[Illustration: FIG. I.—Page 135.]
[Illustration: FIG. II.—Page 136.]
[Illustration: FIG. III.—Page 136.]
[Illustration: FIG. IV.—Page 136.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEGROES
AND
NEGRO “SLAVERY:”
THE FIRST AN INFERIOR RACE:
THE LATTER ITS NORMAL CONDITION.
BY
J. H. VAN EVRIE, M.D.
“To our reproach it must be said, that, though for a century and a
half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men,
they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural
history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the
blacks, whether originally a different race, or made distinct by
time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments
both of mind and body.”—THOMAS JEFFERSON _in his “Notes on
Virginia.”_
NEW YORK:
VAN EVRIE, HORTON & CO.,
162 NASSAU STREET.
1861.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by
JOHN H. VAN EVRIE,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for
the
Southern District of New York.
STEREOTYPED BY
SMITH & MCDOUGAL,
82 & 84 Beekman-st.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE.
Since the first edition of this work was issued, startling and
deplorable events have occurred. The great “Anti-Slavery” delusion, that
originated with European monarchists more than fifty years ago, has
culminated in disunion and civil war, as its authors always predicted it
would. A party strongly imbued with the false theories and absurd
assumptions of British writers and abolition societies, is in possession
of the Federal Government, which it stands pledged to use to reduce its
assumptions to practice. It holds that the negro, except in color, is a
man like themselves, and naturally entitled to the same liberty—that to
deny him this liberty, is to enslave him—that, therefore, Southern
society is wrong, and should be revolutionized, and it avows it to be
its mission to accomplish this—to institute a policy that shall finally
abolish or destroy the supremacy of the white man, and secure “impartial
freedom” for negroes! To this the South replies, that this government
was created for white men alone, and _their_ posterity, as declared in
the preamble to the Constitution—that the Supreme Court has recently
declared the same great truth—that, seizing the government by a mere
sectional vote, and placing it in distinct conflict with the social
order of the South, with the avowed purpose of penning up its negro
population, in order to bring about some day the extinction or overthrow
of the existing condition, is, therefore, an overthrow of the
Constitution—that the object avowed necessarily involves their future
destruction, and to save themselves from the wild delusion and malignant
fanaticism of the North, they are forced, in self-defense, to withdraw
from the Union, hitherto, or until this hostile and dangerous party
entered the field, so beneficial to all sections of the country.
So stands the case between the sections. If the “anti-slavery” party was
based on truth—if the negro, except in color, was a man like
ourselves—if social subordination of this negro was wrong, and the four
millions of these people at the South entitled to the same liberty as
ourselves—and if the men who made this government designed it to include
the inferior races of this continent, and it were really beneficial to
equalize and fraternize with these negroes, then, though it may be
doubted, if using the common government to bring it about were proper,
the _end_ in view would be so beneficent, and such a transcendent act of
justice to these assumed slaves, that all honest, earnest, and patriotic
citizens should promptly sustain the party now striving to accomplish
it. But, on the contrary, if this party is based on a stupendous
falsehood—if the negro is a different and inferior being, and in his
normal condition at the South—and if the men who made this government,
designed it for white men alone—then the length and breadth and width
and depth of the “anti-slavery” delusion, and the crime of the
“anti-slavery” party, which has broken up the Union in a blind crusade
after negro freedom, will be fully comprehended by the American people.
The whole mighty question, therefore, with all its vast and boundless
consequences, hinges on the apparently simple question of _fact_—is the
negro, except in color, a man like ourselves, and therefore naturally
entitled to the same liberty?
It is absolutely certain that neither the liberty, the rights, nor the
interests of one single northern citizen is involved; nothing whatever
but a blind and foolish theory of “negro slavery” which is attempted to
be forced on the South. If the people of the two great sections of the
country could change places, the vast “anti-slavery” delusion would be
exploded in sixty days. But as this is impossible, the next best thing
is to explain the actual condition of things in the South to the
northern mind. This great work the author has undertaken, not to defend
an imaginary slavery, for it needs no defense, but to explain the social
order—to demonstrate to the senses, as well as the reason, that the
negro is a different and subordinate being, and in his normal condition
at the South; and thus to show the enormous and fathomless folly, crime,
and impiety wrapped up in the great “anti-slavery” delusion of the day.
The former edition of this work was put to press so hurriedly, that it
contained many errors, but the present one has been carefully revised;
and, moreover, the introductory chapter has been rewritten, in order to
present a more distinct history of the origin and progress of the great
British “anti-slavery” imposture which is now working out its legitimate
and designed purpose in the destruction of the American Union.
In conclusion, the author begs to say, that mere literary display or
fine writing is with him quite a subordinate consideration. He only
desires to be understood, and, that the grand and momentous truths
described in this book shall be clearly comprehended by the masses, with
the confident assurance that when they come to understand that their own
liberty, welfare, and prosperity are all hazarded in a blind crusade
after that which, could it be accomplished, would be the greatest
calamity ever inflicted on a civilized people, the causeless and
senseless, but frightful sectional conflict now raging will be speedily
terminated by the universal uprising of the northern masses in favor of
a government of WHITE MEN, and UNION with the South.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION.
Page
European Misconception of the Negro—Monarchical Hostility to
American Institutions—Imposture or Delusion of Wilberforce—False
Issue of a Single Human Race—Dictation of European
Writers—Subserviency of the American Mind 17
CHAPTER II.
LAWS OF ORGANIZATION.
Divisions of the Organic World—Each Form of Being an Independent
Creation—Harmony in the Economy of Animal Life—The Races
specifically different from each other—A Single Species
Impossible—Fallacies of Linnæus and other European
Naturalists—Ignorance of Educated Men on this Subject 34
CHAPTER III.
THE HUMAN CREATION.
Subdivisions of Mankind—The Different Races of Men—Characteristics
of each—The Caucasian—The Mongolian—The Malay—The Aboriginal
American—Caucasian Remains in Mexico—The Esquimaux—The Negro
Race; its Origin; Observations of Livingston, Garth, and
others—Hybrids confounded with the Typical Negro—The Dogma of a
Single Race—Mankind Created in Groups—The Bible Aspect of the
Question—Inconsistency of the Advocates of the Single Race
Theory 44
CHAPTER IV.
HISTORICAL OUTLINE.
Origin of the Caucasian Race—Bible Accounts—Invasion of Egypt by
the Master Race—The Caucasians in Assyria, Persia, and
Babylon—Origin of the Mongolians—The Use of the Term
“Barbarian”—The History of the Greeks—Not the Authors of
Political Liberty—Athens not a Democracy—The Roman Republic and
Empire—Citizenship a Privilege, not a Right—The Advent of
Christianity the Advent of Democracy—The Dark Ages—The Races
that Figured in that Era—The Crusades—The Asiatic Invasion—The
Carthaginians—The Arabs—The Downfall of the Roman Empire—The
Reformation—All the Numerous Varieties of the White Race
Subsiding into Three Well-known Families, the Celtic, the
Teutonic and Sclavonic—General Review—The Intellectual Powers of
the White Race the same in all Ages—Knowledge only
Progressive—The Inferior Races Incapable of Acquiring and
Transmitting Knowledge—The Chinese no Exception 63
CHAPTER V.
COLOR.
The Cause of Color Unknown—The Caucasian Color the Index of the
Character; the Contrary the Case with the Negro Race—The Black
Complexion a Sign of Inferiority—Misuse of the term “Colored
Man” 88
CHAPTER VI.
FIGURE.
Differences in Form—The Negro Incapable of Standing Upright—Other
Marks of Inferiority—The Relative Approximation of the
Ourang-Outang to the Negro and the Caucasian 92
CHAPTER VII.
THE HAIR.
The Hair of the Caucasian and Negro Contrasted—The Beard of the
Caucasian indicative of Superiority—The Negro and other Races
have not the Flowing Beard of the Caucasian 98
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FEATURES.
The Features the True Reflex of the Inner Nature—Variations of
Size, Outlines, Complexion, etc., of the Caucasian
Race—Resemblance of Negroes to each other in Size and
Appearance—Inability of the Negro Features to express the
Emotional Feelings peculiar to the Caucasian, etc., etc. 105
CHAPTER IX.
LANGUAGE.
Divided into two Portions—First Capacity of Expression—Second
Arrangement into Parts of Speech—All Beings have a Language,
each Specific and in Accordance with its Organism—The Vocal
Organs of the Negro—No Negro can Speak the Language of the White
Man Correctly—Negroes can be Distinguished by their Voices—A
Negro Musical Artist Unknown—Musical Genius Requires a Brain of
Corresponding Complexity—The Negro’s Love of Music merely
Sensuous, and Manifested by the Feet as much as by the Brain 109
CHAPTER X.
THE SENSES.
Organism of the Senses—Their Strength and Acuteness in Inferior
Races—The Cause of Negro Indolence Explained—The Necessity of
Governing the Negro—Incapacity of the “Free Negro” to Produce
Sufficient for his own Support—His Ultimate Extinction Simply a
Question of Time—Incapacity of the Negro for the Higher Branches
of Mechanism—Effect of Flogging on the Negro Senses, etc., etc. 115
CHAPTER XI.
THE BRAIN.
Erroneous Impressions Relative to the Brain—What Constitutes the
Brain—Its Size the True Test of Intelligence—General Uniformity
of the Negro Brain—Its Correspondence with the Body—Its Size,
when Compared with that of the White Man—The Folly and Impiety
of Attempting to Equalize those whom God has made Unequal, etc. 123
CHAPTER XII.
GENERAL SUMMARY.
Recapitulation and Review of the Outward Characteristics of the
Negro—Color, etc., seen to be only a Single Fact out of the
Millions of Facts separating Races—Inner Qualities necessarily
Correspondent with the Outward ones—Conclusion 132
PART II.
CHAPTER XIII.
HYBRIDISM.
The Laws of Interunion fully Explained—A fixed and well-defined
Limit to Mulattoism—Prostitution in the North, and Mulattoism in
the South—Amalgamation and its Consequences—The Physiological
Laws governing Mulattoism and Mongrelism—Condition of the Negro
in Jamaica, Hayti, etc.—The Negro, when Isolated, certain to
Relapse into his Original Barbarism—Intellectual Difference
between Negroes and Mulattoes—The Viciousness and Cowardice of
the Mongrel—His Low Grade of Vitality, etc., etc. 143
CHAPTER XIV.
THE “SLAVE TRADE,” OR THE IMPORTATION OF NEGROES.
General Review of the Subject—The Absurdity of Attempting to
Civilize Africa—The Adaptability of the Negro to Tropical
Labor—Las Casas and the Negroes and Indians—How the Spanish
Government conducted “the Slave Trade”—Its Inhumanity, as
practiced by the Dutch and English—The Benefits of the Original
“Slave Trade”—The Reason why England is so Anxious to Abolish
“Slavery,” etc., etc. 168
CHAPTER XV.
NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO.
The Law of Adaptation—The Natural Relation of Men to Animals, of
Parents to Offspring, of Men of the Same Species to Each
Other—American Institutions based on the Natural Relations, or
the Natural Equality of the Race—Political Equality the Normal
Order of the White Man—Disregard of the Natural Relations in
Europe—Repression of the Natural Order—Result of the Employment
of Force to Preserve the Existing Condition—Popular Ignorance of
the Relations of Races—Juxtaposition of White Men and
Negroes—Natural Inferiority and Social Subordination of the
latter—The Natural, or Uneducated Negro of Africa, compared with
the Civilized Negro of America—Free Negroism a Social
Disease—Social Subordination, with the Protection of the White
Man, the Normal Condition of the Negro 179
CHAPTER XVI.
CHATTELISM.
Historic Slavery—Its Origin—Its Character—All White People—Often
Highly Educated Men—Their Abject Dependence on the Will or
Caprice of the Owner—Their Incapacity to Propagate
Themselves—Their Restoration to Citizenship, etc.—Nothing
whatever in Common with the Social Subordination of Negroes in
our Time—The Industrial Capacity of the Negro all that the
Master owns—Care and Kindness of the Master—Rapid Increase of
the Negro Population when in their Normal Condition, etc. 204
CHAPTER XVII.
EDUCATION OF NEGROES.
The Education of the Negro should be in Harmony with his Wants and
Mental Capacity—The Folly of Attempting to Educate the Negro as
we do the Caucasian—The Negro always a Child in Intellect—The
Duty of the Master to set his “Slave” a Good Example—The
Imitative Faculty of the Negro mistaken for Intelligence, etc. 215
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS.
Love of the Caucasian Mother for her Offspring—Relative Capacity
of White and Black Children—The Negress, after a certain period,
loses all Love for, or Interest in, her Offspring—Affection for
his Master the Strongest Feeling of which the Negro is capable,
etc., etc. 223
CHAPTER XIX.
MARRIAGE.
The Idea that Marriage does not Exist among “Slaves” Repugnant to
the Northern Mind—Its Effect on Increasing the Anti-Slavery
Delusion—New England Women—Their Domestic Education
Admirable—Their Mistake as to the Facts of Marriage at the
South—Their Southern Sisters—What is Marriage?—Not Simply a
Civil Contract—A Natural Relation—The Love of Negroes Impulsive
and Capricious 233
CHAPTER XX.
CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION.
How the Earth is Divided—Its Fauna and Flora—All Organized Beings
have their Centres of Existence peculiar to Themselves—No such
thing as the Creation of the same Species in Different Centres
of Life—The more elevated the Organism, the less subject to
External Circumstances—Incapacity of the Negro to Live in
Northern Latitudes—Their Miserable Condition and Rapid
Extinction in Canada—Industrial Adaptation of the Caucasian to
Intemperate Latitudes—Why white Labor is worth more than that of
the Negro at the North—Industrial Adaptation of the Negro to
Tropical and Tropicoid Products—Absurdity of the Ordinance of
1787—The Acquisition of Southern Territory always saves the
North from so-called Negro Slavery—“Extension of Slavery” vital
to both White and Black—Absolute Necessity of Negro Labor in the
Tropics—Production, and therefore Civilization, otherwise
Impossible 245
CHAPTER XXI.
NORTH AND SOUTH—THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF GOVERNMENT.
The Progenitors of our so-called Slaves, though mainly Imported at
the North, ultimately found their way South—Difference between
the Early Colonists of both Sections of the Country—Virginia
Mainly Settled by the Cavaliers—The Southern Leaders the
Originators and Upholders of our Present System of
Government—The Presence of the Negro, in his Natural Condition,
conducive to the Equality of White Men—The Harmony of Southern
Society—The Interests of “Slaveholder” and “Non-Slaveholder,”
and of Master and “Slave” are Indivisible—The Presence of the
Negro in his Normal Condition the Happiest Event in Human
Affairs, etc. 270
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ALLIANCE OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS.
The Antagonism of Ideas after the Constitution was formed—The Two
Opposing Leaders, Hamilton and Jefferson, in Washington’s
Cabinet—Hamilton’s Financial Policy Wrong—The British System—The
Alien and Sedition Laws—British “Liberty”—Conflict of Labor and
Capital—The Producing Classes at the North without Leaders—The
Wealth and Power in the hands of the Federalists—At the South
the Slaveholders were Producers—Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration that
they were the Allies of the Northern Laborers True—The Kentucky
and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 the True Exposition of our
Federal System—Civil Revolution of 1800 293
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.
The Number of Negroes on this Continent—The “Free”
Negro—Impossibility of his Living out the Life of the White
Man—The “Free” Negroes of Virginia and Maryland—The Drawback of
the “Free” Negro Population—Its Dangerous Elements—Its Immoral
Character—Its Tax on the Laboring Classes—Its Ultimate
Extinction—Slavery in Brazil and Cuba—The White Man Degraded
there—Social Danger—Tropical Civilization—Intellect of the White
Man, and the Labor of the Negro Essential to it—The Condition of
Jamaica—White Blood being Extinguished—The Tendency of the
British System to Force Negroes to a Forbidden Level with White
Men—Negro Officials—Knighting a Negro—The Effect of Legal and
Social Equality—The Extinction of the White Race in the West
Indies only a Question of Time—The Negro Returning to
Savagism—Hayti—Terrible Results of the British Anti-Slavery
Policy—An African Heathenism in America 309
CHAPTER XXIV.
CONCLUSION.
Review of the Subject—Juxtaposition with the Subordinate Race has
Originated New Ideas in the Master Race, and Rendered Republican
Liberty Practicable—Beneficent Union of Capital and Labor in the
South—A Southern Majority and Northern Minority have Acquired
all the Territory, Fought all the Battles, and Conducted the
Nation in every Step of its Growth, since its Foundation to the
Present Time—The Acquisition of the Gulf States has Secured
Equal Rights to the Masses at the North—Final Acquisition of
Cuba, Central America, etc., Essential to the National
Development—Extension of so-called Slavery a Vital Law of
National Existence, and Absolutely Essential to American
Civilization 336
CHAPTER I.
CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION.
“American slavery,” though having no existence in fact, is a phrase
which, for the last forty years, has been oftener heard than _American
democracy_; yet the latter is one of the great powers of the earth, and
destined, in the course of time, to revolutionize the world. But in this
prominence of an _abstraction_, and indifference, or apparent
indifference, to the grandest _fact_ of modern times, is witnessed the
wide-spread and almost despotic influence of the European over the
American mind. What is here termed “American slavery,” is the _status_
of the negro in American society—the social relation of the negro to the
white man—which, being in accord with the natural relations of the
races, springs spontaneously from the necessities of human society. The
white citizen is superior, the negro inferior; and, therefore, whenever
or wherever they happen to be in juxtaposition, the human law should
accord, as it does accord in the South, with these relations thus
inherent in their organizations, and thus fixed forever by the hand of
God. And were America isolated from Europe—did that sea of fire, which
Mr. Jefferson once wished for, really divide the Old World and the New,
and thus separate us from the mental obliquities and moral perversities
of the former—then any other relation than that now common to the South,
would be an impossible conception to the American mind.
The words “slave” and “slavery” were scarcely heard a hundred years ago,
as indeed they will be unheard a hundred years hence; and prior to the
Revolution of 1776, the people of America were quite unconscious of that
mighty “evil,” now so oppressive to many otherwise sensible minds,
though this imaginary slavery then spread over the whole continent. All
new communities are distinguished by a certain advance in civilization
over the elder ones, however rude the former may appear in some
respects, or whatever may be the over-refinement, or seeming refinement,
of the latter. Truth lives forever—“the eternal years of God are hers;”
and all real knowledge, all true progress made by the race, is treasured
up, and carried with it in all its wanderings, whether from the Nile to
the Tiber, or from the Thames to the Hudson; while the errors, the
foolish traditions and vicious habits, mental and moral, that gather
about it, and weaken, and sometimes so overlie and conceal the truth as
to render it useless, are left behind. We see this even in our own
energetic and progressive society. The younger States are the most
enlightened States; and the West, whatever may be its wants, or supposed
wants among a certain class, is really more civilized than the East.
That community which is the most prosperous—where there is the greatest
amount of happiness—where there is relatively the greatest number of
independent citizens—is per se and of necessity the most civilized; for
the end of existence, the object of the All-wise and beneficent
Creator—happiness for His creatures—is here most fully accomplished.
And when we contemplate the history of this continent, and compare the
character of the early colonists, their history, and their influence
over the present condition of things, it will be found that they
remained stationary in exact proportion as they clung to the ideas and
habitudes of the Old World; or advanced towards a better and higher
condition just as they cast off these influences, and lived in natural
accord with the circumstances that surrounded them. The Spanish
conquerors were often the pets and favorites of the court, and always
the faithful sons of the Church, and brought with them the pomps and
vanities of the former, and the rigid ecclesiastical observances of the
latter. When Cortez and Pizzaro took possession of a province, they
pompously paraded the titles and dignities of the emperor before the
wondering savages, and added vast multitudes of “Christian converts” to
“Holy Church” with a zeal and fervor that the Beechers and Cheevers of
our times might envy, but surely could not equal. The English colonists,
on the contrary, were almost all disaffected, or at all events, were
charged with disaffection to the mother country. This, it is true, was
masked under religious beliefs and scruples of conscience, but was none
the less hostile to the political order under which they had been
persecuted and suffered so long. As soon, therefore, as they found
themselves in a New World, and relieved from the tyranny of the Old,
they abandoned, to a great extent, the forms, as they already had
abandoned many of the ideas, of the latter. They recognized the nominal
sovereignty of the mother country, or rather of the Crown; but from the
landing at Jamestown, as well as at Plymouth, all the British colonists
really governed themselves, made their own laws, provided for their own
safety, and, except the governor, and occasionally some subordinate
officials, elected their own rulers. The result was a corresponding
prosperity; for not only did the discipline of self-reliance strengthen
the character, and call out a higher phase of citizenship among the
English colonists, but in casting off the habitudes of the old
societies, and adopting those that were suited to the circumstances
surrounding them, they soon exhibited a striking contrast to those of
Spain and of other European powers, who clung to the ideas and habits of
Europe.
But this drawback on American progress—this clinging to the habitudes of
the Old World, which kept the Spanish and French colonies in abject
submission to the mother country, and which England, at a later period,
sought to force on her colonies—was not the sole embarrassment in the
progress of the colonists. They were confronted by wild and ferocious
savages, who disputed every step of the white European; and though,
previous to the independence of the colonies, the mother country united
with the latter against the former, from the breaking out of hostilities
in 1776 to the close of the War of 1812 the interests of monarchy and
savagism may be said to have been inseparable, and to have formed a
common barrier against the march of republicanism. Indeed, it is a
truth, attested by the whole history of the past, and equally so by the
circumstances of the present, that the subordinate races of this
continent—the Indian, Negro, Mongrel, etc.—constitute the material, the
very stock in trade, of European monarchists, to embarrass the progress
of American institutions; and in every instance where we have been
engaged in Indian wars, that portion of our people who, in their
ignorance and blindness, have condemned the course of their own
government, have been the unconscious instruments of the enemies of
their country, and in their sickly sentimentality and folly, they have
sought to obstruct the progress of American civilization. Monarchy
consists in artificial distinctions of kings, nobles, peasants, etc., or
it may be defined as the rule of classes of the same race, and, from the
inherent necessities of its organization, it is forced to make war on
the natural distinction of races. Prior to the breaking out of the
American Revolution, there was no necessity for calling in the aid of
the Negro or the Indian to crush out the liberty of the white man. The
colonists, as has been observed, were practical republicans, and
substantially governed themselves; but they had not questioned the
European system or theory of monarchism. When they did this, however, in
that grand Declaration of Mr. Jefferson, that all men (meaning, of
course, his own race) were created free and equal, the British
monarchists instinctively and, indeed necessarily, resorted to the means
at hand—to the subordinate races of America—to demoralize and break down
this immortal truth. An English judge, anticipating the coming rebellion
of the Americans, had already ruled that “slavery,” or social
subordination of the negro to the white man, was a result of municipal
law—a creature of the _lex loci_; and though this was in language that
led vast numbers of people into error, its technical as well as absolute
falsehood is apparent, when we remember that no such “law” has ever
existed, either now or at any other time, in American history, from the
Canadian Lakes to Cape Horn. But it served as a foundation and
stand-point for that wide-spread imposture and world-wide delusion which
has since so overshadowed the land, and, with the best intentions on
their part, so deluded Americans themselves into a blind warfare against
the progress, prosperity, and indeed the civilization, of their country
and continent. In the seven years’ war waged to crush out the rebellion
of the Colonies, England subsidized the savage Indian tribes wherever it
was possible to do so; and in the subsequent War of 1812, her agents
partially succeeded in combining all the savages on our western border,
under Tecumseh, with the design of shutting us out forever from the
country west of the Mississippi. The result of this monstrous alliance
of European monarchists and American savages to beat back the advancing
civilization of the New World, to hold in check, and, if possible, to
defeat and overthrow republicanism, has ended in the destruction and
almost utter annihilation of the North American Indians. General
Jackson’s campaigns in Florida, as well as those of Harrison in the
West, and, to a certain extent, even the later Seminole War, all had
their origin in the same causes, the open or secret intrigues of British
agents, stimulating the savages to resist the onward march of American
civilization. Nor was it anything like the former contests of the agents
of England and France to enlist the aid of the savages against each
other; for, repulsive and iniquitous as it may be for men of the same
race to employ subordinate races against their own blood, they were
struggling for possession of a continent, and all means, doubtless,
seemed legitimate that should give them victory. But in this case it was
a war against Americanism—against a new order of political
society—against a system based on a principle of utter antagonism to
monarchism, and which if permitted to develop its legitimate results, to
grow into a new and grander order of civilized society than the world
had ever yet witnessed, the rotten and worn-out systems of Europe were
doomed to certain and perhaps early overthrow. It is true, the agents
employed did not know this—indeed, their European masters were ignorant,
perhaps, of the principles involved; but the instinct of
self-preservation, the instinct inherent in hostile systems impelled
them forward, while the ends to be reached, or the consequences of
success, were always too apparent to be mistaken. But their savage
instruments were destroyed in the conflict, in the uses to which they
were applied by their European allies; and whatever may be the future
fate of the Aborigines in Spanish America, the North American Indian is
virtually annihilated. A few wild tribes of the West and South-west,
whose means for preserving existence are every day growing less, still
remain, and some remnants of semi-civilized tribes, which are perishing
even more rapidly than the former, are to be found on our Western
frontier; but the time is not distant, perhaps, when they will be wholly
and absolutely extinct.
