity enveloping the interior
organism of that great antique people. Neither do the outlines of
Babylonian history given by Herodotus afford much insight into the
details of her social structure.
In that fore-world which history has not yet penetrated, the region
between the Mediterranean sea and the head-waters and affluents of the
Euphrates and the Tigris, formed the theatre of a tumultuous confusion
of races, nations and civilizations, which has no parallel in the
known history of mankind. Social and ethnic structures of the most
heterogeneous kind covered those regions, with their various creeds,
theocracies, municipalities monarchies and despotisms of every degree.
When, about fifteen centuries B.C., history unveils the empire of
the Assyrians or Ninevites, their dominion extended in a direct line
from the head-waters of the Euphrates and Tigris to the mouths of
those rivers; on the north-east, also, they ruled over Media (thus
touching the Caspian), and from thence their dominion stretched across
Armenia, southern Caucasus and Georgia, westward to the mouth of the
river Halys (the modern Kizil-Ermak), in the Black Sea, and embraced
also Palestine, Phoenicia and Kilikia. As the dynasty of Ninus once
ruled over Lydia, it is probable that the Ninevite empire at one time
extended over at least a part of Asia Minor, as far as the Egean Sea.
This great Assyrian empire rose on the ruins of Babylon, which was once
her master, and which was also far superior to her in antiquity.
History has preserved the names of some of the races and tribes
which may here at one time have dwelt side by side, but which were
subsequently conquered and ruled by the more powerful nation.
History, we say, has preserved some, and comparative philology is
constantly disentangling others from the chaos of antique Mesopotamian
ethnology.[10]
The Assyrian and Babylonian empires stand recorded in the history of
humanity as having been the cradles of Eastern despotism and political
slavery. How this terrible tyranny arose in Assyria there are no means
of ascertaining. Doubtless there were a number of conspiring causes,
just as many rills unite to form a powerful stream. In the history
of Rome, fortunately we shall be able clearly to seize the genesis
of her despotism, and exhibit the germ as well as the wreck of her
social structure. Reasoning from all historic analogy, however, it may
safely be asserted that Assyrian despotism was generated by war, while
political bondage nursed and fostered domestic chattelhood. Evil ever
reproducing its own substance and shadow!
The social and domestic economy of the Assyrians must, in its general
features, have been similar to that of the Nabatheans and Hebrews.
In the course of time, domestic slavery may, to some extent, have
been developed in both empires; but even in the last stages of their
independent existence, it could not have reached that terrible point
it attained after the loss of their autonomy. Assyria and Babylon fell
by the blows of nations who were themselves subdued and politically
enslaved. To the last, however, neither their lands nor cities
were ever devastated or desolated. Their civilization remained in
a flourishing condition to the last, and historically it stands as
_original_. But original civilizations are never germinated under the
influence of domestic chattelhood. The plains of the Euphrates must
have been the hive of a rural population whence the imperial armies
were supplied, and these supplies could not have been in the form of
chattels. In ancient cities, manufactures and industry were often
carried on by slaves; but when domestic slavery established itself in
the rural regions, the national forces soon became palsied.
The tribes and countries conquered by Assyria and Babylon were simply
made tributary to their wealth and power. Prisoners of war were, in all
likelihood, disposed of in the same manner as they were in Egypt, and
as was the custom all over the ancient world, and indeed, for several
centuries in Christendom--employed in the public works, in the cutting
of those canals whose traces are still visible, or in raising walls,
palaces and public edifices, all of which are now covered mountain high
with the dust of ages. Thus Sargon (or Sargina), for example, employed
prisoners of war in constructing the vast palaces of Khorsabad.
Assyrian and Babylonian history records repeated transportations
of whole populations from one part of the empire to another. The
condition of such captives on becoming colonists has already been
explained in the section upon the "Hebrews." It would seem that the
kings of Assyria and Babylon first inaugurated this mode of wholesale
transportation, captivity and colonization. Thus Tiglath-Palassar
deported the inhabitants of Damascus to Kur in Georgia; and Assardan
sent off, _en masse_, Babylonians, Arkeans, Susianians, Elamites,
Persians and Daheans (Tartars), some north and others south. All such
transplantments begot destruction, desolation and the breaking up
of homesteads; and thus fostered domestic slavery, facilitated its
expansion, and increased its fatal influence over both the conquered
and the conquerors. And finally, they prepared the soil for that
poisonously luxuriant growth of slavery by which Mesopotamians and
Syrians became the general bondmen of classical antiquity.
After the destruction of the Assyrian capital (Nineveh) by the revolted
nations, Babylon became the centre of a new empire. The rule of
Nabukudrussur (a Chaldean from Babylon), extended from the mountains of
Armenia to the Arabian shores of the Red Sea, and to the Persian Gulf.
This again is a record of perpetual war, and was, in all respects, a
continuation of the Ninevitian period of desolation and captivity.
Prisoners of war again filled the capital, and worked at the walls and
palaces of Babylon. The rich valleys were no longer cultivated by free
laborers, but were in the hands of large slaveholders, and tilled by
their gangs of slaves.
