THE “SLAVE TRADE,” OR THE IMPORTATION OF NEGROES.
In the preceding chapters of this work it has been shown that the human
family, like all other forms of being, is composed of a certain number
of species, all having a general resemblance, but each specifically
different from the other—that the Caucasian and Negro are placed by the
will of the Almighty Creator at the two extremes of humanity—the former
being the most superior and the latter the most inferior of all the
known human races; that the physical structure or organization is always
and necessarily connected with corresponding faculties or functions, and
therefore the more prominent physical qualities of the negro have been
presented, in order to illustrate his mental and moral nature. It has
also been shown that the all-powerful instinct (prejudice) which revolts
at the commingling of the blood of different races (stronger even with
the negro than our own race) springs from a fundamental organic
necessity, impelling us to preserve our structural integrity, and if
disregarded and violated, it carries with it a corresponding penalty,
and the miserable progeny, like all other abnormal conditions, is
limited to a determinate existence; that that which the Eternal hand has
moulded and fashioned is also eternal, and beyond the power, caprice,
ignorance, or wickedness of His creatures, to change or modify; and
therefore all the departures from the typical standard—all forms and
degrees of the mongrel or mixed blood—are doomed to final extinction.
Here we have, then, four millions of a widely different race in our
midst, and though we of the present generation may not be responsible
for their presence among us, and are only called upon to deal with the
fact itself, without regard to its origin, the subject is of profound
interest, and however current or unanimous the opinion may now be
against the original “slave trade,” it is believed that a larger
knowledge and a more extended acquaintance with the facts embraced in
that subject will finally result in a total change of popular (American)
opinion. And what American will not rejoice at such a result, if, when
all the facts are known and tested by reason and conscience and the
dictates of a true humanity, it is found that, however censurable the
means employed may sometimes have been, the “slave trade,” the original
importation of African negroes by our ancestors, was right? The negro,
as has been shown, from the necessities of his organism—the size and
form of his brain—is, perforce, when isolated and by himself, a
savage—an idle, non-advancing, and non-producing savage, and history,
ancient and modern, in a word, all human experience, confirms this
physiological and material _fact_. African travelers, finding
occasionally the _débris_ of Caucasian populations and the remains of
Mahometan civilization, have told fanciful tales about negro industry,
thrift, and morality, while dreamers at home have indulged in even more
absurd fancies still in regard to the future of Africa. But why go to
Africa to theorize about the negro, when we have him here, and subject
to our senses as well as our reason? Why speculate on impossible
assumptions, when the negro brain may be seen any day at a medical
college, and its incapacity—its organic and inherent incapacity—to be
any thing else, or to ever manifest any thing else, but just that which
all human experience confirms and assures us must be, as it always has
been, the destiny of this race, when left to itself? To talk of the
civilization of the negro of Africa is like talking of the change of
color of the negro, for it involves the same absurdities, the same
impossibilities; and were not those who indulge in it utterly ignorant
of the subject, one might say the same impieties, for the assumption
that they can change the intellectual nature which God has given the
negro, is as grossly impious as if they were to undertake his physical
re-creation.
The negro, therefore, isolated in Africa, as has been said, must be in
the future what he has been in the past, and without a supernatural
interposition, must remain forever a simple, non-producing, and
non-advancing savage. Can this have been the design of the Almighty?
There are some things we are not permitted to know, that it is impious
as well as foolish to seek to know, that the Almighty, in His infinite
beneficence as well as wisdom forbids us to inquire into, or rather to
attempt to inquire into; but in all that is necessary to our happiness
and for the well-being of the innumerable creatures that surround us, we
may know, indirectly, it is true, but none the less certainly, the
design of the Almighty Creator.