What might have been, it is useless to conjecture; but the notion of a
certain class of sentimentalists among us, that we have done the Indian
great wrong, and that, had we treated him with kindness and justice, he
might have become civilized, and a part of our permanent population, of
course, is absurd; for it is founded on that foolish dogma of a single
race, which Europe has fastened on the American mind, and which supposes
the Indian, as the Negro, etc., to have the same nature as themselves.
Nor is the notion of others, that the Indian is incapable of
civilization, and therefore destined to give way before the advance of
the white man, worthy of any consideration; for this involves the
paradox of being created without a purpose, a supposition not to be
entertained a moment; for the most insignificant beings in the lowest
forms of organic life have their uses, and the human creature, surely,
was not created in vain. The simple truth is, that we need to know what
the Indian is in fact, his true nature and true relations to our own
race, and then, as we have done in the case of the Negro, adapt the
social and governmental machinery to the wants of both races. But this
employment and consequent destruction of the Indians of America by the
monarchists of Europe, though often inflicting great temporary evil on
our border settlements, did not retard our progress in the least, nor
did England, to any appreciable extent, succeed in her objects. The
theory or dogma of a single race, which her writers and publicists had
set up about the time of the Revolution, produced, however, immense
practical results both in Europe and America. The doctrines of the
American Revolution, as was foreseen by British statesmen, soon became
universally accepted in France, and threatened to overturn monarchy all
over the Continent, and indeed in England itself. Dr. Johnson,
Wilberforce, Pitt, and all the great writers and leaders of England,
naturally enough adopted the notion that Indians, Negroes, etc., were
men like themselves, except in color, cultivation, etc.; but they were
impelled, by the necessities of their system and the preservation of
monarchical institutions, to practicalize this theory to the utmost
extent in their power, and thus divert the attention of their own
oppressed white people from _their_ wrongs, by holding up before them
continually the _imaginary_ wrongs of “American slaves.” They said, “It
is true, you laborers of Yorkshire and operatives of Birmingham have a
hard life, a life of constant toil and privation; but you are free-born
Englishmen, and your own masters, and in all England there is not a
single slave; while in America, in that so-called land of freedom, where
there is no king, or noble, or law of primogeniture, and where, in
theory, it is declared that all men are created free and equal, one
sixth of the population are slaves, so abject and miserable that they
are sold in the public markets, like horses and oxen. What, then, are
your oppressions or your wrongs in comparison with those of American
slaves? or what are the evils or the injustice of monarchy when
contrasted with those dark and damning crimes of American democracy,
that thus, in these enlightened times, dooms one sixth of the population
to open and undisguised slavery?” Such was the argument of the British
writers, and it was unanswerable if it had rested on _fact_—if the
foundation were true, then the inference, of course, was unavoidable. If
the so-called American slave was created free and equal with his master,
then all that the British writers charged would have been true enough,
and American slavery, in comparison with British liberty—or what passed
for such in Yorkshire and Birmingham—would have been a wrong, so deep,
damning, and fathomless, that no words in our language would be able to
express its enormity. How was the poor, ignorant, and helpless laborer,
or even his defenders, Fox, Sheridan, and other liberal leaders of the
day, to answer this argument? They did not attempt it. They admitted
that “American slavery” was all that it was charged to be—that it was a
wrong and evil immeasurably greater and more atrocious than any of those
which the people of France had risen against, or that the masses in
England suffered under; but they hoped that the great principle of the
American Revolution was strong enough to overcome this wrong, and in the
process of time, to “abolish slavery,” and that liberty would become
universal among Americans. Indeed, some of those who had been the most
devoted believers in the great American doctrine, both in England and
France, were so painfully impressed by the seeming wrong done the negro,
that they lost their interest, to a great extent, in the real wrongs of
the white man, and devoted all their efforts to the former. Societies
were formed in London and Paris, funds contributed, books published,
tracts distributed, and extensive arrangements entered into, with the
sole purpose of relieving the “American slave” from the fancied wrongs
that were heaped on him; and their societies, these “_Amis des Noirs_,”
patronized by Robespierre and other leaders of the people, which were
formed in almost every town in France and England, popularized the
movement, and so identified the imaginary cause of the negro with that
of the European masses, that to this day they doubtless seem
inseparable. And even in our own times, we have witnessed the sorry
spectacle of English laborers contributing of their wretched pittance to
glorify some abolition hero or heroine of the “Uncle Tom” pattern, under
the deplorable misconception, of course, that these blind tools of the
enemies of liberty were faithful defenders of a common cause, when, in
truth, they were vastly more dangerous to that cause than the open and
avowed friends of despotism. But this very natural mistake of the
friends of freedom in Europe, this ignorance and misconception of the
negro nature and relations to the white man, which led Fox in England,
and Robespierre in France, to confound the cause of the oppressed
multitudes of their own race with the imaginary interests of negrodom,
extended and unfortunate as it was and still is, was surpassed by a
still more insidious and more extended influence. Wilberforce, who, more
than any other man, gave form and direction to the great “anti-slavery”
delusion of modern times, was eminently pious—as piety is accepted by a
large portion of the religious world. He was an Episcopalian in form,
but preeminently a Puritan in practice; and, while doubtless sincere in
his belief, and perfectly correct in his religious habits, he was one of
the most complete bigots, religious, political, and social, the world
ever saw. Belonging to the ruling class, and possessed of a considerable
fortune, he believed that his own _status_ was the stand-point, and
himself the model, for the government of society, and therefore was as
doggedly and bitterly opposed to any change in England, or to any reform
in English society, as he was earnest in his efforts to relieve the
“sufferings of the slave” in America. In a public career of some forty
years, as a member of Parliament, he never failed to record his vote
against any increase of popular freedom, or any change that tended to
ameliorate the condition of the white masses, and just as steadily and
uniformly labored to “elevate” the negro to the _status_ of the English
laborer, or, at all events, to favor that final “abolition of slavery,”
which he himself was not, however, destined to witness in the British
American possessions. But throughout he regarded the question rather as
a religious than a political one, and at an early period, in this
respect, impressed his own character on it. Identified with the Church,
all his notions those of the High Church party—substantially the notions
that Archbishop Laud entertained two centuries before—by birth and
association connected with the landed aristocracy, and yet distinguished
for practical piety, for a zeal and devotion to his religious duties
that the most zealous among the Dissenters and Evangelicals might
imitate but could not surpass, this was just the man to impress a great
movement with his own characteristics, and the “anti-slavery cause”
became the cause of religion as well as of liberty with the religious
world. Nor was it confined to the “American slave;” it embraced the
whole world of heathendom; and a religious crusade sprang up, that
finally became more extended, and, in some respects, more permanent,
than the great political movement inaugurated by Jefferson a few years
before. And if the Father of Lies, Lucifer himself, had plotted a plan
or scheme for concealing a great truth, and embarrassing a great cause,
he could have accomplished nothing more effective than the movement that
Wilberforce inaugurated for the professed benefit of the negro and other
subordinate races of mankind, which, masked under the form of religious
duty, and appealing to the conscience, the love of proselytism, the
enthusiasm, and even the bigotries of the religious world, has, for more
than half a century, held in thrall the conscience as well as the reason
of Christendom. Robespierre, and other patrons of the _Amis des Noirs_,
could only present a common cause, that “universal liberty” which they
declared to be the birthright of _all_ men, and which it were better
that every conceivable calamity should happen rather than this “great
principle” should perish; but when it became the duty of every Christian
man and woman, every follower of Christ and professor of religion, to
work and pray for “the deliverance of the slave,” then a power was
aroused that nothing could resist, for it became an immediate and sacred
duty to labor in this cause. Missionary societies were organized, money
contributed by millions both in Europe and America, enthusiastic men and
women offered their services, even children were taught to give their
pocket-money for a cause so holy as that of redeeming the “slave,” while
all this time innumerable multitudes of their own race, their own blood,
those whom God had created their equals, and endowed with like
capacities, instincts, and wants, and therefore designed for the same
happiness as themselves, were left to grovel in midnight darkness and
abject misery.
It is not intended to sneer at or to indulge in unkind criticism on
missionary efforts. On the contrary, it is frankly admitted that they
sprang from the sincerest conviction, and were generally pursued with an
utter disregard of selfish and mercenary considerations; but in not
understanding the diversity of races, these efforts were more likely to
do harm than good. A man’s first duties are to his own household; and no
amount or extent of benefits conferred on strangers, can excuse him for
neglecting the former; and even if the “heathen”—the Negro, Indian, and
Sandwich Islander—had been benefited by the efforts of Wilberforce and
his followers, the neglect of the ignorant, darkened, and miserable
millions of their own race, was a wrong that scarcely has a parallel in
history. But they did not benefit the subordinate races, but, on the
contrary, assuming them _to be beings like themselves_, when they were
widely different beings, they necessarily injured them; and when it is
reflected that they not only neglected the ignorant and degraded
multitudes of their own race, but got up a false issue, in order to
distract the attention and conceal the wrongs of their own people, then
an unequalled crime was committed.
The government of England, which is simply an embodiment of the class to
which Wilberforce belonged, acted in concert with these religious
efforts; and thus we see the leaders of the popular cause in the Old
World, Fox and Robespierre, the Church and Aristocracy, all acting
together in a common cause, and laboring, in fact, to retard the
progress and the liberation of millions upon millions of their own race,
under the pretence, and doubtless with many, in the belief, that they
were laboring for the benefit of the negro and other subordinate races.
The government expended about a thousand millions to crush out American
liberty in 1776; but it is quite likely that an almost equal sum,
expended for the professed benefit of the negro, has accomplished vastly
more than all other things together to protract the liberation of her
own masses. It has been estimated that six hundred millions have been
expended nominally to put down the slave trade, but in reality to
pervert the natural relations of races, and force the subordinate negro
to the _status_ of the British laborer. The interest on this enormous
sum is annually drawn from the sweat and toil of the English masses; and
every hut and cottage in the British Islands is forced to surrender a
portion of its daily food, or of the daily earnings of its owner, to pay
the interest on money squandered on the negro in America! The amount
thus paid, properly expended, would be amply sufficient to give a good
English education to the entire laboring class; but that would be an
overwhelming calamity to the governing class, who could not retain their
power for a single day after the masses were thus enlightened.
A few years since, famine and pestilence swept over Ireland, carrying
off some three millions of the Irish people, all of whom might have been
saved if the annual amount wasted on negroes in America had been applied
to this beneficent and legitimate purpose. Indeed, it is quite possible
that if the money wrung from the sweat and toil of Irishmen alone, for
the pretended benefit of the negro, had been appropriated to the relief
of the suffering multitudes of that unhappy people, few would really
have perished. The mortgage on the bodies and souls of future
generations of British laborers, for the avowed purpose of “doing good”
to the negro, enormous as the amount may be—and it has been estimated as
high as one thousand million dollars—is only a portion of the vast waste
and wholesale destruction of property involved in the British Free Negro
policy, or so-called schemes of philanthropy. Farms and plantations in
Jamaica and other islands, valued at fifty thousand pounds prior to the
“emancipation,” were afterward sold with difficulty at ten and even five
thousand pounds; and indeed extensive districts were abandoned by their
unfortunate owners. An infamous system of fraud and inhumanity,
practiced of late years on the ignorant and simple Chinese and other
Asiatics, has enabled some planters to recover and restore their wasted
and plundered estates; and the vile hypocrites who filled the world with
their doleful lamentations over the sorrows of Africa, not only wink at
this infinitely greater wrong practiced on Asiatics, but resort to the
_effects_ attending it, as a proof that emancipation has not ruined
these beautiful islands! Could audacity and hypocrisy surpass, or did
they ever surpass, this shameless fraud? But this new and vastly more
atrocious system of “man-stealing,” is transitional and temporary. The
Mongol or Asiatic is rapidly worked up and destroyed in the West Indies;
and, as no females are introduced, they can never become an essential or
permanent element of the population.
The negro, forced from his normal condition, and into unnatural relation
to the white man, must relapse into his African habits, just as fast as
the white element disappears; and as the latter is relatively feeble,
the time must soon come, unless we take possession and restore the
natural order, when civilization itself will utterly perish, and the
great heart of the continent be surrendered to African savagism! The
eternal and immovable laws fixed forever in the heart and organism of
things, can not be changed or modified by human folly, fraud, or power;
and therefore the climate, the soil, the products, and the _means_ that
the Almighty has ordained shall be used to make them tributary to human
welfare, have their fixed and everlasting relations since time began.
The brain of the white man and the muscles of the negro, the mind of the
superior and the body of the inferior race, in natural relation to each
other, are the vital principles of tropical civilization, without which
it is as impossible that civilization should exist in the great centre
of the continent, as that vegetation should spring from granite, or
animals exist without atmospheric air; and, therefore, thrusting the
negro from his natural sphere into unnatural relations with the white
man, necessarily destroys the latter, and drives the other into his
inherent and original Africanism.
The delusion, the folly, or the fraud of Wilberforce and his associates,
in presenting a false issue to their own wronged and oppressed millions,
and thus diverting their attention from their own oppressions to the
imaginary sufferings of negroes and other subordinate races, is so
transcendent, its magnitude so enormous, that we have no terms in our
language that can express it; but great and indeed awful as may be this
wrong on the white man, it is in some respects really surpassed by the
evils, if not the wrongs, inflicted on the negro. More than one million
of negroes are believed to have perished, through the means resorted to
to suppress the slave trade; and now it is admitted that those attempts
have not prevented the importation of one single negro! The world needed
the products of the tropics; the labor of a certain number of negroes
was needed to furnish these products; and therefore, when fifty thousand
were required in Cuba, eighty thousand were shipped on the African
coast, thus leaving a margin of thirty thousand to be destroyed by
interference with the laws of demand and supply. Who can contemplate
these frightful results without awe, and sorrow, and pity, not alone for
the victims, but for the authors of such wide-spread and boundless
calamity. The crusades of the middle ages are now recognized as utterly
baseless—simple human delusions, in which millions of lives were
sacrificed, not to an idea, but to a false assumption—an assumption that
the Holy Sepulchre could be recovered at Jerusalem. That crusade of
“humanity,” in behalf of the subordinate races, set up by Wilberforce
and his associates in modern times, is also a simple delusion, based on
a false assumption, the assumption that negroes are _black_-white men,
or men like ourselves, and though not so fatal to human life as the
former, its effects or influences on human welfare are vastly and
immeasurably more deplorable.
Such is the great “anti-slavery” delusion of our times. It is wholly
European and monarchical in its origin; and leaving out of view all
other considerations, its mere existence among us, or that any
considerable number of Americans could be so deluded and mentally so
degraded, as to embrace it, will astonish posterity to the latest
generations. We are in contact with the negro—we see he is a negro—a
different being from ourselves. We will not—even the most deluded
Abolitionist will not, in his own case or family, act on the assumption
that he is a being like himself, indeed, would rather see his child
carried to the grave than intermarried with a negro, however rich,
cultivated, and pious; and rather than thus live out his own professed
belief, he would prefer the death of his whole household. The European,
on the contrary, naturally enough supposes the negro to differ only in
color; and the monarchist—the enemy of Democracy—the man opposed to the
great principle of equality underlying our system—just as naturally
demands that we shall be consistent and apply it to negroes. But instead
of enlightening this European ignorance, and indignantly rejecting this
monarchical impudence, which proposes that we shall degrade our blood
and destroy our institutions, by including a subordinate race in our
political system, we have foolishly, wickedly, and abjectly assented to
the European assumption, and millions of Americans have based their
reasonings, and to a certain extent their actions, on this palpable,
fundamental, and monstrous falsehood. Those portions of the country most
directly under the mental dictation of the Old World, are those, of
course, most given up to the delusion, but nearly the whole northern
mind has adopted it as a mental habit. The time, however, has come when
it must be exploded, and the _reason_ of the people restored, or it will
drag after it consequences and calamities that one shudders to
contemplate. Eighty years ago it was an abstraction, universally
assented to, and just as universally rejected in practice; for all the
States save one then recognized the legal subordination of the negro as
a social necessity, whatever the speculative notions were on this
subject. They generally believed that, in some indefinite or mysterious
manner, it would—or rather that the negro would—become extinct; and as
the industrial powers of this element of the general population was not
specifically adapted to our then territory, all perhaps were willing to
hope that it should some day disappear. But the vast acquisition of
Southern territory, the discovery and opening up of new channels of
industry, and the extensive cultivation of those great staples so
essential to human welfare, which are only to be attained on this
continent by the labor of the negro when directed by the white man; and,
moreover, the rapid increase of this population, and the certainty that
it must remain forever an element of our population, demand that this
mighty delusion shall be exposed, as it is in fact the vilest and most
infamous fraud on the freedom, dignity, and welfare of the white
millions ever witnessed since the world began.
CHAPTER II.
GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION.
The organic world is separated into two great divisions, animal and
vegetable, or into animate and inanimate beings. In regard to the
vegetable kingdom, as it is termed, it is not necessary to say a word;
those desirous of obtaining a thorough knowledge of animal life,
however, had better begin their studies with the more elementary and
simple forms of vegetable being. Many persons suppose that the whole
animate existence is linked together by connecting or continuous
gradations. In a certain sense this may be said to be so; nevertheless,
absolutely considered, each family or form of being is a complete and
independent creation. There are resemblances and approximations as well
as gradations, yet each is perfect in itself, and makes up an entire
world of its own. The Almighty Creator, in His infinite wisdom, has
provided against chance, or accident, or human caprice, and placed each
and every one of His works in a position of such absolute independence,
that one of them, or more, perhaps, might utterly perish, and yet the
beauty and harmony of nature would remain unimpaired. It is certain that
some species of animals belonging to the existing order have utterly
disappeared, and it is quite probable that some species of men have
perished; but the grand economy of nature is unaffected by it. It is
thought that the aborigines of this continent will, in time, utterly
perish, and yet no one supposes that that event will disturb the
operations of nature or deface the fair form of creation. This shows
that there is no continuous or connecting link even among species of the
same family or form of being. If there were such—if all the forms of
life were continuous and connecting gradations—then it is evident that
the destruction of one of these connecting links would cast the whole
economy of being into utter confusion. In a watch, or any other
elaborate machinery of human contrivance, a single wheel, or cog, or
link, however minute, torn from its place, involves the disruption, if
not absolute destruction, of the whole machine. And so it is in the
economy of individual life, for, though one organ may be disabled,
another, to a certain extent, and for a given time, supplies its place;
yet the vital forces are enfeebled from the instant of such accident,
and life, if not interrupted, is always impaired. But a species, a
genus, a class, perhaps, a great number of these, might disappear,
utterly vanish from existence, and those remaining would preserve the
integrity and completeness the Creator had endowed them with at the
beginning. While each and every form of life is, therefore, perfect in
itself and independent of all others, there are resemblances and
approximations that must be regarded as of vital importance.
Naturalists have divided or separated the organic world into classes,
orders, genera, species and varieties. Classes are those like the
mammalia—that is, all animals where the female nourishes its offspring
by mammary glands. Orders are those like the quadrumana—all those having
four hands. A genus, or a family proper, is composed of species; and a
species includes varieties, or possible varieties, of the same being
under different circumstances. But these classifications are, to a
considerable extent, arbitrary; and though they serve the purpose of
facilitating our studies, they may also lead us astray, if too closely
followed. Genera, or families proper, in many cases at least, are,
however, susceptible of very exact definitions. So, too, are species.
For example:—The simiadæ, or monkey family, are so entirely distinct
that they will not be or need not be confounded with anything else. Some
ignorant or superficial persons, with the false notion of continuous and
connecting gradations, have supposed the negro something midway between
men and animals. But there is no such monstrosity in nature, for, as
already observed, each form of being is a complete and independent
creation in itself. A genus is composed of a given number of species,
all different from each other, and, it need not be repeated, independent
of each other. These genera are believed to be incapable of interunion
with other genera, though this has been questioned in some cases.
Species are capable of a limited interunion, though it may be doubted if
such interunion ever occurs in a wild or savage state. And as each
species is different in form and character from others, so the limited
capacity for interunion varies, or in other words, hybrids—the product
of different species—vary in their virility or power of reproduction.
The given number of species of which a genus is composed, ascends or
descends in the scale of being, that is, there is a head and base to the
generic column. The one next above the most inferior has all the
qualities of the latter, but these qualities have a fuller development,
that is, the organization is more elaborate and the corresponding
faculties are of a higher order. And indeed this is not confined to mere
species or genera even, but is true of widely separated beings. Thus,
the exalted and elegant Caucasian mother—the habitue of the Fifth avenue
or St. Germain—nourishes her offspring by the same process common to the
meanest of the mammalia. So, too, in the process of gestation, the
function of mastication, deglutition, digestion, the sense of taste, of
sight, etc.—the function is absolutely the same, but what a world of
difference in the mode of its manifestation, that distinguishes the
human being from the animal!
Investigations made by some French physiologists would seem to show that
the mysterious problem of animal life might be simplified, and clearly
grasped by the human intellect, by simply tracing this great fact to its
elementary sources. It is said that the embryo (Caucasian) fœtus passes
through all the forms of an innumerable number of lower gradations
before it reaches its own specific development. And be this as it may,
enough is seemingly established to demonstrate its truth in respect to a
genus or family, and especially is it demonstrated in the human
creation. At a certain stage of fœtal development there is the cranial
manifestation of the Negro, then the aboriginal American, the Malay, the
Mongolian, and finally the broad expansion and oval perfection of the
most perfect of all, the superior Caucasian. Nor can these
demonstrations be mistaken, for it is not a mere question of size but of
form. The negro brain is small and longitudinal—thus approximating to
the simiadæ and other animals. The aboriginal is larger and
quadrangular, almost square in its general outline. The Mongolian
pyramidal, and still larger than either of the others. Finally, at the
period of complete gestation, there is the full and complete oval
development, alone peculiar to the Caucasian. The force of these
distinctions may be easily grasped by the non-scientific reader by
bearing in mind that a female of either of these races or species could
no more give birth to a child with the cranial development of a race
different from her own, than she could to that of an inferior animal.
The distinctions of nature, or the boundaries which separate even
species from each other, are absolutely impassable; each has the hand of
the Eternal impressed upon it forever, which neither accident nor time
can modify in the slightest particular. They have, it is true, a limited
capacity for interunion, and we sometimes witness the disgusting
spectacle of a white woman with a so-called negro husband. But while the
offspring of this unnatural connection is limited in number, they
partake of the nature of both the parents, and thus the birth becomes
possible, though at the expense of great physical suffering to the
mother and perhaps in every case shortening her existence. In another
place this subject will be more especially discussed; it is only
referred to in this connection to show the perfect order and harmony in
the economy of animal life. The primal steps—the process of
reproduction—the starting-point of creation—being in complete harmony
with the laws governing the being, man or animal, after it has reached
its mature development.
The same eternal separation of all the forms of being and the same
eternal approximations, however varied the manifestations may be at
different periods, remain unaltered and unalterable. Linnæus ventured to
place “man” in the category or class mammalia, while at the same time he
separated the mammalia from birds and other forms of being—thus assuming
that the human creation had a closer union with pigs and dogs, than the
latter have with birds, etc. At this every Christian and believer in a
future state of being must revolt, for though there are certain
approximations that cannot be disregarded, nevertheless it is absolutely
certain that the human creation is separated by an interval wider than
that separating any of the forms of mere animal life, and therefore his
classification must be wrong.
It is not intended to make this a scientific work, but on the contrary,
to popularize for the general reading of the people, some few elementary
truths of zoology and physiology in order that they can better
comprehend the subject really to be discussed, viz.:—the specific
differences and specific relations of the white and black races. But the
author feels himself conscientiously impelled to dissent from the
classifications of Linnæus, and those modern naturalists who follow him,
not only as being untrue in point of fact, but pregnant with mighty
mischief. Linnæus placed “man” in the category mammalia, but made him an
order, a genus and species by himself. This is false as a matter of
fact, for in the entire world of animal existence there is no such fact
as a single species. All the forms of life are made up of groups or
families, properly genera, and each of these is composed of a certain
number of species. These species, as already observed, differ from each
other. They begin with the lowest, or simplest, or grossest formation,
and rise, one above the other, in the scale of being, until the group is
completed; so that they are all, not only specifically different from
each other, but absolutely unlike each other in every thing, in the
minutest particle of elementary matter as well as in those things
palpable to the sense. Generally considered, they resemble each other,
but specifically considered, they are absolutely distinct, and, it need
not be repeated, the distinctions in each case or each individual
species are also specific.
