THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.
There are something like twelve millions of negroes in America, on the
mainland and the adjacent islands—as large a proportion, perhaps, in
view of their industrial adaptation, as there are of the Caucasian or
dominant race; and, therefore, whatever may be the contingencies or the
wants of the future, there would seem to be no necessity now for any
further importation of these people. Of the twelve millions, there are
between four and five millions in their normal condition at the South.
There are, perhaps, half a million of so-called free negroes, about
equally divided between North and South. There are about four millions
in Brazil, Cuba, and Porto Rico of so-called slaves, but really in a
widely different condition from that common to the South. Finally, there
are between three and four millions of so-called free negroes in the
tropics, in Jamaica, Hayti, and the other islands, with some thousands,
however, scattered about the coast towns, and in the _terra caliente_ of
the mainland. The free negro, in the American Union, as has been stated,
is destined to extinction. It is only a question of time, when this doom
will be accomplished. The census returns, and the universal experience,
recognize this deplorable truth; but beyond them, and independent of any
demonstration whatever, their extinction is a necessity—is as legitimate
and unavoidable as any other _effect_ or effects linked by inevitable
necessity with their predetermining cause or causes. They are not merely
turned loose—abandoned to their fate without masters or protectors to
look after them, but they are assumed to be Caucasians, _black_-white
men, creatures like ourselves, with the same capacities, and the same
wants, and though no one assumes to do so individually, _society_ forces
them to live up to the theory in question, and, as this is impossible,
as no human force or forces can set aside the ordinances of the Eternal,
it destroys them. If, for example, laws were passed to change the color,
the hair, the form of the limbs, or any _physical_ quality of the negro,
and the whole power of the State was brought to bear upon him to compel
him to be like the white man in these respects, it is obvious that
nothing could be accomplished save the destruction of the unhappy
creature. The capacities, the wants, the moral and intellectual nature
of the negro, differ from our own to the precise extent that his
physical nature or bodily structure differs from ours, and, therefore,
Northern society, or rather that monstrous and malignant philanthropy
which in its ignorance and blind impiety deems itself kind and
beneficent, necessarily destroys the object of its solicitude when it
strives to give him the rights of the white man, or to force him to
change his moral and intellectual nature into that of the white man.
If all the children of the age of ten, in a given community, were turned
from their homes into the street and left without their natural
protectors to care and provide for their wants, they would perish in
time, of course, if we could suppose them to remain at this age or
condition. But if, in addition to this abandonment of these helpless
ones, a theory were set up that they _had_ all the capabilities of the
adult, and should, therefore, enjoy the rights and perform the duties of
men and women, they would, of necessity, perish still more rapidly. If a
dog, or horse, or other domestic animal were turned loose or lost its
owner, it would sooner or later perish, but if some deluded
“philanthropist” should set up the assumption that his bull-dog, for
instance, was entitled to the rights and should enjoy the life of the
hound, and therefore attempt to force it to exhibit the same qualities,
the scent, sight, or swiftness that God has given the latter, he would,
of course, destroy the poor thing with far greater rapidity than if he
had simply turned it loose to shift for itself. Similar results do
attend and must attend that malignant philanthropy and blind impiety
which would impose the rights or force the duties of the white man on
the differently organized and differently endowed negro. In Virginia and
Maryland he is simply turned loose without any guide or protector or
white man’s rights whatever, not even the right of free locomotion
common to British subjects, and, therefore, lives longer, for there is
no especial violence attempted—no direct effort made to force him to
live out the life or to manifest the nature of widely different beings.
But in Canada and Massachusetts, where white manhood is held so cheaply
that the negro is supposed to be entitled to the same rights, and direct
efforts are made to compel him to fulfill the same duties, where the
little Prince of Wales in his recent visit declared that _he_ would not
recognize those distinctions of race that originate in the mind of the
Eternal and are fashioned by the hand of Omnipotence, which no amount or
extent of human force, folly, impiety, or crime can obliterate even to
the millionth part of a primordial atom, and which millions of years
after those paltry distinctions of human invention which transform this
common-place lad into an imaginary superiority over his fellows shall
have disappeared, then he rapidly and miserably perishes.
The tendency to extinction, therefore, is always accelerated or
diminished in exact proportion as “impartial freedom” is thrust upon
him—as he is permitted “to enjoy equal rights” with the white man, or as
ignorance and folly, in their blind and cruel kindness and exterminating
goodness, strive to force him to manifest the nature and live the life
of a different being. This assertion, doubtless, startles the reader, as
it once certainly would have startled the writer himself. We are all so
accustomed to mental habits directly in conflict with this assertion,
that it is somewhat difficult to lift our minds out of them and to take
true cognizance of the facts, and inductive facts, that daily confront
us.