All things are obviously designed for use—all the innumerable hosts of
living creatures for specific purposes; the natures of many are known to
us now; every day is adding to our knowledge, and a time will assuredly
come when the nature and purposes of the most ferocious of wild animals
and the most venomous of serpents will be clearly understood and applied
to their proper uses. It is, therefore, the obvious design of the
Creator that the negro should be useful, should labor, should be a
producer, and as his organism forbids this, if left to himself, it is
evidently intended that he should be in juxtaposition with the superior
Caucasian. It is equally obvious that the tropical latitudes endowed
with such exuberant fertility were designed for cultivation, for use,
for the growth and production of those indigenous products found nowhere
else except within the tropics and tropicoid regions of the earth. The
organization of the Caucasian utterly forbids physical labor under a
tropical sun. He may live there, enjoy life, longevity, the full and
healthy spring of all his faculties, without lassitude or any of that
weight upon his energies which ill-informed persons have supposed
followed a residence in these climes, but he can not cultivate the earth
or grow the products of the soil by his own labor. The negro organism,
on the contrary, is adapted to this production, and the rays of a
vertical sun stimulate and quicken his energies, instead of prostrating
them, as in the case of the former. In another place this subject will
be fully discussed, and therefore it will be sufficient in this place to
simply state the fact, that the labor of the negro can alone grow the
indigenous products of the tropics, and without this labor the great
tropical centre of the American continent must consequently remain a
barren waste.
The introduction of negroes into the Spanish islands of the West Indies
can, therefore, hardly be called an accident. Negro servants were
introduced into Spain by the Arabian and Moorish conquerors. From time
immemorial negro “slaves” were the favorite household servants of the
oriental Caucasians—not alone because they were the most docile and
submissive of human beings, but because they were the most faithful and
absolutely incapable of betraying their masters, and scarcely a Moorish
family of consideration entered Spain without being accompanied by some
of these trusty and favorite servants. The recent Portuguese discoveries
and conquests on the African coasts had also brought many negroes into
the Peninsula, and when Columbus and the Spaniards began their
settlements in the New World, there were negroes to be found in almost
every town in Spain. The conquest of the miserable natives of Hispaniola
and Cuba, and their partition among the Spanish adventurers, failed to
gratify their fierce desire for wealth, and from the brutality of their
masters, the still lurking desire of these poor creatures for their
former condition, or, it may have been, as declared by the Spanish
writers, their original feebleness of constitution, they rapidly faded
away in the mines and on the plantations, and more vigorous laborers
became an absolute necessity, if cultivation, progress, and civilization
were to be carried on in these islands. It was thus a material and
industrial necessity, rather than any fancied humanity on the part of
Las Casas and his friends in behalf of the Indians, that carried negroes
into the Spanish islands. Some accompanied the earliest adventurers;
they were seen to be safe, and to remain perfectly healthy when
Spaniards themselves were constantly smitten down by the fierce suns and
deadly malaria of the tropics, while instead of the drooping and
listless air that distinguished the natives, these negroes were the most
joyous and contented of human beings.
The interests of civilization and of a true humanity were, therefore,
united with the humane desires of Las Casas and his friends in respect
to the natives, and negroes soon became the sole reliance of the
planters and others to whom lands had been assigned by the Spanish
princes. Modern writers—Helps, Prescott, and others—laboring under the
world-wide misconceptions of our times in regard to negroes, have
expressed astonishment at the (to them) strange inconsistency of Las
Casas, who, laboring so earnestly in behalf of the Indians, quite
unconsciously aided in substituting the negro, and thus, as they
suppose, laid the foundation or led the way to the enslavement of one
race, while working for the freedom of another. But neither Las Casas,
nor any one else, had any notion of freedom or slavery in connection
with these negroes. Such a thing as a free negro was doubtless unknown
in Spain or anywhere else, or, if known, it was simply because he had
lost or strayed from his master. History does not, it is true, cast much
light on the subject, but it is certain that neither Las Casas nor any
of his cotemporaries had any conception of negro freedom, or associated
with that race any other condition or social status than that which
modern writers have universally designated as negro slavery.
Nor was he laboring for the freedom of the Indians, as that term is now
understood. Many, perhaps most of those who defended the natives from
the oppressions of the Spaniards, were prompted solely by religious
zeal. These poor “heathens,” they held, were entitled, not to freedom,
to political or social rights of any kind, but to the rights of
religion, to participate in the Holy Sacraments, to enjoy the privileges
which the Church promised to all who would accept them, and as the
ferocity of the Spaniards constantly interfered with this, hunted them
down and slaughtered them without mercy, or rapidly destroyed them by
hard labor and the excessive burthens heaped upon them when they no
longer resisted their invaders, the priests generally, and many others,
sought to defend them.