That Linnæus and other European naturalists, and especially the
ethnologists, should make such a mistake, and suppose that the human
creation is composed of a single species, is perhaps natural enough, for
they saw but one—the two hundred millions of Europe, except a few
thousand Laplanders, being all Caucasians. But then it is strange how
those so ready to class men with animals should so widely depart from
the spirit and order of their own classification. They must have known
that in the whole world of animate existence there was no such fact as a
single species, and therefore when assuming only a single human species,
that they directly contradicted or ignored the most constant, universal
and uniform fact in organic life, a fact underlying and forming the very
basis of all with which they were dealing. This mistake, or
misconception, or ignorance of European ethnologists, however, is of no
particular importance. They saw no other and therefore could know of no
other species of men except their own, and though its effect on
ourselves has been mischievous, the cause of their misconception is so
palpable to men’s common sense that it only needs to be pointed out to
be utterly rejected. It is about as respectable as the assumptions of
the northern Abolitionists, who, though not even venturing out of
Massachusetts, affect to know, and doubtless really believe that they do
know, more about the internal condition of South Carolina or Virginia
than the people of those States themselves. But facts are stubborn
things, and, as the Spanish proverb says, “seeing is believing.” It is
impossible that the northern Abolitionist who never ventured out of New
England can comprehend a condition of society that he has never seen.
So, too, the authority of European writers, necessarily ignorant of the
subject, will be rejected by those whose very senses assure them that
negroes are specifically different from white men. And that mental
dominion which, beginning with the early planting of European colonies
on this continent, has continued long after political independence has
been secured, only needs to be cast off altogether, to convince every
one of the utter absurdity of European teachings on the subject.
But there is an objection to the Linnæan classification infinitely more
important than this misconception in regard to species. He places his
one human species (Caucasian) in the class mammalia, and therefore
assumes that the human creation has a closer connection with a class of
animals, than these animals themselves have with some other forms of
animal life. For example: men (and white men, too) approximate more
closely to dogs and cats than the latter do to owls and eagles! It does
not help the matter to say that this is only in their animal structures,
for there is an invariable and imperishable unity between the material
organization and the external manifestations or faculties, which is
fixed forever, and the conclusion or inference from the Linnæan
assumption is unavoidable—if men approximate more closely to a class of
animals than these animals do to some other class, then it is absurd to
suppose the purposes assigned them by the Almighty are so widely
different as our reason and instinct alike impel us to believe. To hope
for or to believe in immortality, or in a destiny so transcendent, while
beings that closely resembled us perished with this life, in common with
those still farther separated from themselves, was such a contradiction
to reason, that men involuntarily shrunk from it, and the result has
been to repel vast numbers of people from the study and investigation of
this most essential element of all knowledge. The Materialists promptly
accepted it, and wielded it with tremendous effect in advancing their
gloomy and forbidding philosophy, while those impelled by that innate
and indescribable consciousness of the soul itself, which, in its
Godlike knowledge, rises high beyond the realms of reason and mere human
will, and assures them of a life immortal and everlasting, shrunk from
all study or investigation of the laws of physical life, as if it
involved consequences fatal to that higher life of the soul. The former
said, and said truly, if men have a closer union with the quadrumana
than the latter have with birds, etc., then it is all nonsense to
suppose that they have an eternity of life, while those separated by a
still wider interval are limited to the present. And the only reply to
their reasoning has been the refusal to investigate the subject or to
study the laws of God, and to admit, inferentially at least, that there
was a contradiction between the word and the works of the Almighty.
Nothing is more common than to find men of great intelligence on almost
every subject except this, the most vital, indeed the foundation and
starting-point of all real knowledge. Especially are clergymen ignorant,
and those who assume to be the interpreters of the laws of God are not
unfrequently the most ignorant of the most palpable and fundamental of
these laws. This should not be so, and in all reasonable probability
would not be so had it not been for the untruthful and unfortunate
classification of Linnæus. Instead of meeting the Materialists on their
own ground, and showing them that however approximating to certain forms
of animal life, the human creation was yet separated by an absolutely
boundless as well as impassable interval—for the distinctions between
them are utterly unlike those separating mere animal beings—they tacitly
admitted the truth of their assumptions, and met it by a blind and
foolish refusal to investigate the matter, indeed have generally cast
their influence on the side of ignorance, and advised against the study
of nature and the noblest works of God.
But there can be no contradiction; God cannot lie; and whatever seeming
conflict there may be at times between His word and His works, a further
search is alone needed to show their perfect uniformity. It is true that
the physical resemblances between men and beings of the class mammalia
seem closer than those of the latter and some other forms of life, but
while there is also an eternal correspondence between structure and
functions, it is rational and philosophical to suppose that the
difference in the qualities or external manifestations is the safest
standard of comparison. Or in other words, whatever may be the seeming
physical resemblances, the differences in the faculties show that the
former are not reliable. For example: in contemplating the intelligence
of certain quadrupeds and birds, can any one suppose or believe for a
moment that the difference between them in this respect equals or even
approaches to that separating both from human beings? And in the present
state of our knowledge, our ignorance of the elementary arrangement of
organic life, it is surely safer and more philosophical to be governed
by our reason rather than our senses—to accept the differences which
separate human intelligence from the animal world as boundless and
immeasurable when compared with the apparent physical approximations
which seem to unite us with a class of the latter.
In conclusion, it is scarcely necessary to repeat that there is a fixed,
uniform, and universal correspondence between structure and function, or
between organism and the purpose it is designed to fulfil. We do not
know nor need to know the cause of this or the nature of this unity. We
only know, and are only permitted to know, that it exists, and are not
bound to accept the dogma of the Materialists, that function is the
result of organism; nor that of their opponents, who still more falsely
imagine results without causes, or that there can be functions without,
organism. Truth, in this instance, lies between extremes:—functions or
faculties cannot exist without a given structure or organism, but they
are not a result of that organism. They exist together inseparably,
universally, eternally dependent on each other, but not a result of
either. To see there must be eyes; to hear, ears; to walk, the organism
of locomotion; to manifest a certain extent of intelligence there must
be a corresponding mental organism, but there is no such thing proper as
cause and effect, nothing but fact—the fact of mutual existence.
CHAPTER III.
THE HUMAN CREATION.
The human creation, like all other families or forms of being, is
composed of a genus, which includes some half dozen or more species. It
has been the fashion to call these permanent varieties, and almost every
writer on ethnology has made his own classification, or rather has
created what number he pleased of these “imaginary varieties.” Agassiz,
unquestionably the greatest of American naturalists, but unfortunately
not much of a physiologist, and therefore unprepared to deal with the
higher truths of ethnology, supposes several species of white men, and,
in regard to the subordinate races, would doubtless multiply them _ad
infinitum_. But at this time, or in the existing state of our knowledge,
the number actually known to exist cannot be assumed beyond that already
named. They are thus:—1st. The Caucasian. 2d. The Mongolian. 3d. The
Malay or Oceanic. 4th. The Aboriginal American. 5th. The Esquimaux; and
6th. The Negro or typical African.
The Caucasian can be confounded with no other, for though in some
localities, climate and perhaps other causes darken the skin, sometimes
with a deep olive tint, and extending, as with the Bedouins and the Jews
of the Malabar coast, to almost black, the flowing beard (more constant
than color), projecting forehead, oval features, erect posture and
lordly presence, stamp him the master man wherever found.
The Mongolian, though less distinctive, is, however, sufficiently so,
for his yellow skin, squat figure, beardless face, pyramidal head, and
almond eyes, can scarcely be confounded with any other form of man. The
Malay is less known, and therefore more difficult to describe. They are
darker than the Mongol, though in some islands of a bright copper color,
and indeed, vary from light olive to dark brown, and as in the case of
the Australians, to deep black, but with no other approximation to the
Negro.
The vast populations known under the term Papuan, and mainly Malay, are
doubtless extensively mixed with the Negro, for however remote the time,
or whatever the form or mode, real negro populations have resided in
tropical Asia, and left behind them these remains of their former
existence. In some islands, like New Zealand, etc., the ruling dynasties
or principal families have a considerable infusion of Caucasian blood,
which is shown in their tall, erect form, more or less beard, fair
complexion, and manly presence, and intellectually in their prompt and
often intelligent acceptance of Christianity.
The Indian, American, or Aboriginal, needs no description; suffice it to
say that, from the mouth of the Columbia River to Cape Horn, they are
the same species. It is quite possible, indeed probable, that some
species, formerly existing on this continent, have disappeared—utterly
perished. The investigations of Dr. Tschudi warrant this belief, though
his nice discriminations in regard to some of the bones of the head are
of little or no importance, as all this might be, and doubtless was, the
result of artificial causes. But crania discovered in Southern Mexico
and Yucatan, as well as in Peru and Brazil, are sufficient evidence to
warrant the belief that a still inferior race did once really inhabit
this continent, but whether aboriginal or brought here by some superior
race, may never be known. The remains of ancient structures in Yucatan,
in Peru, in Mexico, in Brazil, all over the southern portion of the
continent, show simply the traces of Caucasian intrusion. It has been
generally supposed that Columbus and his companions were the first white
men that ever visited this continent, but it may have been discovered,
and to a certain extent, occupied, at least certain localities occupied,
before even Europe itself, or before the period of authentic history.
Any one visiting Mexico, Puebla, or other cities of Spanish America, is
amazed and bewildered with the contrast between the vast and magnificent
structures that meet his eye, and the existing population. He
involuntarily asks himself, “Can these people be the authors of all this
art, this beauty, strength and magnificence? Can these miserable,
barefooted, blanketed, idle and stolid-looking creatures have built
these palaces, these churches, these bridges, these mighty structures,
which seem to have been built for eternity itself, so strong and secure
are their foundations?” Some years hence this contrast would be still
more palpable, and left to themselves, a time would come when it would
be obvious that the existing population had nothing to do with these
structures, for the mixed blood would have disappeared, and there would
be only the simple, unadulterated “native American,” as discovered by
the Spaniards three centuries ago. And we have only to apply this to the
antiquities of America to understand its history, at all events, to
understand the meaning of those half-buried monuments so frequently
found on its surface. Adventurers, often, doubtless, shipwrecked
mariners, were cast upon the coasts of America. Possibly in some cases
before Rome was founded, or Babylon itself was the mighty capital of a
still more mighty empire, these enterprising or unfortunate men found
themselves undisputed sovereigns of the New World. We know that Northmen
found their way here in the eighth century, and doubtless they were
preceded at intervals by numerous other Caucasians. Settling in some
localities they reigned undisputed masters, built cities, organized
governments, framed laws, and laid the foundations of a civilized
society. But intermarrying with the natives, they were swallowed up by
mongrelism, and, in obedience to an immutable law of physical life,
doomed to perish, and at a given period, the white blood extinct, there
remained nothing to denote its former existence, except the half-buried
palaces and ruined monuments yet to be traced over large portions of the
continent. The Toltecs, Aztecs, etc., are simply the remnants of these
extinct Caucasians, just as the present population, if left alone in
Mexico, the latest portion of it, with Caucasian blood, would be the
ruling force, and perhaps retain somewhat or some portion of the Spanish
habitudes.
The pure native mind is capable of a certain development, but that is
fixed and determinate, and beyond which it can no more progress than it
can alter the color of its skin or the form of its brain. Powhatan’s
empire in Virginia was undoubtedly aboriginal and probably called out
the utmost resources and reached the utmost limit of the Indian mind.
The Indian has, and does manifest to a certain extent, a capacity of
mental action, but this is too feeble and limited to make a permanent
impression on the physical agents that surround him, and therefore he
can have no history, for there are no materials—nothing to record. The
term, therefore, “Indian antiquities,” is a misnomer and the great
congressional enterprise under the editorship of Mr. Schoolcraft an
obvious absurdity.
The Polar or Esquimaux race has been least known of all, and prior to
the explorations of that true hero and true son of science, the late Dr.
Kane, was scarcely known except in name. It is both Asiatic and
American, but which continent is its birth-place is matter of doubt. The
facilities for passing from one continent to the other were doubtless
much greater at some former period than at present, and not only men but
animals may have done so with ease. Except a few well-known species of
animals and vegetables, which are essential to the well-being of the
Caucasian, and which have accompanied him in all his migrations, each
species has its own centre of existence, beyond or outside of which it
is limited to a determinate existence. The Arctic animals are quite
numerous, and differ widely from all others, but they are absolutely the
same in Asia as in America, and therefore must have passed from one to
the other, and man, however subordinate or inferior to other races
endowed by nature with ample powers of locomotion and migration, could
meet with only trifling obstacles in passing from one continent to the
other. This race, though thus far of little or no importance, is
doubtless superior to the Negro, for the necessities of its existence,
the terrible struggle for very life in those bleak and desolate regions,
infer the possession of powers superior to those of a race whose centre
of life is in the fertile and luxuriant tropics, where nature produces
spontaneously, and where the idle and sensual Negro only needs to gather
these products to exist and multiply his kind.
Finally, we have the Negro—last and least, the lowest in the scale but
possibly the first in the order of Creation, for there are many reasons
in the nature and structure of things that indicate, if they do not
altogether warrant, the inference that the Negro was first and the
Caucasian latest in the programme or order of Creation. The typical,
woolly-haired Negro may have been created in tropical Asia, and carried
thence to Africa, as in modern times he has been carried to tropical
America. Like other subordinate races, it never migrates, but the
extensive traces of its former existence in Asia show beyond doubt that
that was either its primal home, or that it had been carried there by
the Caucasian long anterior to the historic era. But it is now found in
its pure state or specific form in Africa alone, and even here large
portions of it have undergone extensive adulteration. Our knowledge of
Africa is very limited and consequently very imperfect. African
travelers, explorers, missionaries, etc., ignorant of the ethnology, of
the physiology, of the true nature of the Negro, and moreover, bitten by
modern philanthropy, a disease more loathsome and fatal to the moral
than small-pox or plague to the physical nature, have been bewildered,
and perverted, and rendered unfit for truthful observation or useful
discovery before they set foot on its soil or felt a single flush of its
burning sun. With the monstrous conception that the Negro was a being
like themselves, with the same instincts, wants, etc., and the same
(latent) mental capacities, all they saw, felt, or reasoned upon in
Africa was seen through this false medium, and therefore of little or no
value. Thus Barth and Livingston encountering a mongrel tribe or
community, with, of course, a certain degree or extent of
civilization—the result of Caucasian innervation, or perhaps the remains
of a former pure white population, note it down and spread it before the
world as evidence of Negro capacity, and an indication of the future
progress of the race! Myriads and countless myriads of white men have
lived and died on the soil of Africa; vast populations and entire
nations have emigrated to that continent. At one time there were half a
million of Christians (white) and forty thousand inmates of religious
houses in the valley of the Nile alone, while three hundred Christian
Bishops assembled at Carthage, and it will be a reasonable assumption to
say that since the Christian era, there have been five hundred millions
of whites in Africa. What has become of them? They have not
emigrated—have not been slaughtered in battle, nor destroyed by
pestilence, nor devoured by famine, and yet these countless hosts, these
innumerable millions, these Christian devotees and holy bishops have all
disappeared, as utterly perished as if the earth had opened and
swallowed them up. With the downfall of the Roman empire, civilization
receded from Africa, and the white population were gradually swallowed
up by mongrelism. The Negro, being the predominant element, absorbed, or
rather annihilated, the lesser one, and the result is now seen in
numerous, almost countless, mixed hybrid or mongrel tribes and
populations spread all over that continent. It is certainly possible,
indeed probable, that there are two or three, or more species of men,
closely approximating, it is true, nevertheless specifically different
from the woolly-haired or typical Negro. One of these (the Hottentots or
Bushmen) with the true negro features but of dirty yellow color, it
would seem almost certain must be a separate species; but until some one
better qualified to judge, than those hitherto relied on, has
investigated this subject, it is only safe to assume but a single
species, and that the other and numerous populations of Africa, however
resembling or approximating to the typical Negro, are hybrids and
mongrels, the effete and expiring remains of the mighty populations and
imposing civilizations that once flourished upon its soil. There may be
also other species besides the Mongol in Asia, and beside the Malay in
Oceanica, and it is quite probable that some species have totally
perished. But it is certain that those thus briefly discussed now exist;
that their location, their history, as far as they can be said to have a
history, their physical qualities and mental condition, in short, their
specific characters, are plainly marked and well understood.
Nevertheless, and though all this belongs to the domain of fact, and it
is as absurd to question it as it would be to question the existence of
diverse species in any of the genera or families of the animal creation,
the “world” generally holds to the notion of a single human race. It is
not designed to expressly argue this point, for, to the American mind,
it is so obvious, if not self-evident, that the Human Creation is
composed of diverse species, that argument is misplaced if not
absolutely absurd. The European people rarely see the Negro or other
species of men, and therefore the notion of a single human race or
species (with them) is natural enough, indeed a mental necessity.
Ethnologists—men of vast erudition, of noble intellect and honest and
conscientious intentions—have devoted their powers to this subject, and
volume upon volume has been published to demonstrate the assumption of a
single race. Buffon, Blumenbach, Tiedemann, Prichard, even Cuvier
himself, have given in their adherence to this dogma, or rather it
should be said have set out with the assumption of a single race and
collected a vast amount of material—of fact or presumed fact—to
demonstrate its supposed truth. Nor is it an easy matter to explode
their sophistries or to disprove their assumptions. With great and
admitted claims to scientific acquirement and powers of reasoning, they
combine undoubted honesty of intention and seemingly careful and patient
investigation, and the amount or extent of evidence adduced, the
elaborate and mighty array of fact, of learned and imposing authority
appealed to, and the fatiguing if not unwarrantable argument put
forward, made it, and still make it difficult to reply to them or to
disprove their assumptions. Any question, no matter what its nature, or
however deficient in the elements of truth, still admits of argument,
and falsehood may often lead astray the reason even when the judgment
itself is convinced to the contrary. And these European advocates of the
dogma of a single race have such a boundless field for discussion, can
so bewilder and fatigue the reason as well as pervert the imagination by
their plausible arguments, drawn from the analysis of animal life, that
it is not wonderful they should lead astray the popular mind; nor is it
surprising that those among us claiming to be men of science should bow
to their authority, for though common sense rejects their arguments,
there are few of sufficient mental independence to withstand that
authority, when backed up by such an imposing array of distinguished
names. But the strong common sense that distinguishes our people will
not be, indeed, cannot be, deceived on this subject. The American or the
Southern knows that the Negro is a Negro, and is not a Caucasian, just
as clearly, absolutely and unmistakably as he knows that black is black
and is not white, that a man is a man and is not a woman—that a pigeon
is a pigeon and is not a robin—or a shad a shad and not a salmon. He
sees negro parents have negro offspring; that Indians have Indian
offspring; and that whites have white offspring, “each after its kind,”
with the same regularity, uniformity and perfect certainty that is
witnessed in all other forms of existence. There is not a white man or
woman in the Union who, if told of such a thing as white parents with
negro offspring, or negroes with white offspring, would believe it, even
if sworn to by a million of witnesses. Such a belief or such a
conception would be as monstrous, and indeed impossible, as to suppose
that robins had begotten pigeons or horses asses. And the constant
witnessing of this—this undeviating and perpetual order in the economy
of animal life, demonstrates the specific character of the Negro beyond
doubt or possible mistake. Irishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, etc., come
here, settle down, become citizens, and their offspring born and raised
on American soil differ in no appreciable or perceptible manner from
other Americans. But Negroes may have been brought here three centuries
ago, and their offspring of to-day is exactly as it was then, as
absolutely and specifically unlike the American as when the race first
touched the soil and first breathed the air of the New World. It is not
intended, as already observed, to argue this matter, for it is a
palpable and unavoidable fact that Negroes are a separate species; and
though in succeeding chapters of this work the specific qualities are
examined in detail, these detailed demonstrations are merely designed to
present the physical differences in order to determine the moral
relations, and not by any means to demonstrate a fact always palpable to
the senses. Even those foolish people, disposed to pervert terms or play
upon words—to admit the fact, thus palpable, but ready to confound and
distort the reason by the application or use of false terms, cannot
avoid the inevitable conclusion of distinct species. To conceal or keep
out of sight this truth, some have thus admitted these every day seen
and unmistakable specific differences in dividing races, but a silly as
strange perversity has prompted them to use the term “permanent
varieties” instead of “species,” as if white and black were variations
and not specialties. It is a fact, an existing, unalterable,
demonstrable, and unmistakable fact, that the Negro is specifically
different from ourselves—a fact uniform and invariable, which has
accompanied each generation, and under every condition of circumstances,
of climate, social condition, education, time and accident, from the
landing at Jamestown to the present day. The Naturalist, reasoning alone
on this basis of fact, says, that which has been uniform and undeviating
for three hundred years, in all kinds of climate and under all kinds of
circumstances, in a state of “freedom” or condition of “slavery,” under
the burning Equator and amid the snows of Canada, without change or
symptom of change, must have been thus three thousand years ago. And he
reasons truly, for the excavations of Champolion and others demonstrate
the specific character of this race four thousand years ago, with as
absolute and unmistakable certainty as it is now actually demonstrated
to the external sense of the present generation. And the Naturalist,
reasoning still further on this basis of fact, says, “that which has
existed four thousand years, without the slightest change or
modification, which in all kinds of climate and under every condition of
circumstances preserves its integrity and transmits, in the regular and
normal order, to each succeeding generation the exact and complete type
of itself, must have been thus at the beginning, and when the existing
order was first called into being by the Almighty Creator.” And
contemplating the subject from this stand-point, and reasoning from
analogy, or exactly as we do in respect to other and all other forms of
existence, the conclusion is irresistible and unavoidable that the
several human races or species originally came into being exactly as
they now exist, as we know they have existed through all human
experience, and without a re-creation, must continue to exist so long as
the world itself lasts, or the existing order remains. But a large
portion of the “world” believe that the Bible teaches the descent of all
mankind from a single pair, and consequently that there must have been a
supernatural interposition at some subsequent period, which changed the
human creation into its actual and existing form of being. And if there
has been, at any time a special revelation made to man, and supernatural
interposition in regard to other things, then this alteration or
re-creation of separate species is no more irrational or improbable than
other things pertaining to that revelation, and which are universally
assented to by the religious world. A revelation is necessarily
supernatural—that is, in direct contradiction to the normal order; but
it may be said that the Creator is not the slave of His own laws, and in
His immaculate wisdom and boundless power might see fit to change the
order of the human creation; and certainly the same Almighty power which
took the Hebrews over the Red Sea on dry land, that saved a pair of all
living things in the ark of Noah, or dispersed the builders of Babel,
could, with equal ease, reform, or re-create human life, and in future
ordain that instead of one there should be several species of men. This
is a matter, however, in regard to which the author does not assume to
decide, to question, to venture an opinion, or even to hazard a
conjecture. It is clearly and absolutely beyond the reach of human
intelligence, and therefore not within the province of legitimate
enquiry. The Almighty has, in His infinite wisdom and boundless
beneficence, hidden from us many things, a knowledge of which would
doubtless injure us, and the origin of the human races belongs to this
catalogue. Men may labor to investigate it, to tear aside the veil the
Creator has drawn about it, to unlock the mystery in which He has
shrouded it, and after millions of years thus appropriated, come back to
the starting-point, the simple, palpable, unavoidable truth. They exist,
but why or wherefore, whither they came or whence they go, is beyond the
range of human intelligence. We only know, and are only permitted to
know, that the several species now known to exist have been exactly as
at present in their physical natures and intellectual capacities,
through all human experience and without a supernatural interposition or
re-creation, must continue thus through countless ages, and as long as
the existing order of creation itself continues. This we _know_ beyond
doubt or possible mistake, while, whether it was thus at the beginning,
or changed by a supernatural interposition at some subsequent period, is
now, and always must be, left to conjecture. Those who interpret the
Book of Genesis, or who believe that the Book of Genesis teaches the
origin of the human family from a single pair, will, of course believe
that the Creator subsequently changed them into their present form,
while those who do not thus interpret the Bible will believe, with equal
confidence perhaps, that they were created thus at the beginning. It is
not, nor could it be of the slightest benefit to us to really and truly
know the truth of this matter. All that is essential to our welfare we
already know, or may know, if we properly apply the faculties with which
the Creator has so beneficently endowed us. We only need to apply these
faculties—to investigate the question—to study the differences existing
among the general species of men, and compare their natures and
capabilities with our own, to understand our true relations with them,
and thus to secure our own happiness as well as their well-being, when
placed in juxtaposition with them. All this is so obvious, and the
remote and abstract question of origin so hypothetical and entirely
non-essential, that it seems impossible that intelligent and
conscientious men would ever seek to raise an issue on it, or that they
would overlook the great practical duties involved in the question and
engage in a visionary and unprofitable discussion about that of which
they neither do nor can know anything whatever. Nevertheless, some few
persons seem to be especially desirous to provoke an issue on this
matter, not only with science but with common sense, and a certain
reverend and rather distinguished gentleman has publicly and repeatedly
declared “that the doctrine of a single human race underlies the whole
fabric of religious belief, and if it is rejected, Christianity will be
lost to mankind!” What miserable folly, if nothing worse, is this! It is
a virtual declaration that we must believe or pretend to believe, what
we _know_ to be a _lie_, in order to preserve what we _believe_ to be a
truth. The existence of different species of men belongs to the category
of physical fact—a thing subject to the decision of the senses, and
belief neither has nor can have anything to do with the matter. It is
true, the reverend gentleman in question may shut _his_ eyes and remain
in utter ignorance of the fact, or rather of the laws governing the
fact, and while thus ignorant, may believe, or pretend to believe, that
widely different things constitute the same thing—that white and black
are identical—that white parents had at some remote time and in some
strange and unaccountable manner given birth to Negro offspring; but
what right has he to say, to those who are conscious of the fact of
different species, and who _know_, moreover, that negroes could no more
originate from white parentage than they could from dogs or cats, that
they shall stultify themselves and dishonestly pretend to believe
otherwise, on pain of eternal reprobation, or what he doubtless
considers such, the loss of Christianity to the world? It is not the
desire of the writer to either reconcile the merits of science with
those peculiar interpretations of the Bible, or to exhibit any
contradictions with those interpretations. An undoubting believer
himself in the great doctrines of Christianity, he finds no difficulty
whatever in this respect, and would desire to simply state the _facts_
or _what he knows to be truth_, and leave the reader to form his own
conclusions. But the seemingly predetermined design of some to make an
issue on this matter, to appeal to a supposed popular bigotry and
fanaticism in order to conceal the most vital and most stupendous truth
of modern times—a truth underlying all our sectional difficulties, and
which, truly apprehended by the mind of the masses, will instantly
explode those difficulties—renders it an imperative duty to expose the
folly and sophistry of those who strive to keep it out of sight. They
assume that the Bible teaches the origin of all mankind from a single
pair—that the Mongol, Indian, Negro, etc., with the same origin, have
the same nature as the white man, and consequently have the same natural
rights, and that we owe to them the same duties that we owe to ourselves
or to our own race. And, moreover, they proclaim a belief in this
assumption as essential to salvation, or, in other words, that if it be
rejected Christianity will disappear from the world. It need not be
repeated that the writer will not condescend to argue a self-evident,
actually existing, every-day palpable and unavoidable physical fact, or
insult the reader’s understanding by presenting proofs to show that the
Negro is specifically different from himself—that is a matter beyond the
province of rational discussion, and entirely within the domain of the
senses; yet, as already observed, in the subsequent chapters of this
work the _extent_ of these differences separating whites and blacks will
be demonstrated, their physical differences and approximations shown, in
order to determine their moral relations and social adaptations. But the
assumption that belief in the dogma of a single human race or species is
vital to the preservation of Christianity needs to be exposed, as it is
in reality as monstrous in morals as stupid and absurd in fact. We
cannot _believe_ that which we _know_ to be untrue, and to affect such
belief, however good the motive may seem, must necessarily debauch and
demoralize the whole moral structure. There are many things—such as the
belief in the doctrine of election, original sin, of justification by
faith, that admit of belief—honest, earnest, undoubting belief—for they
are abstractions and purely matters of faith that can never be brought
to the test of physical demonstration, or to the standard of material
fact, but the question of race—the fact of distinct races or rather the
existence of species of Caucasian, Mongols, Negroes, etc., are physical
facts, subject to the senses, and it is beyond the control of the will
to refuse assent to their actual presence. Can a man, by taking thought,
add a cubit to his stature? Can he believe himself something else—a
woman, a dog, or that he does not exist—that black is white, or that red
is yellow, or that the Negro is a white man? It is possible to deceive
and delude ourselves, and believe or think that we believe many things
which our interest, our prejudices, and our caprices prompt us to
believe, but they must be things of an abstract nature, where there are
no physical tests to embarrass us or to compel the will to bow to that
fixed and immutable standard of truth which the Eternal has planted in
the very heart of things, and which otherwise the laws of the mental
organism absolutely force us to recognize. But the existence of distinct
species of men does not belong to this category. It is fact, a palpable,
immediate, demonstrable and unescapable fact. We know, and we cannot
avoid knowing, that the negro is a negro and is not a white man, and
therefore we cannot believe, however much we may strive to do so, that
he is the same being that we are, or in other words, that all mankind
constitute a single race or species. All that is possible or permissible
is to make liars and hypocrites of ourselves—to pretend to believe in a
thing that we do not and cannot believe in—to force this hypocrisy and
pretended belief on others who may happen to have confidence in our
honesty and respect for our ability; and finally, as a salve for our
outraged conscience, to deceive ourselves with the notion that our
motives are good, and the end justifies the means.