Babylon fell, destroyed by war, combined with political and domestic
slaveries, and she transmitted both diseases to her destroyers.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 10: The philological analysis of the arrow-headed characters
and inscriptions discovered in the ruins of Nineveh (Khorsabad) and
of Babylon, and on various other spots of the ancient Persian empire,
give us some idea of the various ethnic elements which composed the
Assyrian and Babylonian empires. Probability, founded on comparative
philology, attributes the invention of the arrow-headed characters to
a Tartar (Scythic) people or race. Transmitted, in all likelihood,
from people to people; increased, fused in usage and application by
various languages and dialects, these cuneiform characters--as used
for Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian inscriptions--are now ethnically
and philologically classified into two main divisions--the Anaryan
and the Aryan. The Aryan comprises the Old Persian; the Anaryan of
the Ninevite relics is the result of thirteen ethnic and philologic
combinations, and was used by the five following peoples, all known to
history. 1. Medo-Scythians; 2. Casdo-Scythians; 3. Susians; 4. Ancient
Armenians; 5. Assyrians. The following are the thirteen combinations:
1. Pure hieroglyphs; 2. Hieratic signs--neither yet arrow-headed; 3.
Old Scythic or Tartar arrow-heads; 4. New Tartar (new under Assyria);
5. Old Susian; 6. New Susian; 7. Old Armenian; 8. New Armenian; 9. Old
Assyrian; 10. New Assyrian; 11. Old Babylonian; 12. New Babylonian; 13.
Demotic Babylonian.--_Oppert._]
VIII.
MEDES AND PERSIANS.
AUTHORITIES:
_Zend Avesta, Vendidad, Herodotus, Lassen, Pictet, Duncker, etc._
The Medes and Persians, or Zend-speaking Iranians, those destroyers of
the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, were a mighty branch of the great
family of Aryas. The Iranians left the common home of the Aryas at a
period so distant as to render useless every effort toward giving it
possible or even probable chronology. They settled in regions called by
them "Lands of Iran," which, up to the present day, constitute Persia.
Some investigators assert that Iran-Persia was previously occupied by
Tartars; but the earliest traditions preserved in the Zend, or ancient
speech of Zarathustra, do not mention any struggles for supremacy
between the races as having taken place.
The Zend Avesta, the oldest traditional record of the people of
Iran, presents a picture of the primitive migrations and the social
condition of the Iranians. It exhibits them as divided into three
classes--priests, soldiers and farmers; though, as yet, there was no
such thing as the circumscription of caste. It would seem that the
fusion with the Tartars--the supposed aborigines of Iran--was complete,
as the Zend Avesta makes no mention of any subjugated people or lower
class. The warriors and the agriculturists stood on a perfect social
equality. The book of tradition nowhere mentions serfdom, slavery,
or property in man. This would seem to authorize the conclusion that
among the early Iranians, property in man was unknown. Certainly, at
all events, if even the forms of slavery were present, they were in
such abeyance as to escape the attention of Zarathustra (Zoroaster),
the great moralist and lawgiver of his people, who lived long after
the epoch of the early wanderings, and when the Iranic nation formed
a well-organized society on Iran's soil. Zarathustra considers
agriculture as morally and socially the noblest human occupation; but
he speaks of the generous labor of freemen, not the forced drudgery of
slaves.
The Vendidad contains frequent allusions to the general occupations of
life, and is especially minute regarding the details of husbandry--its
wants, modes, products and implements. The farmer is to have at
least a team of draught cattle, a harness and a whip; a plough, a
hand-mill, and so forth; but there is no mention whatever of a slave
as an agricultural requisite. The homestead of an Iranian consists of
a habitation, a storehouse, a cellar, stables for horses, camels and
cattle; but the records have no allusion to a cabin for the slaves. The
Vendidad also describes how dogs--almost sacred to the Iranians--are
to be posted to watch over the village and the herds; but nowhere
says that they were to be used for watching and hunting slaves.
Various operatives and artisans are enumerated, but none of them as
bond-servants or as working under compulsion.
The farmers, peasants and operatives of Media and Persia--so admired
even by Xenophon and Plato--thus built up a vigorous state and society.
After long centuries of existence, however, its strength was undermined
by foreign conquests, by luxury, and by political and domestic slavery.
A similar phenomenon will present itself again and again in the course
of this investigation. When the Medes overthrew the Assyrian empire,
they became infected with the dissolute customs of their former
masters. The houses of the wealthier were filled with domestic slaves;
though, as yet, slavery did not come in contact with agriculture or the
industrial pursuits, and so spread like a blight over the land.
Domestic slavery, in the limited sense of household servitude, was
doubtless ultimately introduced into Persia; but never was Persian held
as _chattel_ on his ancestral soil. Nor yet did despotism, or political
slavery, exist in the governmental structure of the Iranians, who, led
by Kyros (Cyrus), conquered the whole western Asiatic world. Kyros was
only the first among his peers, and was all-powerful only as a leader
and commander. He had not yet the despotic power of Xerxes and other
and later scions of the Achæmenides; and to the last, even to the
conquests by Alexander, the Iranic social structure was comparatively
free from domestic slavery. Nor were the Persians and other Iranian
tribes ever the absolute political slaves of their own kings.
The Persian conquerors of the Asiatic world found domestic slavery
more or less developed wherever they penetrated. Positive information,
however, is extremely scanty regarding the special social and political
organization of the Persians after Kyros and under Dareios. The rule of
the Achæmenides extended over about eighty millions of men, belonging
to various races. The conquerors, in all cases, respected the civil
and social organization and administration peculiar to the subjugated
tribes or nations. In numerous instances, the sovereigns of conquered
states became Persian satraps over lands they once ruled in their own
right. As satraps they were possessed of oppressive authority, had
the power of life and death, of forcing exactions and levying taxes.
But, as the Persian kings were, to the last, strict observers of
Zarathustra's precepts, agriculture always continued to be the most
favored pursuit. The satraps were rewarded with strict reference to
the degree in which agriculture flourished and the population grew and
prospered in their respective satrapies.
During the long rule of the descendants of Dareios, comparative
peace prevailed in the interior of the great empire, which swept
from the Nile almost to the Indus. So that domestic slavery did not
find its usual supplies from prisoners of war, or by the destruction
of small properties and consequent domestic impoverishment--those
terrible sequels of wars from which Fore-Asia had suffered almost
uninterruptedly for many previous centuries.