Las Casas, who seems to have been a generous and noble-hearted man,
devoted himself for many years, indeed a whole life-time, to the cause
of the natives, but at no time or in any way was he laboring for their
freedom or to secure to them social or political rights of any kind.
Other priests labored to secure their spiritual welfare, or what they
believed to be this, while Las Casas, though a profoundly religious man,
sought their material preservation, and to save them from that direful
fate of total extinction which even then was threatened, and which
finally has been so complete, that at this moment there is not one
single descendant of these people left to tell the tale of their
destruction. The popular notion, therefore, that Las Casas was the
author or originator of the “slave trade,” and of American (negro)
“slavery,” in order to “free” the native race, is altogether groundless.
It originated, as has been stated, in an industrial necessity—and while
he assented to it, with the humane belief, doubtless, that it would tend
to benefit the native race in relieving it from the excessive and fatal
burthens imposed by the Spaniards, his assent or dissent could have no
influence whatever on the subject. And as he was not laboring for the
freedom of the natives—for nothing whatever but their mere material
preservation—of course he could have no doubts or anxieties in regard to
negroes in that respect, and when he saw them resisting alike the deadly
malaria of the climate and the brutality of their masters, and contented
and happy, he doubtless felt that it was a wise and beneficent
arrangement of Providence that had thus adapted them to their condition
and to the fulfilment of the great purposes of civilization and human
progress.
The supply of negro labor in San Domingo, Cuba, and other islands, was
followed, however, by extensive importations for the main land, and
finally the trade, falling into the hands of the Dutch and English,
became a world-wide commerce, and negroes were taken into every nook and
corner of the New World where there were found buyers, or where the
traders could dispose of their human cargoes. And here begins the wrong
side of the matter—the cruelties, injustice, outrages, and inhumanities
which, together with the false theories, morbid philanthropy, and a
certain amount of falsehood, have made the term “slave trade” synonymous
with everything that is diabolical and devilish that the imagination can
conceive of. The Spanish government of the day limited the introduction
of negroes, and provided for an equal number of females, and encouraged
the importation of children; indeed, while there is no reason to suppose
that they ever contemplated the negro as abstractly entitled to the
rights claimed for them in our times, it is certain that both the
governments of Charles V. and Philip II. did regard them as human, and
made every provision that was proper for their kind and humane
treatment, both in regard to their passage from Africa and their
treatment on the plantations. But when the physical adaptation of the
negro had become so clearly demonstrated in the Spanish islands, the
British and Dutch merchants began to import them in such multitudes, and
the prices fell so low, that it would not pay to import women and
children, and then began that nameless and unspeakable outrage, not
merely on human but on animal nature, which has distinguished this trade
ever since, and, to the disgrace of all Christendom, which at this
moment distinguishes it in the neighboring island of Cuba—the separation
of the sexes and the violation of the rights of reproduction. Instead of
a simple supply of negro labor essential to tropical production, and
which violated no instinct, want, or necessity of the negro nature,
ships were now fitted out on speculation; cargoes of men, as mere
work-animals, were obtained in Africa and carried to any port where
there was a chance of a market, not in the tropics alone, but all over
North America; and the British Provinces of New England, as well as Cuba
and Porto Rico, became the marts for traffic in human beings. This
accounts for the great mortality of these people in the islands. In
general terms, it may be said the negro will work no more than he ought
to work; that is, nature has so adapted him that he can not be forced in
this respect; but when they could be purchased so cheaply, the master
had little interest in their health, and together with the very small
native increase going on, the mortality vastly preponderated. The New
England as well as the Middle States were fully supplied with these
cheap negroes, but they never were profitable, and the laws of
industrial adaptation has steadily carried their descendants southward.