But the advocates of the European theory of a single race are faced by
other difficulties, which are quite as unavoidable as those thus briefly
glanced at. They demand that the world shall believe in the dogma of a
single race, but not one among them will act upon it in practice, or
convince others of their sincerity by living up to their avowed belief.
If the Negro had descended from the same parentage, or, except in color
merely, was the same being as ourselves, then there could be no reason
for refusing to amalgamate with him as with the several branches of our
race. But on the contrary, the reverend and distinguished gentleman who
has ventured to declare that the belief that the Negro is a being like
ourselves, is essential to Christianity, would infinitely prefer the
death of his daughter to that of marriage with the most accomplished and
most pious Negro in existence! If he believed in his own assertions in
regard to this matter, then it would be his first and most imperative
duty, as a Christian minister, to set an example to others, to labor
night and day to elevate this (in that case) wronged and outraged
race—indeed, to suffer every personal inconvenience, even martyrdom
itself, in the performance of a duty so obvious and necessary. And when
this theory was at last reduced to practice, and all the existing
distinctions and “prejudices” against the Negro were obliterated, and
the four millions of Negroes amalgamated with the whites, society would
be rewarded by the increased morality and purity that would follow an
act of such transcendent justice. But will any one believe in such a
result—that, reducing to practice the belief, or pretended belief of a
single race, will or would benefit American society? No, indeed; on the
contrary, every one _knows_—even the wildest and most perverted
abolitionist _knows_—that to reduce this dogma to practice, to honestly
live out this pretended belief, to affiliate with these negroes, would
result in the absolute destruction of American society. Nothing,
therefore, can be more certain than the hypocrisy of those who pretend
to believe in this single-race doctrine, for it need not be repeated,
that they do not and cannot believe in it in reality. But why should
they deem this absurd doctrine essential to _their_ interpretation of
the Bible? That the Almighty Creator subsequently changed the order of
the human creation is in entire harmony with the universally received
history of the Christian Revelation. All the Christian sects of the day
admit the doctrine of miracles, or supernatural interposition, down to
the time of the Apostles, and the largest of all (the Roman Catholics)
credit this interposition at the present day, and therefore those ready
to recognize it in such numerous instances, many, too, of relatively
trifling importance, but, determined to reject it in this matter of
races, are only imitating their brethren of old, and straining at gnats
while swallowing camels with the greatest ease. To many persons the
great doctrines of the Christian faith carry with them innate and
irresistible proof of their divine origin, but the professional teachers
of theology depend mainly upon supernatural interposition to convince
the world of its truth, and yet by a strange and unaccountable
perversity, some of them would reject it in the most important, or, at
all events one of the most important instances in which it ever did or
ever could occur. But will the sensible and really conscientious
Christian priest or layman venture to persist in forcing this
assumption, this palpable, demonstrable, unmistakable falsehood, that
the single-race dogma is essential to the preservation of Christianity,
upon the public? If he does, and if it is accepted by those who look
upon him as a teacher, then it is certain that he will inflict infinite
mischief on the cause of Christianity. To assume that all mankind have
white skins, or straight hair, or any other specific feature of our own
race, involves no greater absurdity, indeed, involves the exact
absurdity, that the assumption of a single human species does. If it
were assumed that we must stultify ourselves, and believe, or pretend to
believe, that all mankind have white skins, or Christianity would be
lost to the world, there is not a single man in this Republic that would
not reject such an assumption with scorn and contempt. White and black
are, of course, specialties, but no more so than (as will hereafter be
shown) all the other things that constitute the negro being, and
therefore the assumption put forward substantially and indeed exactly,
is thus: We must believe that whites, Indians, Negroes, etc., have the
same color, or the whole fabric of Christianity will be overthrown and
lost to mankind!
But enough—all Americans know—for they cannot avoid knowing—that negroes
are negroes and specifically different from themselves; they know,
moreover, that they differed just as widely when first brought to this
continent, and all who understand the simplest laws of organization know
that they must always remain thus different from ourselves, and
therefore they know that they were made so by the act and will of the
Almighty Creator, while when, or how, or why they are thus, is beyond
the province of human enquiry, and of no manner of importance whatever.
CHAPTER IV.
HISTORICAL SUMMARY.
The white or Caucasian is the only historic race—the race which is alone
capable of those mental manifestations which, written or unwritten,
leave a permanent impression behind. What was its first or earliest
condition upon the earth? This, except the meagre account given by
Moses, is unknown, nor is it of much importance that it should be known,
for though it never was nor could be savage or barbarous, as these terms
are understood in modern times, still its intellectual acquisitions were
doubtless so limited that if really known to us, they would be of little
or no service. Moses scarcely attempts any description of social life
before the time of Abraham, and that then presented does not differ very
materially from what exists in the same locality at the present day. The
pastoral habitudes of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the sale of Joseph to
the Ishmaelites by his brethren, his purchase in Egypt, and sudden
exaltation at the court of the Egyptian Monarch, is an almost exact
counterpart of scenes witnessed now, and with little varieties in the
same lands, for the last four thousand years. The starting-point—the
locality where the race first came into being, is equally hidden as the
time or period of its creation. Biblical writers have usually supposed
somewhere in Asia Minor, on the banks of the Euphrates, while
ethnologists are inclined to believe that the high table-lands of Thibet
and Hindoo Koosh may have been the cradle of the race. Nor is a
knowledge of this material, or indeed of the slightest consequence,
except as an aid in determining its true centre of existence—that is,
its physical adaptation or specific affinities for a certain locality.
But this is determined by experience; and it is demonstrated beyond
doubt that while the elaborate and relatively perfect structure of the
Caucasian Man enables him to resist all external agencies, and to exist
in all climates capable of supporting animal life, he can only till the
soil or perform manual labor in the temperate zones. It is, therefore,
immaterial when or where he first came into being, or what was the
starting-point of the race—its centre of existence is alike in all the
great temperate latitudes of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. The
history of the race may be said to be divided into three great cycles or
distinct periods; all, however, connecting with each other, and
doubtless mainly resembling each other in their essential nature,
however widely different in their external manifestation. The first
period, beginning with its actual existence on the earth, may be said to
terminate in the era of authentic history. The second, or historic era,
may be assumed as extending to the overthrow of the Roman Empire by the
so-called northern barbarians, or, perhaps, to what is usually termed
the dark ages. And finally, there is another grand cycle in human
destiny, which, beginning with the restoration of learning, comes down
to and includes our own times. In regard to the first, we actually know
little of it, for, leaving out of view the Sacred Scriptures, we have
only a few imperfect glimpses of the actual life of the countless
millions that preceded the historic period. What little knowledge we
have depends on tradition and mythology, sometimes, perhaps, true
enough, but the greater portion thus transmitted to our times we know is
false, because conditions are assumed that are in contradiction with the
laws that govern our animal being. If the race, however, was created in
Asia, we know that portions of it migrated to Africa, at a very remote
period; indeed, leaving the Bible out of view, the first knowledge we
have of its existence, or the earliest traces of its existence, is in
Africa. Caucasian tribes or communities entered the valley of the Nile
possibly before the delta of the lower country was sufficiently hardened
to admit of cultivation, as they evidently occupied localities
considerably removed from the outlet of that great river. These early
adventurers conquered the aboriginal population, subjected them to their
control, compelled them to labor for them, built magnificent cities,
temples, palaces, founded a mighty Empire and advanced, to a certain
extent, in civilization. But wealth and luxury, with their effeminate
consequences, probably, too, injustice and crime in the rulers, and
certainly, and worst of all, interunion and affiliation with the
conquered races, tempted purer and hardier branches of the race to
invade them, and indeed the delicious climate and fertile soil must have
always tempted Caucasian tribes into the Valley of the Nile, from the
earliest periods, and whenever they felt themselves strong enough to
attack the existing community. Of course we can only deal in conjecture,
in regard to this matter, but it is probable that numerous invasions
took place, each passing through much the same course as its
predecessors. First came conquest, then the erection of a mighty Empire,
followed by a grand civilization; then came effeminacy, affiliation with
the subject races, debauchment and debility inviting a new conquest by
pure Caucasians, and they, in their turn, going through the same round
of glory and decay, of conquest and degradation. Such seems to have been
the condition of Egypt when the Romans invaded it, and made it a
province of that great Empire. The effete remains of these Egyptian
populations afterward, became known to the Roman writers, and, to a
certain extent, may be said still to exist. The great Asiatic empires
were doubtless similar to the Egyptian, except in respect to the
debauchment of blood. The Assyrians, Persians, Chaldeans, Babylonians,
Hebrews, etc., each in their turn, were conquerors and conquered,
masters and slaves, but their downfall, in one essential respect,
differed widely from those of Africa. They were pure, unmixed
Caucasians, for at that time the Mongol element was unknown in that
portion of Asia, and the Negro, except a few household servants, never
existed on that continent. The Mongolian race was first known about five
hundred years anterior to the Christian Era, and whether originally it
existed in a more northern region, or had not reached a full development
as regards numbers, can not be known, on account of our limited
knowledge of the earth at that time. The old Caucasian populations of
Asia knew nothing of it, and had no admixture of Mongolic blood. But all
is conjecture, mystery, doubt and uncertainty, in regard to these
ancient and extinct Empires. We know that they existed—that they were
white men—beings like ourselves—our own ancestors, with the same wants,
the same instincts, in short, the same nature that we have, and
therefore, in the main, acted, as we do now. Of course we call them
heathens, pagans, savages, barbarians, etc., but were they thus?
In the modern times there are no white barbarians or heathens. In all
modern history, wherever found, white men are much the same; why, then,
should it not have been so always? The fanatic Jew called all others
gentiles, savages; the supercilious Greek called even their Roman
conquerors barbarians; even the manly and liberal Roman did not rise
above this foolish bigotry, and not only called the Gauls, Britons,
Germans, etc., barbarians, but reduced them to slavery, as if they were
inferior beings. We witness the same ignorance and folly in our own
enlightened times. The Englishman believes that the English are alone
truly Christian and civilized; the Frenchman honestly believes that _La
Belle_ France is at the head of modern civilization; even the advanced
and liberal American Democrat thinks, and perhaps correctly, that the
Americans alone are truly civilized; while some among us would exclude
all from the privilege of citizenship who happen to be born elsewhere,
as rigidly as the Jew did the uncircumcised Gentile or the Moslem the
dog of a Christian. Is not this notion of “outside barbarians,”
therefore, the result of ignorance, or foolish egotism, without sense or
reason? Some nations or communities were doubtless advanced more than
others in ancient times, as at present, but in the main the race must
have approximated to the same common standard we witness now. If it is
said that in early times the obstacles in the way of frequent
intercourse prevented this general approximation to a common standard of
enlightenment, it may be replied that the same obstacles would also
prevent a wide departure, and when we know that they had the same wants,
the same instincts, the same tendencies, etc., the conclusion seems
unavoidable that no nation or community could at any time in history
assume, with any justice, that others were barbarians, or that they
alone were civilized. The traditions and imperfect knowledge which we
have hitherto possessed in respect to these long-buried populations,
may, perhaps, be replaced by that which is almost or quite as reliable
as written history itself. Within a few years past a class of men have
sprung up who, excavating the dead remains of long forgotten empires,
promise revelations that will bring us face to face with the buried
generations that we now only know through the dim perspective of
uncertain tradition. Champolion, Belzoni, Rawlinson, Layard and their
companions have already made discoveries in Egypt and Nineveh that open
to our minds much of the social condition and daily life of those remote
times, and future explorations, it is probable, will give us nearly as
accurate a knowledge as we have of those embraced within the cycle of
authentic history.
The next great period in the history of the race—the historic era—is
supposed to be entirely within the province of real knowledge. It begins
with the history of the Greeks—not the symbolic but the real—that grand
and glowing intellectualism which, in many respects, may be said to
equal the intellectual development of our own times. The history of
Greece and Rome is in truth the history of the race, of the world, of
mankind. There were cotemporary nations of great power, extent and
cultivation, but the Greeks and Romans, and the subject or servile
populations that acknowledged their supremacy, made up the larger
portion of the race. It is true the Persians were then pure Caucasians,
and, in respect to numbers, largely surpassed the Greeks, but while they
did not differ much in their general character, they were on the decline
before the Greeks had reached their full national development. The
latter always referred to Egypt as the source of their civilization, but
it is more probable that they borrowed from Asia most of those things
supposed to be of foreign origin. It is, however, quite possible that
the earliest civilization was developed in Africa, that it receded from
thence to Asia, as we know it afterwards did from the latter to Europe,
and as we now witness it, passing to America. But what is civilization?
It is, or it may be defined as, the result of intellectual
manifestation. A nation or people who have most deeply studied and
understood the laws of nature or the nature of things, and applied their
knowledge to their own welfare, are the most civilized or we might say,
in a word, that the nation that has the most knowledge is the most
civilized. The Greeks, certainly, surpassed all cotemporary nations in
the most essential of all knowledge, yet even this seems to have been
rather a thing of chance than otherwise. Political intelligence, or a
knowledge of men’s social relations to each other, is the most vital
they can possess. The Greeks may be said both to have possessed this
knowledge and to have been entirely deficient in it. Athens, with thirty
thousand citizens all recognized as political equals, was a Democracy,
but this so-called Democracy, with, perhaps, a hundred thousand slaves,
was a burlesque on a democratic government. The Helots of Greece, the
servile and subject population of which history gives no account, except
to refer to them, were white men—men with all the natural capacities of
Socrates, Demosthenes, or Alcibiades, but the Greek orators and writers
of the day never even seemed to imagine that they had any rights
whatever. They had much the same relation to the Greeks that the Saxons
had to the Normans, that the Irish have to the English, and yet with all
their political enlightenment and high intellectual development, the
Greeks gave them no rights, and treated them as different and
subordinate beings. The notion, therefore, taught in our schools, that
the Greeks were the authors of political liberty, is unsound—they
neither practised nor understood liberty, and the external forms
mistaken for democracy had no necessary connection with it. Aristotle
could not form even a conception of a political system that did not rest
upon slavery, and this was doubtless the general condition of the Greek
mind. It was merely accidental that the Greek States assumed a
democratic form, or rather approximated to a democratic form; but while
they were utterly ignorant of individual relations they certainly had
clear views of the relations of states and the duties that independent
communities owe to each other. The Asiatic nations seem to have had no
conception whatever of these duties—conquest or slavery were the only
alternatives. A nation must conquer or be conquered—a dynasty must
destroy all others, or expect to fall itself—and the Asiatic character
still partakes largely of these habitudes. Except, therefore, in the
mere externals or outward arrangements of political society, the Greeks
can hardly be said to have done anything for political liberty or to
advance political science. The Romans did more—vastly more—but they had
little or no conception of democracy or of individual liberty. The proud
boast, “I am a Roman citizen,” unlike the idea of the American democrat,
partook of the spirit of a British aristocrat of our own days, claiming
the privileges of his order. The men who founded the city of Rome,
though doubtless fillibusters and adventurers, perhaps even outcasts of
the neighboring populations, were assumed to be superior to the later
emigrants, and their descendants especially claimed exclusive
privileges. And when Rome expanded into a mighty empire and ruled the
world, the senatorial order ruled the empire—at all events, until Cæsar
crossed the Rubicon and seized the supreme power. The change from a
republic to an empire had little or no bearing upon the question of
liberty, for the condition of the great body of the people remained the
same. Rome conquered all, or nearly all, the then known world, for,
except the Persians, and perhaps some few populations in the far North,
the whole Caucasian race recognized the Romans as their rulers. The
Parthians, so often waging desperate war with the Romans, were doubtless
a mixed people, something like the modern Turks, and very possibly their
ancestors. Following the rude code of early times, the Romans enslaved
the conquered populations. All the prisoners of war were deemed to have
forfeited their lives, and were parceled out among the Roman conquerors,
while the rural populations were compelled to pay tribute to the Roman
civil officers. It is quite probable that the Romans conquered some of
the inferior races, but except the Numidians, Lybians, Ethiopians, etc.,
of Africa, Roman writers are silent on the subject. It has been said
that the history of the Romans was the history of the Caucasian race,
and that was the history of the world. This is literally true, for
though we cannot suppose that the conquered populations were the
miserable barbarians that the Roman writers represent them to have been,
Rome was the most advanced portion of the race, and therefore the
embodiment of its civilization and intellectual life. At this moment
Paris represents all France; and the city of Rome bore a somewhat
similar relation to the populations that composed the empire, however
distant they may have been from the capital. It was not an unusual thing
for the same general that commanded in Britain or that had conquered in
Gaul, to administer the government of the African provinces or to
conduct a campaign against the Persians on the bank of the Euphrates.
And however much the vanity of Roman authors may have been gratified by
assuming that they alone were civilized, it is altogether irrational to
suppose that the conquered populations, with the same nature and same
capacities as themselves, and moreover, in frequent and often intimate
intercourse with themselves, could have differed widely or remained
barbarians, even if such when conquered. The Romans advanced far beyond
the Greeks in political knowledge, but with them also the state was
every thing and the individual nothing. As with the Greeks, the great
majority were slaves; and Roman citizenship, or the rights claimed by a
Roman citizen, was at best a special privilege; and prior to the advent
of Christianity, the idea of individual rights, of equality, of
democracy, seems never to have dawned upon the intellectual horizon of
the race. Nor did the primitive Christians (even) accept it in theory,
though they lived it out in practice. Their mental habits were formed
under the old social order, and though the spirit of the new doctrine
impelled them to live it out in practice, few, if any, ever adopted it
in theory. Christ had said, “love each other,” and “do unto others as
you would have them do unto you,” that is, “grant to others the rights
claimed for yourselves,” but while they often lived together, owning
things in common like the modern communists and socialists, perhaps not
one in a million ever thought of applying their doctrines to the state,
or even supposing for a moment that the artificial distinctions which
separated classes could ever be altered or modified. Even the forced and
unnatural relation of master and slave, which necessarily violated the
fundamental doctrine of their religion, was clung to and respected in
theory, and it needed several centuries of practice and faithful
obedience to the spirit of the new faith before this ancient barbarism
was finally obliterated from the Roman world. The conquest of Rome, by
the so-called northern barbarians, was followed by an eclipse of
learning—by a mental darkness in Western Europe at least, that is fitly
enough denominated the dark ages. Was this irruption of the northern
nations into Italy the true cause of this darkness? For several
centuries previous there had been an immense and almost continuous
emigration from Asia, not of individuals, as we witness in the present
day, to America, but of tribes, communities, whole nations. History is
indeed imperfect, if not altogether silent, in respect to the cause of
these mighty migrations which so long pressed upon Europe. But there can
be little doubt that the Mongolian race about this time changed, to a
considerable extent, its location, and pressing down on the old
Caucasian populations of Asia, impelled those vast masses to seek
shelter and safety, if not homes and happiness, in Europe. In the mighty
invasions of Italy in the fifth century by Attila, the truth of this is
certainly demonstrated. He himself was doubtless a white man, and so
were his chiefs; but the mighty populations he ruled over, and which
extended from the Danube to the frontiers of China, were mainly
Mongolian. But no Mongolians settled permanently in Europe—none but
Caucasians, and except the modern Turks, none but pure Caucasians—and,
being the same men as the Romans themselves, why should they be
barbarians? They were conquerors; a pretty good proof that, though not
so refined perhaps, certainly not so effeminate as the Romans had
become, they could not have been barbarians. Other things being equal,
the nation that has made the greatest advance in knowledge will be able
to conquer, because it has only to apply its knowledge to this object to
succeed. There can be no doubt that we ourselves surpass all the nations
of our times in knowledge, or in our capacity to apply our knowledge to
the purposes of material existence. Our railroads, canals, public works,
our ship-building, commerce, etc., prove this, and we have only to apply
this knowledge to purposes of offence or defence, to invade others or to
defend ourselves, to demonstrate our immense superiority. Nevertheless,
if we should conquer Spain, or any other ancient and effete empire,
doubtless their writers would take their revenge in calling us
barbarians, as indeed the poor, feeble, and adulterated hybrids of
Mexico actually did thus represent us when in possession of their
capital. Nothing, therefore, can be more improbable than the theory of
Gibbon and others, that the nations that conquered Rome were barbarians,
and that the dark ages were the result of that conquest. But there was a
cause for the subsequent darkness which so long spread over the European
world much more palpable. Christianity had become generally accepted,
and bad and ambitious men, in the then general ignorance of the masses
of the populations, might wield it with stupendous effect in advancing
their ambition and securing their own personal objects. The assumption
that Christ had delegated a power on earth to interpret the will of
Heaven, both as to temporal as well as religious interests, was enough;
of course all human investigation and mental activity terminated, and
was denounced as impiety.
The subordinate clergy were often, perhaps generally, faithful to the
great truths transmitted by the primitive Christians, but, dependent on
tradition, and subject to the rule of their sacerdotal superiors, they
in vain resisted these influences, and these truths became in time so
corrupted as scarcely to retain any resemblance to the original faith.
It is believed that, except in these “dark ages,” the Caucasian mind has
never retrograded or indeed remained stationary. Progress is the law,
the instinct, the necessity of the Caucasian mind, and however much some
branches or some nations may decline, there is always some portion,
nationality, or community, that embodies the wants of the race, and that
moves forward in pursuit of that indefinite perfectability which is its
specific and distinguishing characteristic. But it is easily understood
how this might have suffered an eclipse under the circumstances then
existing. A great proportion of the so-called barbarian conquerors of
Rome were ignorant of Christianity, and when they became the converts of
the conquered Romans, they naturally exalted their teachers as beings
almost superhuman in their superior knowledge; and the general ignorance
of the times favored any pretension of the priests, however absurd it
might be. In fact a body of men claiming to be, and universally believed
to be, the interpreters of the will of the Almighty, necessarily
interrupted all inquiry into the laws of nature (the real laws of God),
and though some monks themselves, immured in their cells, continued to
think, to experiment, to acquire knowledge, as well as in many instances
to preserve that already acquired by others, the great mass of the
people as well as the great body of the clergy looked upon everything of
the kind as wicked, impious, and heretical. And we have only to suppose
an intellectual activity and freedom corresponding with our own times
throughout these dark centuries, to realize the stupendous evil
inflicted on the world by this priestly arrogance and ambition.
The races, so-called, that figured most prominently during the period
beginning with authentic history and terminating in the dark ages, are
first, the Semitic, which included the Egyptians, Carthaginians,
Persians, Syrians, Hebrews or Jews, Saracens, Arabians, etc., indeed
under the term Semitic may be included all the Orientals, except the
Parthians, who were doubtless a mixed people, and those northern tribes,
historically known as Scythians, afterwards the conquerors of Egypt and
the progenitors of that extraordinary military autocracy known in modern
times by the name of Mamelukes. The second great branch was the
Pelasgian, which included the Macedonians, the Romans, the Hellenic
tribes, Dorians, Thracians, etc., and of which the Romans were for
nearly two thousand years the main representatives. Between these great
branches of the Caucasian—for they were both doubtless, typical
Caucasians, though Agassiz thinks that the Semitic constituted a
separate species—there was almost constant war, from the very beginning
of history to the capture of Constantinople. The Greek and Trojan war
was doubtless a collision of this kind—and so were the wars of the
Greeks and Persians—the conquests of Alexander, which, for a time,
almost annihilated the Persian empire—the terrible life-and-death
struggle of the Romans and Carthaginians, and finally the invasion and
conquest of Spain by the Arabians, with their ultimate defeat by the
Franks under Charles Martel. Indeed, coming down to more modern times,
we find the Crusades, when nearly all Europe, in a fit of uncontrollable
phrensy, precipitated itself on Asia; and in the collapse which
followed, Asiatic hordes, though not exactly Semitic, again seeking to
penetrate into Europe, and actually conquering the remains of the old
Roman empire, in the eastern capital of which they are now firmly
established. Historians are wont to magnify the results of these
contests, especially the defeat of Hannibal and the overthrow of the
Carthaginians by the Romans, and the defeat of the Arabians by the
Franks, as of vital importance to the world and the best interests of
mankind; but it is quite possible that they over-estimate these things,
especially the victory of the Romans over the Carthaginians. They were
both of the same species of men, both branches of the Caucasian, with
the same nature, the same tendencies, and, under the same circumstances,
the same beings. The Carthaginians were, for the time, highly civilized.
They were the heirs of the Egyptian and Asiatic civilizations, as Rome
was of that of the Greeks. They were a great commercial people, with
boundless wealth, science, arts, manufactures, everything but a warlike
spirit; while Rome, at the time without commerce, poor and torn by
factions, was a mere military aristocracy, and the capital itself little
more than a military encampment. Why, then, should the defeat of the
former have been beneficial to the progress of the race, or to the
general interests of mankind?
In regard to the defeat of the Arabians by the Franks, the case is
altogether different. They were the same species, and doubtless, at that
time, more advanced than the Europeans, but they were Mohammedans, and
in the full flush of enthusiasm for their faith, which they invariably
propagated by the sword. And if they had overrun Europe as they did
Asia, somewhat similar results would doubtless have followed, for though
it is altogether improbable, indeed, in view of its Divine origin,
impossible, that they could have exterminated the Christian religion,
they would have done it and the general cause of civilization
incalculable injury. But both of these great branches of the race have
long since disappeared from history. The Semitic element can scarcely be
said to exist at all. In Africa it is adulterated by the blood of the
Negro, and perhaps the blood of some race or races not so low in the
scale as the Negro. In Asia it is mixed with the Mongolian blood, and
though the Arab and Persian populations of our day are mainly white,
there is more or less taint pervading all the Asiatic communities. The
great Pelasgian branch has long since disappeared and been swallowed up
in the more modern branches of the race, and though the modern Italian
claims to be, and doubtless is, the lineal descendant of the ancient
Roman, no portions of the race are wider apart than the ancient Roman
and his modern descendant, a striking proof that accidental
consanguinity does not affect the universality of the race.
The last great cycle of history, commencing with the Reformation, comes
down to and includes our own times. It is quite unnecessary to dwell
upon it, as all intelligent persons have much the same view of it. With
the downfall of the Roman empire, however, new varieties of the
Caucasian, or, as historians have termed them, new races, have emerged
into view, and in their turn struggled for the empire of the world. The
hordes that, under Alaric and other leaders, overran Italy, were
generally known as Goths, a generic term that is applied to great
numbers of very different people, though, of course, all were white men,
and therefore of the same race or species. But after varying fortunes,
and passing through numerous mutations, all these races have subsided
into several well-marked and well-known divisions or families now
existing. There are—_First_. The Celts—including a large portion of the
French, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, and the remains of the primitive
people of the British Islands. _Second._ The Teutonic or German,
including the Germans of all kinds, the Swiss, the mythical Anglo-Saxon
and perhaps the Danes, the Scandinavians, etc. _Third._ The Sclavonians,
embracing the Russians, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, etc. There
are some few populations that, either in language or historical facts,
have little or no connection with those enumerated. These are the modern
Hungarians, the European Turks, the Circassians, etc. They are, however,
Caucasians: even the Turks and Circassians are, in our times, pure or
mainly pure Caucasians. Finally there remain our own people, the
offspring of every country and of every variety of the race, and as the
more the blood is crossed the more energetic and healthy the product or
progeny, the American people should become, as it doubtless will become,
the most powerful and the most civilized people in existence.
Such, briefly considered, is an imperfect summary or outline of the
history of our race, the only race that has a history or that is capable
of those mental manifestations whose record constitutes history. It is a
favorite theory of most historians to represent the mental development
of the race as divided into distinct categories, not as the author has
ventured, into historic periods, but into different phases of
intellectual manifestation. They have supposed that men (white men) were
first hunters and lived wholly by the chase—that after a while they
became shepherds, and lived on their herds or flocks—that then they made
another advance and became cultivators, and finally artisans, merchants,
etc. Each of these conditions, it has been supposed, were dependent on,
or were associated with, a corresponding mental development. The hunter
had intellect enough to run down the stag or wit sufficient to entrap
the game necessary for his support, but had not sufficient capacity to
take care of his flocks or sense sufficient to till the earth! This
notion has doubtless arisen from observing the habits of the subordinate
races of men, though it is quite possible that our own race has passed
through some such stages as those suggested. But there has never been
any variations in its actual intellectual powers. The mental capacities
given it in the morning of creation were just what they are now, and
what they will be millions of years hence. Thus is explained the (to
many persons) seeming anomaly that in the very dawn of history there
were men like Homer, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, and others, with a
breadth and depth of intellect corresponding to the most intellectual
men of our own times. Mental power, like physical strength, remains
always the same through all ages and mutations of human society, while
knowledge, or the uses made of the intellectual forces, is constantly
varying from age to age, and changing from one country to another. The
miserable Italian organ-grinder under our window, it is somewhat
difficult to suppose, embodies the high intellect and powerful will,
which two thousand years ago, made his ancestors masters of the world,
but such is the fact, however latent, unknown or unfelt by himself may
be these powers. The amount or extent or degrees of knowledge, the
perceptions of external things, their relations, the laws that govern
them, their uses, their influences on our well-being or the contrary, in
short, our capacities for acquiring knowledge, for comprehending
ourselves and the things about us, are limitless, and therefore progress
and indefinite perfectibility are the specific attributes of the
Caucasian. Each generation applies its capabilities and acquires a
certain amount of knowledge which the succeeding one is heir to, and
which, in turn, transmits its acquisition to those following; thus its
march is ever onward, and except during the “dark ages” it is believed
that the great law of progress which God has imposed on the race as a
duty as well as given it as a blessing, has never been interrupted.
But the inferior races of mankind present a very different aspect in
this respect. The Negro, isolated by himself, seems utterly incapable of
transmitting anything whatever to the succeeding generation, and the
Aboriginal American, Malay, etc., doubtless approximate to him in these
respects. The Aztecs and Peruvians, at the time of the Spanish conquest,
however, had advanced to the grade of cultivators, and were therefore,
doubtless, capable of a limited or imperfect transmission of their
knowledge. The Malay is probably capable of still greater development in
these respects; but its limitations are too decided to be mistaken. The
Mongolian, on the contrary, approximates much closer to ourselves, and
while it cannot be said to have a history in any proper sense, it is
doubtless capable of transmitting its knowledge to future generations to
a much greater extent than others, but it, too, is at an immeasurable
distance from the Caucasian in this respect. The Chinese, it is true,
pretend to trace back their history to a period long anterior to our
own, but this claim is itself sufficient proof of its own worthlessness.
No one will suppose that the individual Chinaman has a larger brain or
greater breadth of intellect than the individual Caucasian, and if not,
what folly to suppose that the aggregate Chinese mind was capable of
doing that which is impossible to the aggregate Caucasian intellect! The
truth is, what is supposed to be Chinese history is a mere collection of
fables and nonsensical impossibilities, and it may be doubted if they
can trace back their annals even five hundred years with any certainty
or with sufficient accuracy to merit a claim to historic dignity. There
can be no doubt, however, that at some remote period, a considerable
portion of the Chinese population was Caucasian, as indeed a portion is
still Caucasian, and it is perhaps certain that Confucius and other
renowned names known to the modern Chinese, were white men, and what
shadowy and uncertain historical data they now possess are therefore
likely to have originated from these sources. The Mongolian race was in
fact unknown to ancient writers, though there has doubtless been contact
with these races from a very early period.
It is supposed by Hamilton Smith and others, that the Mongolian formally
existed much further North than at present, and that its immense
development in regard to numbers finally pressed so heavily on the
Caucasian populations of Central Asia, that it displaced them, and hence
that those mighty migrations into Europe, a short time after the
beginning of the Christian era, were the results of this pressure in
their rear. Be this as it may, it is certain that those vast inundations
which at times swept over the Asiatic world, and also threatened Europe
with their terrible results, were mainly composed of Mongolic elements.
Attila was of pure Caucasian blood, and his chiefs were doubtless also
white men or of a predominating Caucasian innervation; but it is equally
certain that the larger portion of his terrible hordes were Mongolians.
His seat of empire was on the Danube and somewhere near the modern Buda,
from which he threatened France as well as Rome and the Italian
Peninsula, while his dominion extended to the frontiers of China, and
embraced the vast regions and almost countless populations intervening
between these widely separated points. His invasion of France, and his
repulse if not defeat at Chalons, is one of those transcendent events
that, for good or evil, change the order of history, and for centuries
affect the fortunes of mankind. Had this not happened—had his march been
uninterrupted—had his terrible legions swept over Western as they
already had over Eastern Europe, and a vast Mongolian population become
permanently settled there, the destinies of mankind would have been
widely different. But his repulse—his desperate retreat and his
subsequent death, which occurred soon after—changed the current of
events, and his desolating hordes instead of effecting a permanent
lodgement in the heart of Europe, vanished so utterly that, except a few
thousand Laplanders, they have left no trace or evidence of their
terrible invasion of the European world.
Genghis Khan, in the twelfth century, was the next great conqueror and
mighty leader of those vast Mongolic hordes which, at various times,
have inundated the ancient world, and in their desolating march swept
away numerous empires and extinguished whole populations. Genghis Khan,
though of predominating Caucasian blood, was mixed with Mongolian, but
his successors for several centuries after were mainly Caucasians or the
children of Caucasian mothers. Finally, the last and the greatest of
these terrible conquerors, Tamerlane, in the sixteenth century, made a
conquest of nearly the whole of Asia, penetrating even into Africa and
conquering Egypt, while his defeat of Bajazet, the Emperor of the Turks,
then at the zenith of their power, opened Europe to the march of his
desolating hordes, and could his life have been extended a few years
longer, it is quite possible that he would have accomplished what seems
to have been the object of Attila, and subjected the European as well as
the Asiatic world to his terrible sway. As it was, he invaded and
conquered India as well as Egypt, and the master of, or wearer of
twenty-eight crowns, he reigned over the whole of Asia to the borders of
China, except the Turkish dominions, and even here he was the recognized
master though he gave back the empire to the sons of Bajazet. The
character of his conquests—the death and desolation that marked his
path—was the most terrible as well as the most extensive ever witnessed
before or since, and many of the largest and most powerful empires of
Asia were as utterly blotted from the earth as if it had opened and
swallowed them up. He himself was of pure Caucasian extraction, and
doubtless his generals and chiefs were the same, and the Caucasian
Tartars formed a very considerable portion of his forces. There was
doubtless also a large mixed or mongrel element, for of the throngs of
female captives taken in these Mongolian invasions, few ever returned to
their homes, but becoming the wives of Mongolian chiefs, those numerous
and often powerful dynasties which have ruled over the Asiatic
populations had their origin. Nevertheless a vast majority of these
almost countless hordes led by Tamerlane were unmixed Mongolian, and,
therefore, though the leader was himself a Caucasian or white man, the
bloody and desolating character of his conquests were stamped by the
cruelty and ferocity of that race. Perhaps no better illustration of the
Caucasian and Mongolian character could be presented than the contrast
between Alexander’s invasion of Persia and India and similar invasions
of Tamerlane. The first, though a “Pagan” several centuries before the
Christian era, was humane and merciful to the conquered, and except in
battle shed no blood, while the latter not content with the enforcement
of the Moslem rule of tribute or death or the religion of the Prophet,
slaughtered whole populations after the battle was over, and for the
gratification of his ferocious hordes. His conquest of Bagdad and his
pyramid of ninety thousand heads is one of those terrible things that
historians are generally puzzled with, for not only is there nothing
resembling it in history, but there seems to be no motive or sufficient
cause for it. It was the result, the offspring of Mongol ferocity and
apathetic cruelty, such as we now witness in India and China, and
springs as much, perhaps, from a low grade of sensibility or incapacity
to feel or sympathize with suffering, as from a sentiment of cruelty.
The Hindoos or East Indians, like the Chinese, also pretend to trace
back their history to a time long anterior to our own historic era.
Their claim, in this respect, is doubtless better founded than that of
the former, but it, too, is absurd and valueless. The Hindoos were
originally Caucasian, who, at some remote period, invaded and conquered
India, and stamped their civilization and religion on the whole
peninsula. It is quite likely, indeed it is certain, that India had been
invaded and conquered by numerous nations or tribes of Caucasians long
anterior to the Hindoo conquest. There are in our day too many traces of
this, too many evidences of the former existence of the great master
race of mankind in India, to permit us to doubt. The vast debris spread
all over India, indeed the sixty or seventy dialects of Sanscrit proves
that India must have been long subject to the dominion of the Caucasian.
It is believed by many that _Hindoo Koosh_, or the high tableland of
Thibet, was the cradle of the race, and it is rational to suppose that
long anterior to our own historic era white men may have formed the
principal portion of the Indian population. They doubtless thus spread
themselves over the peninsula; or if that was the birth-place of the
Mongolian, then it is certain that restless and energetic Caucasian
tribes at a very early day invaded and conquered the country. Even now
there is a large Caucasian element in India. The Afghans are pure
Caucasian, while the Sikhs, the Rajpoots, and a large portion of the
people of Oude are doubtless of predominating Caucasian blood. That
caste which English writers have so much to say about, and the good
people of Exeter Hall desire so much to “abolish,” is, to a great
extent, mere mongrelism, and that which is not mongrelism is simply what
England itself suffers from to a greater extent than any other country
or people. The Normans invaded the latter country, took possession of
their lands, and reduced the conquered Anglo-Saxons to slavery, where
they have remained, ever since, and though the Norman blood has long
since disappeared, the theory or system remains, for a few cunning and
adroit “Anglo-Saxons,” claiming to be the descendants of Norman
Conquerors, _now_ monopolize the land and rule the great body of the
people as absolutely as the real Normans did in their day. The early
invaders of India grasped everything, as did the Normans in England, but
they amalgamated with the conquered, and thus enfeebling themselves,
fell a victim to fresh invasions of pure Caucasians. They, in their
turn, underwent the same fate, and thus, from time immemorial there grew
up those multitudinous dynasties, each of which had its own character,
and which became a caste, often, doubtless, as a means for governing the
people, and preserved by the conquerors as carefully as that which they
in their turn imposed on the country. The Normans and Saxons were of the
same race, and the greater the admixture of blood, the more energetic
the population, while the admixture of the conquering Caucasian with the
conquered Mongolian, has rendered the modern Hindoo powerless and
contemptible in comparison with the English or European invader of our
times. The general subject of the human races has been so little
studied, and our actual knowledge of these great Asiatic populations is
so limited and so imperfect, that it is difficult to determine their
present character, let alone their former history, and it is quite
possible that the present native of India is specifically different from
the Chinese. It has been the custom of writers on this subject to assume
that the Caucasian and Mongolian, with their often extensive
affiliations, constitute the sole population of the Asiatic continent,
and that the differences which are actually presented are those produced
alone by climate and external influences. The writer has adopted this
view, but without assenting to it in fact, for the actual differences
between Nena Sahib or an Indian prince, and the true Mongol of the
Chinese model, are certainly as distinct as those separating the former
from a modern Englishman, and therefore he thinks it quite probable that
further investigation will show a race or species of men, mainly to be
found in India, that are yet to be known and to take their place in the
great human family, midway between the Caucasian and Mongolian. Be this
as it may, however, it is certain that our own race alone has a history
or is capable of those mental manifestations which constitute the
materials of history. The Mongolic element, though often invading and
temporarily conquering large portions of territory occupied by Caucasian
populations, has receded almost as rapidly as it advanced, and therefore
their actual centre of existence remains substantially the same at all
times. There is, however, a trace of Mongolian blood now found outside
of its own proper centre, but probably there is a much larger Caucasian
element among Mongolic nations. The Caucasian Tartars invaded and
conquered China a few centuries ago, and though doubtless mixed up with
and mainly Mongol at this time, they are the ruling dynasty. The
instincts of this race naturally impelled it to escape from contact or
collision with the superior race; thus, the great wall of China was a
vain attempt to keep out a race it fears and hates, and which its
instincts assure it must rule over itself wherever they exist in
juxtaposition. Many persons fancy that our treaties with Japan and China
will bring these vast populations within the circle of modern
civilization, and open up to ourselves a fancied Asiatic commerce,
which, through California and a Pacific railroad, we shall mainly
monopolize. Of course these notions originate in utter ignorance of what
China is in reality, and except in degree do not differ from that of the
Abolitionists in respect to negroes and negro “slavery.” The Mongol
never will, as indeed he never can, become an element in the modern or
Christian civilization of our times and of our race, and though there
may be a certain trade carried on between us and China, it is not likely
to vary to any considerable extent from that existing now, while any
attempt to establish a diplomatic intercourse or equality is simply
absurd, and must end in nothing.
This, then, is the history of the Mongolian race—the race nearest our
own—all the history we have of it, and indeed all the history there is
of it, for however brief or imperfect our own knowledge of the race, it
is doubtless better and more reliable than is its own pretended history
of itself. As has been said, unlike the Negro, whose capacities cannot
go beyond the living or actual generation, and with whom millions of
generations are the same as a single one, the Mongolian mind may
perhaps, with more or less correctness, grasp the life of a few
generations, but in no proper sense is it capable of acting, and
consequently of writing history.
CHAPTER V.
COLOR.
Anatomists and physiologists have labored very earnestly to account for
or to show the “cause” of color, not of the Negro alone, but in the case
of our own race. They have generally supposed that the pigmentum nigrum,
a substance lying immediately beneath the outward skin, or cuticle,
constituted that cause, and therefore the complexion was fair or dark,
blonde or brunette, just as the “coloring” matter might happen to be
dark or otherwise. This, in a sense, is doubtless true, but to speak of
it as a cause is an abuse of terms, for it is simply a fact, and no more
a cause than it is an effect. Cause and causes in natural phenomena are
known only to Omnipotence, and why the Caucasian color is white or the
Mongol yellow, or the Negro black, is as absolutely hidden from us as
the cause of their existence at all—as wholly beyond the scope of human
intelligence, and therefore of rational inquiry, as the cause of the
return of the seasons, or why men and animals at a certain time arrive
at maturity or finally decay and die. The divine wisdom and perfect
fitness of the fact itself, however, are clearly appreciable, and we are
able to see, not only its transcendent importance, but the utter
impossibility of its being otherwise. There is in all the works of God
perfect harmony, as well as perfect wisdom, and, therefore, such a
monstrosity as a “colored man”—or a being like ourselves in all except
the color of the negro—is not merely absurd, but as impossible in fact,
though not so palpable to a superficial intelligence, as a white body
with a negro head on its shoulders, or indeed as a dog with the head of
any other animal or form of being.
The face of the Caucasian reflects the character, the emotions, the
instincts, to a certain extent the intellectual forces, and even the
acquired habits, the virtues or vices of the individual. This, to a
certain extent, depends on the mobility of the facial muscles, and the
general anatomical structure and outline of the features; but without
our color, the expression would be very imperfect, and the face wholly
incapable of expressing the inner nature and specific character of the
race. For example: What is there at the same time so charming and so
indicative of inner purity and innocence as the blush of maiden modesty?
For an instant the face is scarlet, then, perhaps, paler than ever in
its delicate transparency; and these physical changes, beautiful as they
may be to the eye, are rendered a thousand times more so by our
consciousness that they reflect moral emotions infinitely more
beautiful. Can any one suppose such a thing possible to a black face?
that these sudden and startling alternations of color, which reflect the
moral perceptions and elevated nature of the white woman, are possible
to the negress? And if the latter cannot reflect these things in her
face—if her features are utterly incapable of expressing emotions so
elevated and beautiful, is it not certain that she is without them—that
they have no existence in her inner being, are no portion of her moral
nature? To suppose otherwise is not only absurd, but impious; it is to
suppose that the Almighty Creator would endow a being with moral wants
and capacities that could have no development—with an inner nature
denied any external reflection or manifestation of its wants or of
itself. Of course, it is not intended to say that the negress has not a
moral nature; it is only intended to demonstrate the fact that she has
not _the_ moral nature of the white woman; and, therefore, those who
would endow her inner nature with these qualities, must necessarily
charge the Creator with the gross injustice of withholding from her any
expression of qualities so essential to her own happiness, as well as to
our conception of the dignity and beauty of womanhood. This same
illustration is extensively diversified in regard to the other sex. It
is seen every day in our social life, and confronts us at every step.