The “slave trade,” after the first fifty years of its commencement, up
to the American Revolution, may be said to have been in the hands of
the British mainly, of the merchants of Bristol and Liverpool. These
traders, as has been said, made it a mere matter of commerce, dealing
in it just as they did in any other article of commerce, and many of
the largest fortunes in England are believed to have had their
foundations laid in this traffic. So far as the colonists participated
in it, they approached somewhat to the earliest Spaniards, and though
there were more males imported than there were females, the horrible
practice of the islands, which forbade these people to fulfill the
command of the Almighty, and multiply their kind, did not prevail to
any considerable extent. Nature always recovers from the outrages
committed on her laws, and though no legislation or human means has
sought to remedy the disproportions of the sexes, they are now
probably equal, though of the imported progenitors of our negroes
probably two-thirds at least were males, and though even a larger
proportion than this were imported into Northern ports, there are now
scarcely a quarter of a million in the Northern States, while the
descendants of those imported into the North have expanded into four
millions at the South! What a lesson these facts present to the blind
and infatuated “friends of freedom” in Kansas, and the equally blind
believers in the ordinance of 1787. The negro, by a higher law than
human enactments, goes where he is needed, and _permanently_ no where
else. A broad and liberal survey of the whole ground—the nature of the
negro, his utter uselessness when isolated or separated from the white
man—his organic adaptation to tropical production—the wonderful
fertility of tropical soils—the vast importance of their peculiar
products to civilization and human well-being—demonstrates, beyond
doubt the right and justice of the original “slave trade,” or the
original importation of African negroes into America. The abuses that
finally attended it have been made to overshadow the thing itself, in
the popular estimation, but despite all these, and all other
drawbacks, it is certain that the introduction of these negroes has
resulted in a vastly preponderating good to our race, while the four
millions of Christianized and enlightened negroes in our midst, when
compared with any similar number of their race in Africa, are in a
condition so immeasurably happy and desirable, that we can find no
terms that will sufficiently express it.
The frightful tales invented of their cruel treatment on the passage
from Africa may be dismissed with the single remark that it was the
highest interest of the traders to take the utmost care of them, and if
that be not sufficient, with the simple but pregnant fact that the
average mortality, when the trade was legal, was only eleven per cent.,
while the illegal trade, the efforts to put it down, the false
philanthropy, and mistaken interference, have raised the mortality to
something like forty per cent.!
There were but two mistakes, wrongs, inhumanities, outrages on nature,
whatever we may term them, involved in the “slave trade,” so far as we
were concerned: 1st, the importation mainly of males, and the consequent
violation of the laws of reproduction—of that fundamental and universal
command of the Almighty to multiply their kind and to replenish the
earth; and, 2d, their importation into northern latitudes, unsuited to
the physical and industrial nature of the negro. But, as has been said,
nature, sooner or later, recovers from every outrage upon her laws, and
while we, in our ignorance and folly, have been disputing over our petty
theories in respect to this subject, her reparatory processes have
silently and steadily gone on and corrected our mistakes, and,
therefore, both of the real _wrongs_ connected with the “slave trade”
are now substantially _righted_.
It is, however, discreditable to our intelligence that the statute-book
of the nation is disfigured by our laws and legislation on this subject.
England has waged a war upon the distinctions of nature and the natural
relations of races, ever since we threw off her dominion, and set up a
new system of government founded on the fixed and unchangeable laws of
nature. The preservation of her own system—the rule of classes and of
artificial distinctions among men of the same race—impels her by a blind
instinct quite as much, perhaps, as reason, to pursue this policy, and
therefore, under the pretense of putting down the “slave trade,” she has
constantly labored to obliterate the distinctions of race, and force or
corrupt the white men of America into affiliation and equality with
negroes. The war upon the “slave trade” was simply the means for
accomplishing her ends—the equalization of races in the New World, and
in Canada, the West Indies, in all her American possessions, she has
succeeded. Negroes, whites, Indians, and mongrels are all alike her
_subjects_, and the distinctions of society, as in Europe, are wholly
artificial, while those of race, of nature, that are fixed by the hand
of the Eternal, are impiously disregarded. And we have been her tools,
her miserable dupes, and ourselves labored for our own degradation, to
accomplish her objects and obliterate the distinctions of races. The
question of importing more negroes—to keep open or to prohibit the
“slave trade”—was and is a question of expediency, that our government
should decide for itself, without regard to the opinions or policy of
any other people. But to blindly follow England in her nefarious and
impious efforts to break down the distinctions of race, to pronounce the
conduct of our own ancestors infamous and worthy of death because
English opinion and monarchical influences and exigencies demand it, is
a disgrace to the manhood of our people and the intelligence of our
statesmen that should not be permitted to disgrace our government any
longer; and it is to be hoped that the time is not distant when this
disgraceful legislation will be swept from our statute book.