The white man is flushed with anger, or livid with fear, or pale with
grief. He is at one moment so charged with the darker passions as to be
almost black, and the next so softened by sorrow or stricken by grief
that the face is bloodless and absolutely white. All these outward
manifestations of the inner nature—of the moral being with which God has
endowed us—are familiar to every one. They form a portion of our daily
experience, and constitute an essential part of our social life.
There are great differences among our people in regard to the general
expression of the features. Some reflect in their faces all the emotions
by which they are moved, while others are so stolid, or they have
acquired such a control over themselves in these respects, as to appear
impenetrable. But this has no connection with color, or any relation to
that great fundamental and specific fact by which and through which the
Almighty has adapted the character and revealed the relative conditions
of the several human races. Like all the other great facts involved,
color is the standard and exact admeasurement of the specific character.
The Caucasian is white, the Negro is black; the first is the most
superior, the latter the most inferior—and between these extremes of
humanity are the intermediate races, approximating to the former or
approaching the latter, just as the Almighty, in His boundless wisdom
and ineffable beneficence, has seen fit to order it. Color is no more
radical or universal, or no more a difference between white men and
negroes, than any other fact out of the countless millions of facts that
separate them. It is more palpable to the sense, more unavoidable, but
no more universal or invariable than the difference in the hair, the
voice, the features, the form of the limbs, the single globule of blood,
or the myriads and millions of things that constitute the Negro being.
It would seem that the Almighty Creator, when stamping this palpable
distinction on the very surface, had designed to guard His work from any
possible desecration, and therefore had marked it so legibly, that human
ignorance, fraud, folly, or wickedness, could by no possibility mistake
it. And indeed it is not mistaken, for those perverse creatures among us
who clamor so loudly for negro equality, or that the negro shall be
treated as if he were a white man, only desire to force their hideous
theories on others, and would rather have their own families utterly
perish from the earth than to practice or live up to their doctrine in
this respect. The term “colored man,” or “colored person,” though
natural enough to Europeans, or to those who had never seen negroes, or
different races from themselves, could never have originated in a
community having negroes in its midst, for it is not only a misnomer but
an absurdity as gross as to say a colored fish or a colored bird.
Finally, as color is the standard and the test of the specific
character, revealing the inner nature and actual capabilities of the
race, so, too, is it the test and standard of the normal physical
condition of the individual. The highest health of the white man is
distinguished by a pure and transparent skin, and exactly as he departs
from this, his color is clouded and sallow; while that of the negro is
marked by perfect blackness, and the departure from this is to dirty
brown, almost ash-color—thus, as in everything else, revealing the
eternal truth that life and well-being, social as well as individual,
are identical with an exact recognition of these extremes, and that it
is only when disease and unnatural conditions prevail, that a certain
approximation to color or to equality become possible.
CHAPTER VI.
FIGURE.
To consider and properly contrast the attitude or the general outline of
the negro form with that of the Caucasian, needs a large space to do the
subject justice. But a few brief points are sufficient to grasp its
essential features and enable every one to add or to fill up the details
from his own experience. Cuvier, the great French zoologist, it is said
might pick up a bone of any kind, however minute, in the deserts of
Arabia, and from this alone determine the species, genus, and class to
which it belonged. This at first seems almost incredible, but a moment’s
reflection shows not only its practicability, but the ease and certainty
with which it may be accomplished. Indeed we have recently witnessed a
still more remarkable instance of this tracing the life and defining the
relations of organized beings from a minute and remote point. Agassiz
has been able, from a single scale of a fish, to determine the specific
character of fishes, and those, too, which he had never before seen! A
bone is picked up at random by the zoologist; he soon discovers that it
is a bone of the thigh of some animal, and this necessarily leads to the
fact that it belonged to a quadruped, and it, in its turn, leads to
other facts equally connected and dependent on each other, for that
great fundamental and eternal law of harmony or adaptation which God has
stamped on the organic and material universe permits of no incongruities
or contradictions to mar its beauty or deface its grandeur. Thus an
anatomist, who had given a certain amount of attention to the subject,
might select the smallest bone, a carpal or bone of the finger, for
example, and determine from among millions of similar ones, whether it
was that of a white man or of a negro, with perfect certainty and the
greatest ease. He would know that such bone formed part of a hand with a
limited flexibility—that the bony structure was in accord with the
tendons and muscles that moved it, and gave it, compared with that of
the Caucasian, a restricted capacity of action, of susceptibility, etc.,
and he would necessarily connect this hand with an arm of corresponding
structure, and going on multiplying the connections and relations, he
would be led to the final result, and without possibility of mistake,
that the bone in question belonged to a negro. But while the analysis of
a single bone or of a single feature of the negro being is thus
sufficient to demonstrate the specific character or to show the
diversity of race, that great fact is still more obviously and with
equal certainty revealed in the form, attitude, and other external
qualities. The negro is incapable of an erect or direct perpendicular
posture. The general structure of his limbs, the form of the pelvis, the
spine, the way the head is set on the shoulders, in short, the _tout
ensemble_ of the anatomical formation, forbids an erect position. But
while the whole structure is thus adapted to a slightly stooping
posture, the head would seem to be the most important agency, for with
any other head or the head of any other race, it would be impossible to
retain an upright position at all.
The form or figure of the Caucasian is perfectly erect, with the eyes on
a plane with the horizon, and the broad forehead, distinct features and
full and flowing beard, stamp him with a superiority and even majesty
denied to all other creatures, and relatively to all other races of men.
On the contrary, the narrow and longitudinal head of the negro
projecting posteriorly, places his eyes at an angle with the horizon,
and thus alone enables him to approximate to an erect position. Of
course, we are not to speculate on what is impossible or to suggest what
might happen if the negro head had resembled that of the Caucasian, for
the slightest change of an elementary atom in the negro structure would
render him an impossible monstrosity. But with the broad forehead and
small cerebellum of the white man, it is perfectly obvious that the
negro would no longer possess a centre of gravity, and therefore those
philanthropic people who would “educate” him into intellectual equality
or change the mental organism of the negro, would simply render him
incapable of standing on his feet or of an upright position on any
terms. Every one must have remarked this peculiarity in the form and
attitude of the negro. His head is thrown upwards and backwards, showing
a certain though remote approximation to the quadruped both in its
actual formation and the manner in which it is set on his shoulders. The
narrow forehead and small cerebrum—the centre of the intellectual
powers—and the projection of the posterior portion—the centre of the
animal functions—render the negro head radically and widely different
from that of the white man. This every one knows, because every one sees
it every day, and the universal and all pervading law of adaptation
which God has eternally stamped upon the structure of all His creatures
enables the negro to thus preserve a centre of gravity and comparatively
an upright posture. But were it true that men can make themselves, can
push aside the Almighty Creator Himself, as taught by certain
“reformers” of the day, and vastly improve the “breed” and, as the
“friends of humanity” hold, that the negro can be made to conform in his
intellectual qualities to those of the white man, then it is certain
that their difficulties would become greater than ever. That the
cerebrum or anterior portion of the brain is the centre, the seat, the
organism, in fact, of the intellectual nature, is as certain as that the
eye is the organ of sight, and that in proportion to its size relatively
with the cerebellum—the centre of the animal instincts—is there mental
capacity, however latent it may be in the case of individuals, is
equally certain. And should these would-be reformers of the work of the
Almighty change the intellectual nature of the negro, they would
necessarily change the organism through which, and by which, that nature
is manifested, and thus enlarging the anterior and diminishing the
posterior portion of the brain into correspondence with their own, it is
perfectly evident that they would destroy the harmony which exists
between the negro head and the negro body, and instead of a black-white
man, or a being with the same intellectual nature as ours, they would
render him as utterly incapable of locomotion or of an upright position
at all as if they had cut off his head, instead of re-creating it on the
model of their own! The whole anatomical structure, the feet, the hands,
the limbs, the size and form of the head, the features, the hair, the
color, the _tout ensemble_ of the negro being, as it is revealed to the
sense, embodies the negro inferiority when compared with other races;
and as regards the white man or Caucasian, it presents a contrast so
striking and an interval so broad and unmistakable that it seems
impossible any one’s senses could be so blunted, or his perceptions so
perverted as to be rendered incapable of perceiving it. The flexible
grace of the limbs, the straight lines of the figure, the expressive
features, the broad forehead and transparent color, and flowing beard,
all combine to give a grace and majesty to the Caucasian that stamps him
undisputed master of all living beings, and even the creatures of the
animal world perceive and acknowledge this supremacy. It is not an
uncommon thing in India for a tiger, rendered desperate by hunger, to
suddenly leap into a crowd and to carry off a man, but instead of a
European he invariably selects a native, and while such a thing as the
seizure of a white man is unknown, the negroes in Sierra Leone are
frequently carried off and eaten by lions. The instinct of the animal
leads it to attack the inferior, and therefore feebler being, as even
our domestic animals are far more likely to attack children than adults.
The negro actually has nothing in common with the animal world that
other races have not, but those things common to men and animals are
much more prominent in him. Thus, while there is an impassable and
perpetual chasm between them, there is a certain resemblance between the
negro and the ourang-outang. The latter is the most advanced species of
the simiadæ or ape family, while the negro is the lowest in the scale of
the human creation, and the approximation to each other, though of
course eternally incomplete, is certainly striking. As stated elsewhere,
the author does not belong to that gloomy and forbidding school of
materialism which would make the faculties and even our moral emotions
the mere result of organism. But there is an inseparable connection
which necessarily renders them the exact admeasurement of each other,
and though neither cause nor result, and their ultimate relation
eternally hidden from the finite mind, they are, in this existence at
least, inextricably bound up together. The approximation, therefore, of
the negro to the ourang-outang, while there is a boundless space within
the circle of which there can be no resemblance—for the negro is
absolutely and entirely human—and within which it is not proposed to
enter, is exactly revealed in the outward form and attitude. The negro,
from the structure of his limbs, his head, etc., has a decided
inclination to the quadruped posture, while the ourang-outang has an
equal tendency to the upright human form. The latter often walks
partially erect, and sometimes even carries a club, while the typical
negro in Africa or Cuba, or anywhere in his natural state, is quite as
likely to squat on his hams as to stand on his feet. Thus, an anatomist
with the negro and ourang-outang before him, after a careful comparison,
would say, perhaps, that nature herself had been puzzled where to place
them, and had finally compromised the matter by giving them an exactly
equal inclination to the form and attitude of each other.
CHAPTER VII.
THE HAIR.
Next to color, there is nothing so palpable to the sense as the hair, or
nothing that reveals the specific difference of race so unmistakably as
the natural covering of the head. The hair of the Caucasian is a
graceful and imposing feature or quality, of course in perfect harmony
with everything else, but sometimes, and especially in the case of
females, it is an attribute of physical beauty more striking and
attractive than any other. Its color, golden or sunny brown, and the
dazzling hues of black, purple, and auburn tresses, has been the theme
of poets from time immemorial, while its luxuriance, and silky softness,
and graceful length will continue to be the pride of one sex and the
admiration of the other as long as the perception of beauty remains.
In the Mongol, Malay, or Indian, as well as the Negro, it remains the
same through all the stages of life, and it is only in extreme old age
that it becomes gray or silvery white, or even falls off from any
portion of the head. The coarse, stiff, black hair of the Indian child
is that also of its parents—and a gray-headed or bald-headed Indian,
except in some cases of extreme old age, is as rare perhaps as that of a
bald-headed negro. But the child of the Caucasian, with perfectly white
or flaxen hair, expands into the maiden with clustering ringlets of
auburn or perhaps raven black, to be threaded with silver, in middle
life perhaps, and though less common than with the other sex, a few
years later it becomes again, as in early childhood, perfectly white.
But there are no exceptions to the uniform color of the hair in other
races. Such a thing as a flaxen-haired or a light-haired negro child
never existed. There may be sometimes a slight approximation in this
respect among Mongols, but the hair of the negro, except in some cases
of extreme old age, remains absolutely the same at all periods, from the
cradle to the grave. The elementary structure as shown by the elaborate
microscopical observations of Mr. Peter A. Browne, of Philadelphia,
differs as widely as the external or superficial modifications. The
popular notion that it is wool instead of hair that covers the negro
head is like many others, founded on a mere external resemblance,
without any actual correspondence. It is hair, but _sui generis_, or
rather specific and common to the negro alone, and however widely
different from that of white people, it is no more so than any other
quality or feature of the negro nature. The variations of this feature
in the white race are almost unlimited. Hair dressing even has been
elevated to the respectability of an art, if not to the dignity of a
science. For many generations the kings of France kept _artistes_ of
this character, who often received a salary equal to the ministers of
the crown, and one of them, Oliver Le Dain, became in fact, if not in
form, the actual ruler of the kingdom. But it was the princesses and
ladies of the court that exalted this “art” to its highest pitch of
extravagance and display. Marie Antoinette—one of the most unhappy women
that ever lived—made it an important part of every day’s employment, and
exacted the same labor from her attendants. Even in our own more
sensible times, the Empress Eugenie changes the fashions in this respect
almost every month, and the styles or modes of dressing their hair is an
extravagant though amiable weakness of our own fair countrywomen. There
is in fact no mere physical quality of the female so attractive, or that
is capable of being rendered so charming, as the hair, and the elaborate
dressings, the time and labor spent on its decoration, proceed as much
perhaps from that delicate perception of the beautiful innate in woman
as it does from female vanity or the love of display. But with this
“wealth of beauty” of the Caucasian woman, what an immeasurable interval
separates her from the negress! Is it possible for any who sees the
latter, with her short, stiff, uncombable fleece of seeming wool, to
endow her with the attribute of beauty or comeliness? And though
somewhat less palpable in the other sex, the hair is an essential
element of manly beauty as well as dignity, and the “love locks” of the
cavaliers and even the “soap locks” of more modern times, are identified
with certain conceptions of manly grace. Can any one form such
conceptions in respect to the hair of the negro? Can he identify any of
these things with the crisp, stiff, seeming wool that covers the head of
that race? Can the sentiment of beauty, grace or dignity, or indeed any
idea whatever—except as a necessary provision of nature for covering the
negro head—attach to the hair of the negro? This is all that is possible
to the mind of a white person in actual juxtaposition with the negro,
and therefore while the European Abolitionist may fancy his head adorned
by “ambrosial curls,” our own native Abolitionists are wholly unable to
conceive of any use or purpose whatever for that dense mat of wiry and
twisted hair which covers the negro head, except as a provision of
nature for its protection. The protection of the head, or rather of the
brain, is the purpose or the function of the hair in all races, but
while that, in our race, is identified with elevated and striking
qualities, it is the sole purpose in the case of the negro. The short,
crisp, dense mass that covers the negro head, like every other quality
or attribute of the negro nature, is in perfect harmony with the
climatic and external circumstances with which God has surrounded him.
The popular notion that the negro skull is much thicker than that of the
white man originated from this peculiarity of the covering of the negro
head. The hair is so dense, so curled and twisted together, and forms
such a complete mat or net work as to be wholly impenetrable to the rays
of a vertical sun, and to furnish a vastly better protection for the
brain than the thickest felt hat does to that of the white man. Thus,
though negroes on our southern plantations, with the imitative instincts
of their race, copy after the whites and wear hats, it is merely a
“fashionable folly,” and dictated by no natural want, nor in the
slightest degree adds to their happiness. And beside the protection from
the fierce heats of the tropics, the hair of the negro protects his head
in other respects. It is so hard and wiry, and in fact triangular in
form, that a blow from the hand of a master would doubtless injure the
latter vastly more than it would the head of the negro, and the common
practice among them of butting each other with their heads, though
knocking them off their feet, and the concussion heard at considerable
distances, never results in injury, for the dense mat of semi-wool that
covers the head protects it from mischief. The negro hair is then
designed solely for the protection of the negro head, and not only
differs widely from that of the Caucasian, but from that of all other
races, for the negro is a tropical race, and the hair, like all other
attributes of the negro being, physical and moral, is adapted to a
tropical clime, and in perfect accord with the physical wants and moral
necessities of the race.
But the mere covering of the head, or the mere protection of the brain,
is not all that distinguishes the different races in these respects. The
beard is equally radical and universal, though not so palpable a
specialty as color, and in some respects it may be said to be a more
important one. The Caucasian alone has a beard, for though all others
approximate to it in this respect, it is the only bearded race, and some
writers on ethnology have been so impressed with this imposing and
striking distinction that they have sought to make it the basis of a
classification of races. And there certainly is no physical or outward
quality that so imposingly impresses itself on the senses as a mark of
superiority, or evidence of supremacy, as a full and flowing beard.
Color, when in repose, or when it does not give expression to the inner
nature, does not, in reality, constitute a distinction at all, but the
beard is an evidence of superiority, that, however varied the action or
whatever the circumstances, is equally distinct and universal as an
attribute of supremacy. This is sufficiently illustrated in our own race
and our every day experience. The youth is beardless, and _pari passu_
as he approaches to the maturity of manhood there is a corresponding
development of beard. The intellect—the mental strength—the moral
beauty, all the qualities of the inner being, as well as those outward
attributes tangible to the sense, harmonize perfectly with the growth of
the beard, and when that has reached its full development, it is both
the signal and the proof of mature manhood—an exact admeasurement and
absolute proof of the maturity of the individual as well as the type and
standard of the race. This is equally true when applied to different
races. The Caucasian is the only bearded race, but all others
approximate in this respect, and the negro is furthest removed of all,
for the tropical woolly-haired African or negro, except a little tuft on
the chin and sometimes on the upper lip, has nothing that can be
confounded with a beard. People sometimes see negroes with considerable
hair on their faces, and hence conclude that they are as likely to have
beards as white men; but they forget that all in our society who are not
whites are considered negroes, and therefore those bearded negroes have
a large infusion, and doubtless sometimes a vastly predominating
infusion of Caucasian blood. The beard symbolizes our highest
conceptions of manhood—it is the outward evidence of mature
development—of complete growth, mental as well as physical—of strength,
wisdom and manly grace, and the full, flowing, and majestic beard of the
Caucasian, in contrast with the negro or other subordinate races, is as
striking and imposing as the mane of the lion when compared with the
meaner beasts of the animal world. Like color or any other of the great
fundamental facts separating races, the beard is sufficient to determine
their specific character and their specific relations to each other, and
we have only to apply our every day experience as regards this outward
symbol of inner manhood to measure the relative inferiority of the
negro. The Abolitionists demand that the “equal manhood” of the negro
shall be recognized, and complain bitterly of a government that refuses
to respond to their wishes in this respect, but if this “equal manhood”
was actually revealed to them in the person of the negro as it is in the
persons of white men, and as God has alone provided and ordained or
permitted it to be revealed, they would be overwhelmed with astonishment
or convulsed with laughter. A negro with a full and flowing beard, with
this symbol of perfect manhood or with this outward manifestation of the
inner (Caucasian) being, would be a ludicrous monstrosity, as
impossible, of course, as the Caliban of Shakespeare; but if such a
supernatural being should suddenly make his appearance in an Abolition
conventicle, the “friends of humanity” would be as much astonished as if
an inhabitant of another world had come among them. A youth, with the
majestic and flowing beard of adult life, if the monstrosity did not
shock and disgust us, would be irresistibly comical, and equally so in
the case of the childish and romping negro. Thus, were the leaders of
the “anti-slavery enterprise” busily engaged in discussing the “equal
manhood” of the negro, and in earnestly denouncing those who, unable to
see it, decline to admit such a thing, and a negro should enter the room
with the actual proof of its existence—with the full, flowing beard of
the Caucasian, and therefore the outward symbol of an “equal manhood,”
as the hand of the Eternal has revealed it in the person of the
former—the whole Abolition congregation, if not paralyzed with horror,
would burst into uncontrollable laughter. The wrongs of the “slave,” the
cruelties of the master, the “hopes of humanity,” the most doleful
stories and the saddest tales of the suffering “bondmen,” would be
interrupted by screams of laughter at such a ludicrous spectacle as a
negro with the majestic and flowing beard of the white man. This outward
symbol of complete manhood, or this external indication which typifies
the high nature and lofty qualities of the Caucasian, is no more
impossible, however, to the negro than that “equal manhood” which is
demanded for him, and therefore were the “friends of humanity” to vary
their programme and demand an “equal” beard, or that we shall grant the
negro the full and flowing beard of the Caucasian, they would render
their performances more interesting without giving up any of their
“principles,” as the absurdity is exactly the same in either case.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FEATURES.
The features reflect the inner nature, the faculties or specific
qualities, and they are distinct or indistinct, developed or
undeveloped, as we ascend or descend in the scale of being. In the
simpler forms of animal existence, there is close resemblance to
vegetable life in this respect; but ascending to the vertebrata, and
especially the mammalia, there is a broad distinction between the head
and body, and instead of an undefined uniformity pervading the whole
exterior surface, the face becomes a centre in which the essential
character of the creature is written by the hand of Nature. It is true,
that the general form of the body is significant of the grosser
qualities. The muscular and motive forces of the horse are evidently
designed for swiftness; those of the lion, and the felinæ generally, are
designed both for strength and swiftness; while that of the ox and other
mammalia is adapted to a negative kind of strength which results from a
combination of all the physical forces, and not, as in the former case,
from an excessive muscular development. But the higher qualities, even
in animals, are legibly written in the face or features. In the human
creation, of course, this external reflection of the inner nature in the
features becomes vastly more distinct and real, and in our own race not
unfrequently does the face become a very window of the soul, where may
be read the sweetest and most exquisite emotions of a sensitive and
delicate nature, or, as sometimes happens, the gross and sensual
thoughts of a depraved and perverted one. There are, indeed, countless
and innumerable variations in our own race in this respect. The white or
Caucasian men of Asia, of Africa, Europe, and America, are so modified
by climate, habits, government, religion, etc., that those ethnologists
who are not anatomists have sometimes confounded them, and classed them
as distinct species. Even on the same continent, in the same country,
sometimes the same family, these variations are so marked that they
always seem to belong to different species. The globular head, broad
forehead, oval cheeks, straight nose, and distinct, well-defined lips
and mouth, however, whatever may be the expression, always remain the
same, and can never be confounded with any other race of men. And these
modifications in the Caucasian are not confined to the face, but pervade
the whole surface. White, black, and red hair, white skin and brown
ones, blondes and brunettes, are often found in the same family. It is
even so in regard to size—some are short and others tall—some pigmies
while others are giants—and not unfrequently in the same household,
while the same nation exhibits every possible variety in this respect.
The Caucasian race alone presents these variations—the other races great
uniformity; and the negro, lowest in the scale, presents an almost
absolute resemblance to each other. Of all the millions that have
existed on the earth, their hair not only in color but in form has been
absolutely the same, and such a being as a different-colored or
straight-haired, or long-haired negro never existed. On visiting a
plantation at the South, one sees a thousand negroes so nearly alike,
that except where wide differences of age exist, they are all alike, and
even in size rarely depart from that standard uniformity that nature has
stamped upon the race. The entire external surface, as well as his
interior organism, differs radically from the Caucasian. His muscles,
the form of the limbs, his feet, hands, pelvis, skeleton, all the organs
of locomotion, give him an outward attitude that, while radically
different from the Caucasian, approaches an almost absolute uniformity
of character in the negro. His longitudinal head, narrow and receding
forehead, flat nose, enormous lips and protuberant jaws, in short, his
flat, shapeless and indistinct features strikingly approximate to the
animal creation, and they are as utterly incapable of reflecting certain
emotions as so much flesh and blood of any other portion of his body.
The Almighty and All-Wise Creator has made all things perfect, and
adapted the negro features, as well as those of the white man, to the
inner nature, but if it were true that the negro had certain qualities
with which ignorance and delusion would endow him, then it would be
quite evident that the Almighty Creator had made a fatal blunder in this
case, for it is clearly a matter of physical demonstration that the
negro features cannot reflect these qualities. The features of the
animal are made to express its wants, to reflect the nature God has
given it. We witness this every day among our domestic animals—the cat,
the dog, the horse, all exhibit their qualities, their wants, their
moods, at different times their anger, suffering, and affection, all
that their natures are capable of, are reflected in their faces, and we
understand them. In our own race, the transparent skin, the deeply cut
and distinct features become often a perfect mirror of the inner nature,
and reflect the nicest shades of feeling as well as the deepest emotions
of the soul. Envy, anger, pride, shame, scowling hate and malignant
fear, as well as gentle affection and the most exalted love, are written
as legibly in the face as if they were things of physical form, and
their innumerable modifications and variations are witnessed all about
us, and every day of our lives. How grandly this is displayed in the
case of the orator! This must have been apparent to those who heard Mr.
Clay in the Senate, and saw those wonderful changes of feature—one
moment convulsed with anger, then lit up with genius, or with pride and
pomp of conscious power, and in another reflecting, perhaps, all a
woman’s sweetness or a child’s gentleness. Color, of course, is
essential to this, for a display of the passions and emotions on the
dark ground-work of the negro skin would be as impossible as a rainbow
at midnight, but without the deeply cut and distinctly marked features
of the Caucasian, color would be comparatively useless in reflecting the
grander emotions of the soul. Any one referring to his own experience
for a moment will see how impossible, as a mere physical matter, that
the negro face can reflect the qualities attributed to him by those who
are ignorant of his real nature. The narrow and receding forehead, the
shallow eyes, flat nose, almost on a level with the cheeks, the
protruding and enormous lips,—the only thing that really can be said to
be distinct in the negro face,—the _tout ensemble_ without form or
meaning when contrasted with the white man, is, in connection with the
color, the dark ground of the negro skin, clearly incapable of
reflecting certain qualities of our own race. The negro has, of course,
moral emotions, as have all human creatures, and his face, like that of
the Caucasian, is capable of reflecting all _his_ wants, his likes and
dislikes, his hopes and fears, but every one who has seen him must
_know_ that the higher qualities of the Caucasian cannot find expression
in the negro features, and therefore he does not possess those
qualities, or, as has been said, the All-Wise and Almighty Creator of
all has committed a fatal mistake, and unjustly endowed him with
qualities which he is forever forbidden to express!
CHAPTER IX.
LANGUAGE.
A few years since, an eminent historian, in a public lecture, discussed
the probabilities of a universal language as an instrument of universal
history, and as means for the universal civilization of mankind! Another
public lecturer discussing this subject, and on a professedly scientific
basis, held that language had a miraculous origin, though the period
when this supernatural gift was conferred on man was left wholly to the
imagination of his audience. Others, and among them Buffon, Pritchard,
and even several ethnologists, have scarcely risen above this nonsense,
while their uses or application of this faculty have been vastly more
injurious to science than even their original misconceptions on the
general subject.
Language is naturally divided into two distinct and widely separated
portions, having no necessary connection, though at certain points or
stages uniting and combining together. First, is that universal capacity
of expressing itself—its wants, its sufferings, and its enjoyments—which
God has given to all His creatures, from the insect at our feet to the
Caucasian man standing at the head of this vast and innumerable host of
living beings. In the second place, in its structure and arrangement
into parts or portions of speech; in short, its grammatical
construction. With the former it is alone or mainly proposed to deal in
this place, though it will be necessary occasionally to refer to the
latter. As has been said, all living or rather all animal beings have
the faculty of expressing their wants, and they have a vocal organism in
exact correspondence with these wants and the purposes for which they
are designed by the common Creator of all. Except to a few laborious and
enthusiastic students of natural history, the vast world of insect life
is a _terra incognita_, but each one of these myriad of beings is
adapted to some specific purpose and beneficently designed by the
Almighty Master of Life for the same universal enjoyment which is so
distinctly revealed as the end of their existence in the more
elaborately organized and higher endowed classes of animal being. And
millions of these minute and often unseen creatures are daily and hourly
singing praises to the Almighty Creator for His infinite goodness,
rendering the fields and forests vocal with the music of their gratitude
and the exuberance of their enjoyment. As we ascend in the scale of
animated existence, the vocal faculty or language becomes still more
distinctly revealed, with a vocal apparatus or organism in exact
correspondence with the function or faculty that God has given to the
being in question. The pigeon, of course, cannot give us the notes of
the canary bird, nor the owl sing the songs of the nightingale. The
serpent cannot exchange his hiss for the growl of the tiger, nor the ass
abandon its uncouth utterances for the mighty roar or the majestic voice
of the lion. Each is permitted to express its wants, its sufferings, and
its joys, and each is provided with a vocal organism specific and
peculiar to itself and to its kind, and in accord with the universal law
of adaptation which inseparably unites organism with function. This,
then, in its elementary form, is language—a faculty common to the animal
world, and a necessity of animal existence. It differs in no essential
respect in regard to human beings, or it varies no more from that of the
animal world than other functions or faculties of the human being. There
is, it is true, a point of departure or divergence where the analogies
of the animal world are no longer applicable to human beings, or where
animal beings cannot furnish parallels for those endowed with a moral
nature and destined for immortality; but a vocal organism with its
corresponding faculty or function is essentially the same thing in both,
and differs only in form and degree among the innumerable beings that
compose or are comprised within the vast world of animated existence.
While language, therefore, the voice or faculty by which animals as well
as human beings express their wants, is universal and only varied as the
structure and nature are varied, and while the vocal organism is in
exact harmony with the faculty or function in all cases and in every
phase of animated existence, there is also, and of necessity, a specific
modification of this faculty in the case of the several human races or
species. The vocal organs of the negro differ widely from those of the
white man, and of course there is a corresponding difference in the
language. The specific or the most essential feature of the negro nature
is his imitative instincts, or his capacity for imitating the qualities
and for acquiring the habitudes of the white man. This, of course, is
limited to his actual juxtaposition with the superior race, for aside
from that organic necessity which utterly forbids its being otherwise,
there is no historical fact better attested than that which shows him
invariably relapsing into savageism whenever he is left without the
restraining support of the former. But for wise and beneficent purposes,
God has endowed him with a capacity of imitation, and he is enabled to
apply it to such an extent that those ignorant of the negro nature
actually offer it as a proof of his equal capacity! But with all his
power to thus imitate the habits and to copy the language of the white
man, it is not possible that a single example can be furnished of his
success in regard to the latter. With us, and especially at the North,
all are negroes who are tainted with negro blood, and thus many persons
will imagine that they have seen negroes who were as competent to speak
our language as white men themselves. But no actual or typical negro
will be able—no matter what pains have been taken to “educate” him—to
speak the language of the white man with absolute correctness. European
ethnologists have, notwithstanding, sought to make language the means
for tracing the history and determining the character of races, the
worthlessness and indeed the absurdity of which only needs a single
illustration to expose it. The negroes of Hayti have imitated or copied
the language of their former masters, the French, therefore they are of
the same race, and the future ethnologists would pronounce them
Frenchmen! As the negro cannot preserve anything that he copies from the
Caucasian beyond a certain period, the negroes of that island are
rapidly losing all that they obtained from their former masters, and
though the educated portion on the coasts, and especially the mongrels,
yet retain the French language, those in the interior are rapidly
relapsing into their native African tongue. And a century or two hence,
when the French is entirely extinct and the existing negro population
speak an African dialect, or what is far more probable, speak our own,
the ethnological enquirer would decide that those led by Touissant and
Christophe in the war of “Independence” were Frenchmen instead of
Negroes, because, forsooth, the public documents of the time showed they
spoke the French language! Thus, while language is an important means
for tracing nationalities or varieties of our own race, as, for example,
the modern Spanish, French, Italian, etc., in connection with the great
Latin family of southern Europe, it is simply absurd to apply it to
distinct species like Caucasians and negroes. Each race or each species,
as each and every other form of life, is in perfect harmony with itself,
and therefore the voice of the negro, both in its tones and its
structure, varies just as widely from that of the white man as any other
feature or faculty of the negro being. Any one accustomed to negroes
would distinguish the negro voice at night among any number of those of
white men by its tones alone, and without regard to his peculiar
utterances. Tones or mere sounds are of course indescribable, and
therefore no comparison in this respect is possible, but all those
familiar with the tones of the negro voice know that it is never musical
or capable of those soft and sweet inflections or modulations common to
our own race. Music is to the negro an impossible art, and therefore
such a thing as a negro singer is unknown. It is true that, a few years
since, certain amiable people, both at the North and in England,
believed for a time that they had secured a prodigy of this kind in the
person of the “Black Swan,” but after a careful and patient trial, it
was found to be a mistake. She was not even a negress, though perhaps of
predominating negro blood, and was aided and encouraged by every
possible means, especially in England, where she was actually placed
under the care of Queen Victoria’s music master, but without
avail—Nature was superior to art—the laws of God more potent than those
of human invention—and the “Black Swan” finally disappeared from public
view. The negro is fond of music, as are all other beings, and indeed
all animal beings of the more elevated classes, but music is to him
merely a thing of the senses. With the white race music is perceived as
well as felt—an intellectual as well as sensuous thing—and though it by
no means follows that intellectual persons, with minds above the common
average, should also have musical powers, that sensitive and exquisite
organization which is necessary to a musical genius must be united with
a brain of corresponding complexity. The brain and the nerves constitute
a whole—a system—however widely portions of the latter may diverge in
their especial functions, and it is as impossible that the musical
temperament, or that the elaborate and exquisitely sensuous system of
the Caucasian could be united with the brain of the negro, as it would
be to unite the color of the former with the negro structure. The negro,
therefore, neither perceives nor can he give expression to music—he has
neither the brain nor the delicacy of nerve nor the vocal organism that
is essential to this faculty—all that is possible to him is a certain
approximation through his wonderful powers of imitation, but which is
less available to him in this respect perhaps than any other. His brain
is much smaller, but his nerves are much larger, and his senses are
consequently much more acute, and here is the cause of that “musical
power” with which ignorant and mistaken persons have endowed him. Music
is felt by the nerves rather than perceived by the brain, in his feet as
much as in his head, and with an intensity unknown and unfelt by whites.
His imitative instinct enables him to rapidly acquire the language of
his master, but he also loses it with similar rapidity. The negroes
imported to the West India Islands, though living on large plantations,
soon acquired the language of the few whites, so far as words were
concerned, but an organic necessity compelled them to retain the
structure of their original tongue. Thus, those in British islands spoke
English, in French islands, French, etc., but the general structure
remained the same in all, and now, when the external force applied by
the several European governments has removed the control and guidance of
the superior race, they are rapidly losing the words of their former
masters, and in this as well as every other respect returning to their
native Africanism. In Hayti, where the imitative capacity has little or
nothing to stimulate it, this process is very rapid indeed, and could
they be entirely isolated, the utter extinction of the French language
would doubtless occur within the present century.
CHAPTER X.
THE SENSES.
The senses are those special organisms that connect us with the outer
world through which external impressions are received and transmitted to
the brain—the great sensorium or centre of the nervous system. They are
popularly designated as sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste, each
having its own peculiar organism; some, as sight, exceedingly elaborate,
and others, like taste, quite simple, being little more than a delicate
expansion of nervous matter spread upon the tongue and lining the inner
surface of the mouth. The nervous system includes the brain and the
nerves, but is, in fact, an indivisible whole, of which the brain forms
the centre, and the nerves the circumference, in exact proportion as we
ascend in the scale of being. The centre of the nervous system is
increased and the circumference diminished as the brain becomes larger
and the nerves smaller. Among quadrupeds—the horse, for example—the
nerves are enormously large in comparison with the brain of that animal;
and this holds good throughout, so that an intelligent physiologist
might determine the possible capabilities of any of the higher order of
animals by a simple comparison of the brain and nerves. And in the human
creation a single skull of a Mongol, or Malay, or Negro, and especially
of the latter, should be quite sufficient to enable a physiologist to
comprehend the essential character of the race to which it belonged.
True, he might, as has often happened, mistake it for an abnormal
specimen of the Caucasian, and thus display a vast amount of learned
nonsense of the Gall-Spurzheim order, but if he knew it to be an actual
negro skull, and then compared it with that of the Caucasian, he should
be able not only to determine the intellectual inferiority, but the
vastly preponderating sensualism of the former. He would see that the
relatively small cerebrum, and the large cerebellum, must be united with
a corresponding development of the senses, and a comparatively
dominating sensualism. The mere organism of the senses, of sight,
hearing, etc., though of course differing widely from those of the
Caucasian, it is not necessary to describe, for even in animals of the
higher class there is a certain resemblance, and the student of anatomy
studies the mechanism of the eye in the ox or horse as satisfactorily as
in that of the human creature.
The organisms while thus, in a sense, similar—of the eye, for example—in
whites and negroes, is more elaborately and delicately constituted in
the case of the former, and therefore it is also vastly more liable to
disease, to congenital defects, to strabismus, etc., and especially
short-sightedness. The negro, on the contrary, rarely suffers from these
things, or even from inflammation of the eyes, so common among white
people, and though, in keeping with the imitative instinct of the race,
the negro “preacher” dons spectacles as well as white neck-cloth, it may
be doubted if there ever was a case of near-sightedness in the typical
negro. Though in extreme old age they doubtless lose the power of vision
common to their youth, it is rare that negroes need spectacles at any
age. The organism is supplied with a larger portion of nervous matter
than in the case of the whites, and the function or sense is thus
endowed with a strength and acuteness vastly greater than are the senses
of the Caucasian. Travelers and others mingling among savages, Indians,
negroes, etc., have observed the extraordinary power and acuteness of
the external senses, and have supposed that this was a result of their
savage condition, which, calling for a constant exercise of these
faculties, gave them an extraordinary development. And Pritchard,
carrying this theory or notion to an extreme, inferred that men were
originally created negroes, for the exigencies of savage life demanded,
as he supposed, a black color as well as acuteness of the senses!
Doubtless the civilized negro of America ordinarily displays less
strength and acuteness of sense than his wild brother of Africa, but he
is born with the same faculties, and were the surrounding circumstances
changed so as to call them into more active exercise, he would exhibit
similar characteristics.
The Almighty Creator, with infinite wisdom, has adapted all His
creatures to the ends or purposes of their creation. The Caucasian or
white man, with his large brain and elevated reasoning powers, is thus
provided with all that is necessary to guard his safety and to increase
his happiness. Inferior races, with smaller brains and feebler mental
powers are endowed with strength and acuteness of the external senses
which enable them to contend specifically with surrounding circumstances
and to provide for their safety. This is strikingly manifest in the
North American Indian who marks or makes a trail in the forest which he
follows with unerring confidence, though the eye of the white man sees
nothing whatever. The descriptions of Indian character in Cooper’s
novels are in these respects perfectly correct and true to nature, as
are all those of the Indianized white man, Leather-Stocking, Hawkeye,
etc. The one depends upon his senses—his sight, hearing, etc., the other
on his powers of reasoning or reflection, which in the end enable him to
“sarcumvent” his Huron enemies and to win the victory. Each, according
to his “gifts,” is able to fulfil the purposes of his creation, and
while the superior intelligence of the Caucasian is spreading that race,
with its benign and civilizing consequences, over the whole northern
continent, the strength and acuteness of his senses have enabled the
Indian to resist to a degree all these mighty forces for three hundred
years.
Some historians have advanced the notion that Rome was overrun by
northern barbarians, similar to our North American Indians, but if the
mighty hordes led by Alaric and Genseric to the conquest of Italy, had
been Indians, not one would have escaped to tell the tale of their
destruction. A high civilization, rotten at heart, falls an easy
conquest to ruder and more simple communities of the same race—thus, the
effete and corrupt Roman aristocracy fell before the simple and rude
populations of Northern Europe, as the polished and scholastic Greeks
had succumbed to the Romans, when the latter practised the simple and
hardy virtues of their earlier history. In our own times we have seen
Spain, long ruled over by an effete and worn-out aristocracy, sink from
a first class to a fourth rate power, while France, relieved from the
dead weight of “nobility,” has in half a century become the leading
power of the world. And if the English masses have not sufficient
vitality to cast off the mighty pressure of a diseased and effete
aristocracy by an internal reform like that which the French passed
through in 1789, then it is certain that, at no distant day, the nation
will fall a conquest to some external power that has greater vitality
than itself, however deficient it may be in wealth and learning, and
those refinements that pass for high civilization. But while nations
ruled over by privileged classes thus carry within them the seeds of
their own destruction, and sooner or later fall a conquest to ruder and
simpler societies, the intellectual superiority of the white man always
enables him to conquer inferior races, whatever may be the disparity of
numbers, and Clive with three thousand Europeans, attacking the Hindoo
horde of one hundred thousand, or Cortez invading Mexico with five
hundred followers, amply illustrates the natural supremacy of the
Caucasian race. But, on the contrary, if the Aztecs had had the
intellectual capacity of the Caucasian superadded to their own specific
qualities—the strength and acuteness of the senses—common to the native
race, not alone would Cortez have failed to conquer them, but it may be
doubted if all Europe, combined together for that purpose, could have
accomplished it.
There are no examples for testing the capabilities of negroes in these
respects, for there is no instance in history where they have contested
the supremacy of the white man, the insurrection in Hayti having been
the work of the “colored people” and mulattoes, and the negroes only
forced into it by their fears after the outbreak was complete. But we
have the actual physical facts as well as our every-day experience of
the negro qualities, and therefore can arrive at positive truth when
comparing him with the superior race. The large distribution of nervous
matter to the organs of sense and consequent dominating sensualism (not
mere animalism), is the direct cause of that extreme sloth and indolence
universal with the race. The small brain and limited reasoning power of
the negro render him incapable of comprehending the wants of the future,
while the sloth dependent on the dominating sensualism, together with
strong animal appetites impelling him always to gross self-indulgence,
render a master guide or protector essential to his own welfare. Indeed
it may be matter of doubt which is the paramount cause of the negro’s
inability to provide for future necessities—his limited reasoning power
or his indolence—his small brain or his dominating sensualism. It is a
statistical _fact_ that “free” negroes do not produce sufficient for
their support, and consequently that they tend perpetually to
extinction, and when it is remembered that the small brain and feeble
intellectual power render them incapable of reasoning on the future
rewards of self-denial, and that the large distribution of nervous
matter in the organs of sense, and the consequent sensualism impels them
to gross indulgence of the present, and moreover that they are in
juxtaposition, and must contend with white people, then it is plain
enough to see that it could not be otherwise, and that the total
extinction of these unfortunate beings is necessarily a question of time
alone.
But it is not the mere predominance of the senses, or the strength and
acuteness of the sense which so broadly and radically separates whites
and negroes. They are entirely different in the manifestations of these
qualities. As has been observed, there are few if any near-sighted
negroes, or negroes with other defects of vision, and the sense of smell
in negroes permits them to discriminate and to indicate the presence of
the rattle snake, or other venomous serpents. And in respect to the
sense of touch or feeling, the peculiarity of the negro nature is
perhaps most remarkable of all. This sense in the white person, though
universal of course, is mainly located in the hand and fingers. Sir
Charles Bell, an eminent English surgeon, has written an interesting
work—one of the Bridgewater treatises—on the flexibility and adaptation
of the human hand, and other volumes might be given to the world without
exhausting the subject. The universal law of adaptation, indeed, demands
that the sense of touch, the flexibility of the hand, the delicacy of
the fingers, should be in accord with the large brain and commanding
intellect, otherwise the world itself would long since have come to a
stand-still, and human invention ended with the antediluvians. It is
true the structure—the arrangement of the bones, muscles, tendons, etc.,
in short, the mere mechanism of the hand, is essential, but without the
sense of feeling, or that delicacy of touch found only in the fingers of
the Caucasian, the mechanical perfections of the hand would be
comparatively useless.
All the nice manipulations in surgery, in the arts, in painting,
statuary, and the thousands of delicate fabrics seen every day and all
about us, demand both intellect and delicacy of hand, and these, too, in
that complete perfection found alone in the Caucasian. The sense of
touch, on the contrary, in the negro is not in the hand or fingers, or
only partially so, but spreads all over the surface and envelops the
entire person. The hand itself, in its mere mechanism, is incompatible
with delicate manipulation. The coarse, blunt, webbed fingers of the
negress, for example, even if we could imagine delicacy of touch and
intellect to direct, could not in any length of time or millions of
years be brought to produce those delicate fabrics or work those
exquisite embroideries which constitute the pursuits or make up the
amusements of the Caucasian female. The mechanism of the negro hand, the
absence or rather the obtuseness of the sense of touch in the fingers,
and the limited negro intellect, therefore, utterly forbid that negroes
shall be mechanics, except it be in those grosser trades, such as
coopers, blacksmiths, etc., which need little more than muscular
strength and industry to practice them. But the sense of touch, though
feeble in the hand or fingers, is none the less largely developed as are
the other senses of the negro, and spreads over the whole surface of the
body. This is witnessed every day at the South, where whipping, as with
Northern children, is the ordinary punishment of negroes. As in all
other foolish notions that spring from the one great misconception—that
negroes have the same nature as white people, the “anti-slavery” people
of the North and of Europe labor under a ludicrous mistake in respect to
this matter. They take their notions of flogging from the practice of
the British army and the Russian knout, where strong men are cut to
pieces by the “cat” or beaten to death by clubs, and they suppose that
precisely similar barbarity is practiced on the “poor slave.” And the
runaway negro has doubtless added to these notions, perhaps, without
meaning it. At Abolition conventicles he is expected, of course, to
horrify the crowd with awful tales of his sufferings, but having always
had plenty to eat and never overworked, he has really nothing to fall
back on but the “cruel whippings,” which the imaginations of the former
readily transform into their own notions, but which, in fact, correspond
to that which they deal out to their own children without a moment’s
compunction. The sensibility of the negro skin closely resembles that of
childhood, and while there are doubtless cases of great barbarity in
these respects, as we all know there are in cases of children, the
ordinary flogging of negroes is much the same as that which parents,
guardians, teachers, etc., deal out to white children, and the “terrible
lash” so dolefully gloated over by the ignorant and deluded usually
dwindles down into a petty switch in reality. But it is painful to the
negro, perhaps more so than hanging would be, for while the local
susceptibility of the skin makes him feel the slightest punishment in
this respect, the obtuse sensibility of the brain and nervous system
generally would enable him, as is often manifest, to bear hanging very
well. Those who can remember being flogged in childhood will also
remember the great pain that it gave them, though now in their adult age
they would laugh at such a thing. The negro is a child forever, a child
in many respects in his physical as well as his mental nature, and the
flogging of the negro of fifty does not differ much, if any, from the
flogging of a child of ten, and while the British soldier or Russian
would receive his three hundred lashes without wincing, the big burly
negro will yell more furiously than a school-boy when he receives a
dozen cuts with an ordinary switch.
CHAPTER XI.
THE BRAIN.
The brain is the seat or the centre of the intellect, in short, the
mental organism. The “school men” believed that mind, intellect, the
reasoning faculty, whatever we may term it, had no locality or organism,
but, on the contrary, was some impalpable, shadowy, unfixed principle
that existed as much in the feet or hands as in any other portion of the
body. And even Locke and Bacon, while they promulgated the great truths
of inductive philosophy, were not sufficiently grounded in its
elementary principles to understand clearly the foundation of their own
doctrines. Nor did Dugald Stuart, Dr. Brown, or even the great Kant, of
more modern times, understand any better the fixed truths on which rest
the vast and imperfect systems of philosophy which they labored so
assiduously to build up in their day. It remained for Gall, Spurzheim,
and their followers to do this—to demonstrate certain great elementary
truths which form a foundation, eternal as time itself—for the mental
phenomena to rest upon, and whatever advance may be made hereafter in
the study of these phenomena, its basis is immovable. Metaphysicians
were wont to shut themselves up in their libraries and to analyze their
own emotions, etc., which when noted down, became afterwards the
material for ponderous lectures or the still more ponderous volumes
inflicted on society. Rarely, perhaps, were these speculations connected
with the brain—indeed it is a rare thing to find a physiologist
indulging in metaphysical speculation, while the most famous among the
“philosophers” were profoundly ignorant of that organ, though they
fancied they knew all about its functions! The man that should undertake
to write a treatise on respiration, and at the same time was utterly
ignorant of the structure of the lungs, or to give a lecture on the
circulation, while he knew nothing of the blood vessels, would certainly
be laughed at, and yet innumerable volumes have been written, and
continue to be written, on the functions of the brain or on “moral and
mental philosophy,” by men who never saw a human brain in all their
lives! Gall and Spurzheim did, therefore, a great good to the world when
they began their investigations of the laws of the mind, by the study of
the brain itself as the first and absolutely essential step to be taken
in these investigations. It is true, they, and especially their
followers, sought to set up a fancy science under the name of
Phrenology, and the former thus, to a great extent, neutralized a
reputation which otherwise would have secured the respect of the
scientific world. And it is also true that others before them had
recognized the same truths with more or less distinctness, but it is
certain that Gall and Spurzheim demonstrated and placed beyond doubt the
great, vital, and essential truth that the brain is the organ of the
mind, and that the mental capacity, other things being equal, is in
exact proportion to the size of the brain relatively with the body. This
truth holds good throughout the animal world, and the intelligence of
any given animal or species of animal, is always in keeping with the
size of the brain when compared with the size of the body.
The brain is composed of anterior and posterior portions—of the cerebrum
and the cerebellum—the first the centre of intelligence, the latter of
sensation, or the first the seat of the intellect, and the latter of the
animal instincts, and the proportions they bear to each other determines
the character. As the anterior portion is enlarged and the posterior
diminished the creature ascends, or as the anterior portion is
diminished and the posterior portion enlarged it descends, in the scale
of being. These are the general laws governing men and animals. There is
intelligence in proportion to the size of the brain compared with that
of the body, and in the former there is intellectual capacity—latent or
real—in proportion to the enlarged cerebrum and diminished cerebellum.
It is true we see every day seeming contradictions to the laws in
question, but they are not so, not even exceptions, for they are not
general but universal. Every day we meet people with small heads and
great intelligence, with large heads and large stupidities, but a closer
examination may disclose the truth that the seemingly small head is all
brain, all cerebrum, all in front of the ears, while the large one is
all behind, and only reveals a largely developed animalism. And even
when this is not sufficient to explain the seeming anomaly, there is a
vast and inexhaustible field for conjecture—of accident—where misapplied
or undeveloped powers have been the sport of circumstances. A man may
have a large brain, great natural powers, in truth, genius of the most
glorious kind, and the world remain in total ignorance of the fact, and
among the countless millions of Europe doomed generation after
generation to a profound animalism, there doubtless have been many “mute
inglorious Miltons,” who have lived and died and made no sign of the
Divinity within. On the contrary, there have been men of much
distinction—of great usefulness to their fellows and to the generations
after them, who, naturally considered, were on the dead level of the
race, but by their industry, perseverance, and energy have left undying
names to posterity. Then, again, circumstances have made men great. An
epoch in the annals of a nation—great and stirring events in the life of
a people—stimulate and call into exercise qualities and capacities that
make men famous, who otherwise would not be heard of. Our own great
revolutionary period furnished examples of this, and still later, we
have Jackson, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and their senatorial
cotemporaries, who many doubtless think will never be equalled, though
their equals in fact are in the senate now, and only need similar
circumstances to manifest that equality.
The organism of the race—the species—whether human or animal, never
changes or varies from that eternal type fixed from the beginning by the
hand of God; and men, therefore, are now, in their natural capacities
what they always have been and always will be, whatever the external
circumstances that may control or modify the development of these
capacities. And the brain being the organ or organism of the mind, as
the eye is of the sight or the ear of the sense of hearing, it may be
measured and tested, and its capabilities determined, with as entire
accuracy as any other function or faculty. Not, it is true, as the
phrenologists or craniologists contend, that the brain reveals the
character of individuals of the same species, but the character of the
species itself, and its relative capabilities when contrasted with other
races or species of men. This is beyond doubt or question, or will be
beyond doubt or question with all those who understand it, and taking
the Caucasian as the standard or test, the capabilities of the Mongol,
the Malay, the Aboriginal American, or negro, may be determined with as
absolute certainty as the color of their skins or any other mere
physical quality. The brain of the Caucasian averages ninety-two cubic
inches, that of the negro seventy-five to eighty-five inches, while the
bodily proportions can scarcely be said to vary. There are great
variations among whites as to size—there are giants as well as dwarfs,
and quite as great variety in the form,—from the “lean and hungry
Cassius,” to the rounded proportions of a Falstaff or Daniel Lambert.
But on a Southern plantation of a thousand negroes, sex and age are the
only difference or the principal difference that one sees, and a
stranger would find some trouble to recognize any other, or at all
events to distinguish faces. The brain of the negro corresponds in this
respect with the body, and though there are doubtless cases where there
is some slight difference, there seems to be none of those wide
departures witnessed in these respects among whites.
The material, the fibre or texture of the brain itself is little
understood, and though it is quite likely that what we call genius is
attended by a corresponding delicacy or fineness of texture in the
nervous mass, and future exploration in this abstruse matter may reveal
to us important truths, at this time little is known in regard to the
brain except the great fundamental and universal law that, in proportion
to its size relatively with that of the body is there intellectual
power, actual or latent. Many, doubtless, fancy that there are immense
differences in men in this respect—that a Webster, or Clay, or Bonaparte
are vastly superior to common men—but they have only to remember that
the brain is the organ of the intellect, to see its fallacy. The notion
has sprung from the habitudes of European society, where a man clothed
in the pomp and parade of high rank is supposed to be vastly and
immeasurably superior to his fellows, while, in truth, most of these,
or, at all events many of these are absolutely (naturally) inferior to
the base multitudes that prostrate themselves in the dust at their feet.
Nevertheless, there are striking differences in these respects; not more
so, however, than in strength of body, beauty of features, difference of
hair, complexion, etc. But in the case of the negro there is an eternal
sameness, a perpetual oneness, the same color, the same hair, the same
features, same size of the body, and the same volume of brain. All the
physical and moral facts that make up the negro being irresistibly lead
to the conclusion that the Almighty Creator designed him for
juxtaposition with the superior white man, and therefore such a thing as
a negro genius—a poet, inventor, or one having any originality of any
kind whatever—is totally unnecessary, as they are totally unknown in the
experience of mankind. Some, with more or less white blood, have
exhibited more or less talent, possibly even have shown eccentric
indications of genius, but among a million of adult typical negroes,
there probably would not be a single brain that would vary from the
others sufficiently to be detected by the eye, and therefore not an
individual negro whose natural capacities were so much greater than
those of his fellows as to be recognized by the reason.
Such are briefly the leading and fundamental facts that constitute the
mental organism and distinguish the intellectual character of races,
that separate white men and negroes by an interval broader and deeper
than in any other forms of humanity, and render an attempted social
equality not merely a great folly but a gross impiety. As has been
stated, in exact proportion to the volume of brain, relatively with the
size of body in men and animals, there is intelligence, and as the
cerebrum or anterior portion predominates over the cerebellum or
posterior portion, there is a corresponding predominance of
intellectualism over animalism in the human races. The negro brain in
its totality is ten to fifteen per cent. less than that of the
Caucasian, while in its relations—the relatively large cerebellum and
small cerebrum—the inferiority of the mental organism is still more
decided; thus, while in mere volume, and therefore in the sum total of
mental power, the negro is vastly inferior to the white man, the
relative proportion of the brain and of the animal and intellectual
natures adds still more to the Caucasian superiority, while it opens up
before us abundant explanations of the diversified forms in which that
superiority is continually manifested. There are no terms or mere words
that enable us to express the absolute scientific superiority of the
white man. We can only measure it, or indeed comprehend it, by
comparison, but this will be sufficiently intelligible when it is said
that the past history and present condition of both races correspond
exactly with the size and form of the brain in each. The science, the
literature, the progress, enlightenment and intellectual grandeur of the
Caucasian from the beginning of authentic history to this moment, and
which have accompanied him from the banks of the Nile to those of the
Mississippi, are all fitting revelations of the Caucasian brain, while
the utter absence of all these things—the long night of darkness that
enshrouds the negro being, and which is only broken in upon when in
juxtaposition and permitted to imitate his master, is the result or
necessity of his mental organism.
There being nothing superior to the Caucasian, it may be said that he is
endowed with unlimited powers; that is, while the mental organism
remains the same, his powers of acquisition and the increase of his
knowledge have no limit. A generation in the exercise of its faculties
acquires a certain amount of knowledge; this is transmitted to the next;
it, in turn, adds its proportion, and so on, each generation in its turn
accepting the knowledge of its progenitors and transmitting with its own
acquisitions the sum total to its successors. This is called
civilization, and we can suppose no limit to it, except it be in the
destruction of the existing order and a new creation. On the contrary,
the negro brain is incapable of grasping ideas, or what we call abstract
truths, as absolutely so as the white child, indeed as necessarily
incapable of such a thing as for a person to see without eyes, or hear
without ears. In contact with, and permitted to imitate the white man,
the negro learns to read, to write, to make speeches, to preach, to edit
newspapers, etc., but all this is like that of the boy of ten or twelve
who debates _à la_ Webster or declaims from Demosthenes. People ignorant
of the negro mistake this borrowed for real knowledge, as one ignorant
of metals may have a brass watch imposed on him for a golden one. The
negro is therefore incapable of progress, a single generation being
capable of all that millions of generations are, and those populations
in Africa isolated from white men are exactly now as they were when the
Hebrews escaped from Egypt, and where they must be millions of years
hence, if left to themselves. Of course this is no mere opinion or
conjecture of the author. It is a necessity of the negro being—a
consequence of the negro structure—a fixed and eternally inseparable
result of the mental organism, which without a re-creation—another
brain—could no more be otherwise than water could run up hill, or a
reversal of the law of gravitation in any respect could be possible. But
people, ignorant of the elementary principles of science as well as of
the nature of the negro, fancy that this is quite possible; that,
however inferior the organism of the negro in these respects, it is the
result of many centuries of savagery and “slavery,” and therefore if he
were made “free,” given the same rights with the same chances for mental
cultivation, that the brain might gradually alter and become like that
of the white man! This involves gross impiety, if it were not the
offspring of ignorance and folly, for it supposes that chance and human
forces are more potent than the Almighty Creator, whose work is thus the
sport of circumstances. They would seek by stimulating the mind to add
ten per cent. to the negro brain—then to add to the cerebrum while they
diminished the cerebellum—certainly a work of much greater magnitude
than changing the color of the negro skin; but even the most ignorant or
the most impious among these people would scarcely undertake the latter
operation. If reason could at all enter into the matter, it would surely
be more reasonable to suppose that mind might be changed by acting on
matter, rather than the reverse, and therefore it would be better to
change the color of the skin, as the first, as it would also be the most
practicable, step to be taken in this grand undertaking of setting aside
the Creator and re-creating the negro. But, after all, their labors
would fail—after they had changed the color, after they had increased
the volume of the brain and duly modified its relations as well as
altered its texture—in short, when they had turned him into a white man,
then all would be in vain, for such a brain could no more be born of a
negress than an elephant could be!
CHAPTER XII.
GENERAL SUMMARY.
In the several preceding chapters, those outward characteristics that
specifically distinguish the negro have been briefly considered. It
has been shown that color, the hair, the figure, the brain, etc., are
simply facts out of many millions of facts that separate the races;
that each and all of them are original, invariable, and everlasting,
and the exception, or the absence of any of them, or of any of the
associated facts not enumerated, at any time, in the case of a single
individual or any generation, or under any possible circumstances of
time, climate, or external agencies whatever, is, or would be,
necessarily impossible. Nature is always true to herself, and even in
those abnormal specimens sometimes presented to our observation—those
so-called monstrosities—there is, properly speaking, no departure from
her original designs, or from those fixed and eternal laws that govern
organic life. We sometimes see Albinos, but except a certain tinge to
the color, itself totally unlike any color in other races, the
absolute negro, that is the millions of facts that constitute the
negro being, are untouched. We witness all kinds of abnormal
development in our own race, in animals, in the vegetable world, in
all the innumerable beings and things that surround us. For
example—let any one spend an autumn day in the forest, and turn his
attention to the strange and often ludicrous sights that surround him.
It often seems as if nature delighted herself in creating odd and
uncouth shapes, as if intended for relaxation and relief from her
graver and grander labors. But even here there is no violation of the
higher law—the order of nature though very often interrupted by
accident, is never contradicted—the abnormal development, the most
uncouth and monstrous consequences are still pervaded by the eternal
decree stamped upon the whole universe, that forbids forever any
change in the minutest atom of this mighty mass of life. The Albino,
the deformed or monstrous Negro, the seemingly wide departure from the
normal standard, still obeys the higher law. All the peculiarities
that distinguish him from his race are _sui generis_, without any
approximation or resemblance to the white man. So, too, with the
latter, and so, too, with all monstrosities in the lower animals. The
things that constitute the monstrosity, that separate the creature, or
seem to do so, from his own kind, separate him also from other
species, whether of men or animals. The eternal gulf, the impassable
barrier, the decreed limits fixed by the Creator himself, are never
passed. A negro, with the color, or the hair, or the language, or the
brain, or the sense of touch, or taste, or sight of the Caucasian,
would not be a monstrosity but an impossibility. He might differ very
widely from his own race in any one of these things, as we actually
witness in the case of Albinos, in fact might retain scarcely any
outward resemblance to his kind, and yet exist; but none has ever had,
or ever will have, an existence that has any thing in common with the
white man, for that would contradict the universal order of God
himself.
Such being the fact, all that is external or tangible to the sense being
thus widely, immeasurably, and indestructibly different from the
Caucasian or white man, it is obvious that, in all beyond the outer
surface, the same relative differences must exist. It was originally
intended to demonstrate this in detail—to show the actual anatomical
facts and structural differences in the organs, the tissues, the
systems, down to the minutest atom of the bodily structure. It was
designed to present the reader with numerous plates, showing all
this—the minutest particle, the single globule of blood, even, painted
after the employment of the microscope, being sufficiently palpable to
the sense, to show that the primordial atoms of the negro structure are
as specifically, and relatively as widely, different from the white
man’s as the color, the hair, or any of those outward qualities that
confront us daily in the streets. But this would have added so much to
the expense of the work, as to often place it out of the reach of the
day laborer and working man, those who alone, or mainly, need to
understand the great “anti-slavery” imposture of our times, and the
world-wide conspiracy against their freedom, manhood and happiness,
which has so long held them in abject submission to its clamorous
pretences of philanthropy and humanity. Nor is it at all essential. A
moment’s reflection or consideration is quite sufficient to convince any
rational mind that the outward differences must have their counterpart
in the entire structure. Of course any thing exceptional—a blemish, a
congenital deformity on the surface—has no corresponding relation with
the interior, but that which is specific, uniform, and invariable, as
the color, the hair, the features, etc., must of necessity pervade the
_tout ensemble_ of being, whether human, animal, or vegetable. The
apple, pear, peach, etc., have their own specific features externally,
and their corresponding qualities internally. The shad differs from the
salmon in its absolute structure equally with its outward appearance.
The whole anatomical arrangement of the horse differs as widely from
that of the ass as the outward features vary. And the entire bodily
structure of the negro, down to the minutest atom of elementary matter,
differs just as widely, of course, as the color of the skin or other
external qualities, from those of the white man. It is equally palpable
to the reason that the nature of the negro, his instincts, all the
faculties of his mind, and all the functions of his body, are pervaded
by the same or by relative differences from those of the Caucasian. To
suppose otherwise is not to suppose a monstrosity, for, as has been
remarked, monstrosities, however wide the departure from the normal
standard, are _sui generis_, without any approximation to different
beings—but such things are simply impossible. As it is plainly
impossible that any being could exist half like or half unlike any other
creature, so, too, it is obvious that beings with different structures
could not possess the same qualities or manifest the same nature. Can
any one imagine an apple with the qualities of the pear or peach, or
even of another apple that differed from it in its material structure?
Can it be supposed that a lion could ever have the nature of the tiger,
or panther, or cat, or of any of the felinæ? Can it be believed that a
bull-dog ever manifested the nature of a hound, or that the mastiff or
spaniel could be made to exhibit the specific qualities of either? No,
indeed. Nature makes no mistakes, nor does the Almighty Master of life
permit His creatures to violate or transcend His eternal decrees.
It being, therefore, an invariable, indestructible, and eternal law,
that the outward qualities are exactly harmonized with the interior
structure down to the minutest atom of elementary particles and equally
invariable and everlasting that the organism is in harmonious
correspondence with the functions, the instincts, in a word, the nature,
we are able to understand, with absolute certainty, the _specific_
qualities, and to approach with tolerable certainty the relative
differences and actual interval that separate the white and black races.
The figures of the plate in the opening of this work indicate these
vital and all-important truths.
The first figure exhibits the typical Caucasian, not the cultivated man
of our time, but the “barbarian,” the Oriental—the cotemporary with
David, Solomon, Cyrus, and others of remote antiquity. The second figure
is the Negro of the same period, as found on the monuments, and, at the
present time, in all those portions of Africa where the negro is
isolated, and there are no _débris_ of other races existing among them.
By himself he never changes in his outward manifestations. One
generation is as a million of generations, and therefore the thousands
now annually imported into Cuba are seen to be just as this figure
represents him four thousand years ago.
Nor is the figure of the Caucasian changed, for though the American of
to-day is at an immeasurable distance in knowledge, the actual physical
and intellectual man remains the same as this figure represents him four
thousand years ago. Both figures have the same color, and yet the
_specific_ differences are none the less palpable—the Caucasian and
Negro type being equally distinct and widely different.
The third figure is an American—a white man of to-day—whose intellectual
development, refinement of mind and manners, costume and habitudes are
widely different; nevertheless, the physical qualities and specific
capabilities are the same as those of his Oriental ancestors of by-gone
generations.
The fourth figure is an American Negro, but a typical Negro without
taint or admixture with other races. His features, moulded and softened
by juxtaposition with the Caucasian, present a great improvement,
certainly, over the isolated or African type, but the organism, the
actual physical and mental nature remains the same.
The white man is least and the negro most affected by external agents,
such as climate, time, systems of government, etc. The fourth figure in
contrast with the isolated negro of Africa, exhibits a certain degree of
improvement, progress, or advance that illustrates the actual
capabilities of the race when placed under circumstances favorable to
its development. The size of the brain, the actual organism and absolute
nature, of course, remains unaltered, just as all these things remain
unchanged and unchangeable in the uneducated white laborer of our own
times; but the negro, in juxtaposition with the superior race, becomes
educated, and all his latent capabilities fully developed. Thus, while
the color, the hair, the entire organism is just what it was thousands
of years ago, and what it must be forever, or as long as the present
order of creation continues, there is a certain modification in the
features and still greater changes in the expression. The uncouth and
uneducated European laborer contrasted with the educated classes, or
with the generality of Americans, exhibits a wide difference, not so
much in the features as in the expression; and though the negro in
Africa is in a far more natural position, relatively considered, than
the European laborer, the negro in our midst exhibits, perhaps, even a
greater difference over his isolated brother. And if we suppose, for a
moment, that the masses of English laborers were educated, fed on the
same fare, and subject to the same circumstances as the English nobles,
then we may form a reasonable estimate of the relative advance of the
American over the African negro. The former would differ in no respect
whatever from the privileged and educated class, and if all the negroes
of Africa were brought here or were placed in juxtaposition and natural
relation with the superior race, they would exhibit the same
characteristics common to our so-called slaves, and the fourth figure in
this plate would doubtless present a typical illustration of them. A
good many people, ignorant of the laws of organism, suppose that our
negro population have made a great advance over the wild and barbarous
tribes of Africa, and, as shown by the second and fourth figures in the
plate, this is so, but it is only in the outward expression, while the
essential nature is ever the same. The negro infant, for example,
brought from Africa and placed under existing circumstances in
Mississippi, would be represented by the fourth figure, while the infant
born here and carried to Africa to grow up with the wild tribes of the
interior, would, on the contrary, be illustrated by the second figure of
the plate.
There are a multitude of moral considerations involved, of course, and
that cannot be measured or tested by material illustrations, but we may
form a reasonable estimate of the superiority of condition and of the
greater happiness of the negro over his African brethren, by a simple
comparison of these figures. As has been observed, it corresponds with
the difference between the educated and non-educated white man, but it
is greater, for the negro is more affected by external circumstances,
and therefore while the actual size and relations of the negro brain and
the specific nature of the negro are unalterable, the outward form of
his head as well as the expression of his face is strikingly improved
over that of the typical African.
In general terms, it may be said, that the “American slave” is educated
and the isolated African negro is not; that the former is civilized and
the latter a barbarian; that, though in a sense in a natural position
(for he multiplies in Africa), he is in his normal condition only when
in juxtaposition and natural relation to the superior white man. It is
sometimes supposed that the negro is incapable of progress, and so, of
course, he is when isolated from the superior race, but when placed in
his normal condition, and his imitative capacities called into action,
he is capable of progress to a certain extent. God, while endowing him
with widely different and vastly inferior faculties, has gifted him with
imitative capacities so admirable, that those who are ignorant of his
real nature mistake them for those of the white man. Like children, like
the inferior animals, and like all other inferior races, he naturally
imitates the superior being; but beyond this general tendency common to
all subordinate creatures, there is a peculiar capacity in the negro in
this respect, which, more than anything else, warrants us in terming it
the _specific_ feature of the race. Placed in his normal condition, he
becomes intelligent, civilized, pious, industrious, and if his master is
a man of refined mind and dainty habits, the negro becomes so, even more
than children who imitate the habitudes of their parents. Thus, it will
be seen on Southern plantations generally, that they correspond with
their masters, and if the habits and practices of the former are moral
and Christian-like, the negroes approximate to the same standard. On the
contrary, if they are under the guidance of coarse and brutal masters,
or are left with nothing to imitate but the habits of a gross and
tyrannical overseer, then they become idle, vicious, and thieving; and
take every chance that offers to run away from their homes.
In speaking of negro education, of course no such meaning as that
applied to white people is intended. Reading, writing, arithmetic, etc.,
have no relation or connection with the development of the negro powers.
He simply needs to be in a position where the imitative capacity with
which God has so beneficently endowed him is most completely called into
action, and, as has been observed, he then becomes an industrious,
moral, and well-behaved creature, or he is idle, sensual, vicious and
worthless, just as the master or overseer pleases to make him. There are
doubtless exceptional instances, but with all the wide-spread and
boundless effort of the ignorant and deluded people in England and
America to seduce them from their homes, there are probably but few
negroes—real negroes—who ever abandoned their masters, unless their
education had been neglected. The instinct of the negro is obedience to
his master, and the strongest affection of his nature—far above that for
his wife or offspring—is for the master who feeds, guides, and cares for
him, indeed is his Providence; and his utter horror of migration, unless
it be with his master, these qualities, so dominant in the negro, would
be or might be made a barrier of protection against outside seductions,
were they properly understood and appreciated by those having them in
charge. This negro education, civilization, progress in fact, which the
negro is capable of when in his normal condition, and his imitative
capacities are permitted a healthy development, of course is rapidly
lost when isolated from the white man. If the four millions now in our
midst were suddenly left to themselves, but a few years—probably within
fifty—everything that now distinguishes them—that is, all that they have
imitated from the superior race—would become extinct.
Leaving out of the consideration mulattoes and mongrels, and taking into
view simply the negro—the four millions of negroes of untainted blood
which now exist in our midst—it is reasonable to say that, fifty years
hence, there would not be one that would speak his present language,
that would be a Christian, that would retain his name, or any other
thing whatever which he now possesses and has imitated from his masters.
This may seem a startling declaration to many who live in daily contact
with these people, while by those ignorant and deplorably deluded
parties who fancy that they are engaged in a work of humanity when
seeking to undo the work of the Almighty Creator, by turning black into
white and the negro into a Caucasian, it will scarcely be understood;
but it involves a truth that may be easily and plainly illustrated. A
very large portion of our negroes are the children and grandchildren of
those brought from Africa, and not a few, perhaps, were themselves
brought in by the “slave trade,” which it will be remembered was
continued down to 1808.
Now of all these there probably is not one that can speak the language
of his progenitors, not one that retains his African religion or the
slightest relic of African history or tradition, not one with even an
African name, and if they have thus rapidly lost all that they possessed
of their own, that was original and specific, of course, if isolated
from their masters, they would still more rapidly lose that which they
have imitated from a superior race.
Such, then, is the negro—the lowest in the scale as the Caucasian is the
most elevated in the human creation—a creature not degraded—for none of
God’s creatures are degraded—but that is widely different and vastly
subordinate to the elaborately organized and highly endowed white man.
The _specific_ qualities are not matters of opinion but of fact, that
appeal to our senses at every step, but the specific differences and
actual intervals that separate races, though often susceptible of
successful illustrations, must to a great extent be determined by
experience. The author has attempted to define these differences in some
essential respects, and believes he has succeeded with sufficient
exactitude to warrant correct conclusions in respect to the almost
innumerable things that could not be discussed nor even alluded to in a
work of this kind. We have this race among us—they or their descendants
must remain an element of our population forever. It is doubtless the
design of the Almighty that the Caucasian and negro, under certain
circumstances which will be considered elsewhere, should exist in
juxtaposition, and therefore a specific knowledge of this race, and its
true relations to our own, is the most vital and indeed transcendent
question or consideration that was ever presented to a civilized and
Christian people. Nor can this be delayed or pushed aside, for even now
the nation is rapidly drifting into serious difficulties and possibly
terrible calamities, in consequence of that wide-spread ignorance and
misconception prevalent in regard to the negro’s nature and his true
relations to the white man. The blind and stupid warfare waged so long
upon the domestic institutions of the South, has doubtless thus far
injured the negro most, and it may be demonstrated with ease that the
worst and most brutal master ever known could not inflict so much misery
on the negro as the so-called friend of freedom, who, in utter ignorance
of the negro nature, would force him to live out the life of a widely
different being. But the time has come when this ignorance and delusion
threatens to involve the whole framework of American society, and
nothing but the simple truth—the recognition of the actual and
unchangeable facts fixed eternally by the hand of God, can save the
nation from dire calamities.
PART II.