The negro _is_ a different being from the white man, and therefore, of
necessity, was designed by the Almighty Creator to live a different
life, and to disregard this—to shut our eyes and blindly beat our brains
against the decree—the eternal purpose of God himself, and force this
negro to live _our life_, necessarily destroys him, for surely human
forces can not dominate or set aside those of Omnipotence. Nor is the
negro the sole sufferer from this blind impiety, this audacious attempt
to disregard the distinctions and to depart from the purposes of the
Almighty Creator. The large “free” negro populations of Maryland and
Virginia are the great drawbacks on their prosperity, and if the hundred
thousand or so of these people were supplanted by the same number of
white laborers, or, indeed, the same number of “slave” negroes, a wide
and beneficent change would rapidly follow. Furthermore, they are
vicious as well as idle and non-productive, and every one of them a
disturbing force—a dangerous element—which, in conjunction with those
hideous wretches maddened with a monstrous theory like those miscreants
at Harper’s Ferry, are always liable to be made instruments of fearful
mischief. The consequences of the fifty thousand “free” negroes in
juxtaposition with the three millions of white people in New York are
barely perceptible, but as scarcely one in fifty of these people are
engaged in productive labor, they are a considerable burden upon the
laboring and producing citizens. True, they do not see it or feel it—and
multitudes of honest and laborious citizens in the rural districts are
profoundly interested in the “cause of freedom,” while thus contributing
a certain portion of each day’s labor for the support of some fifty
thousand non-productive negroes. Again, in the cities and larger towns,
the vices and immoralities of the whites have an extended association
with this free negro element.
The negro in his normal condition has attractive qualities. He is not
degraded, for none of God’s creatures are naturally degraded, and his
fidelity and affection for his master and his master’s family, sometimes
reach a dignity that would reflect honor on the white man. Nor is there
any prejudice or hatred between the races when they are in true relation
to each other. One may travel for months, perhaps years, in the South,
and never witness a collision or the slightest disturbance between them;
but, on the contrary, they will often see a kindly feeling displayed
even when the negro is not owned by those who exhibit it. The negro is
in a social position and relation that accords with his nature, his
wants, the purposes that God has adapted him to, in short, lives out his
own life, and therefore, all that is good, that is healthy in his moral
nature as in his physical nature, is duly manifested. But at the North,
where he is thrust from his natural sphere and forced to live out the
life of a different being, he exhibits the same moral defects that he
does in his physical nature. He is a social monstrosity—and though his
subordinate nature renders him less likely to commit great crimes than
the superior white man, the tendencies to petty immoralities are almost
universal. Some, indeed, bred up in well-regulated families, and others
who are nearly white, escape the general demoralization of this people,
but the instances are probably few—the moral defects march hand in hand
with the physical, and, as they tend continually to disease and death,
so, too, do they tend to universal immorality. And as it would be
strange, indeed, if Providence visited the sins of the dominant race on
these poor creatures alone, they are extensively associated, as has been
observed, with the vices of the whites. With feeble perceptions of moral
obligations, with strong tendencies to animal indulgences of every kind,
and an utter repugnance to productive labor, they congregate in the
cities; and the social exclusion to which they are exposed, as well as
the absence of moral sentiment among them, renders them, to a wide
extent, the instruments of the vices and corruptions of the whites.
Thus, it is not alone the negro’s non-productiveness—the burden, the
absolute tax imposed on the laboring classes—but the demoralization of
this abnormal element, of this social monstrosity, that is inflicted on
society as the legitimate and unavoidable punishment for having placed
the negro in an abnormal condition. God created him a negro—a different
and inferior being, and, therefore, designed him for a different and
inferior social position. Society, or the State, has ignored the work of
the Almighty, and declared that he should occupy the same position and
live out the life of the white man; and the result is, the laboring and
producing classes are burdened with his support, and society, to a
certain extent, poisoned by his presence. To the negro it is
death—necessarily death, as it always must be to all creatures, human or
animal, forbidden to live the life God has blessed them with, or to live
in accord with the conditions He has imposed on them. The ultimate doom
of the poor creatures, therefore, is only a question of time. The great
“anti-slavery” imposture of our times, which has rested on popular
ignorance of a few fundamental truths in ethnology and political
economy, has at last culminated, and few, if any more of these people
will ever be turned loose, or manumitted as it has been called. Whether
they will be restored to society and to usefulness at the North may be
doubted, but necessity as well as humanity will doubtless prompt such a
policy at the South; but, in any event, it is absolutely certain that,
as a class, they will become extinct, and a hundred years hence it is
reasonable to suppose that no such social monstrosity as a “free negro”
will be found in America.
But another and far more embarrassing question is presented by free
negroism outside of the American Union, and that now confronts us in
Cuba, Jamaica, Hayti, Mexico, and on the whole line of our Southern
border. This is the danger, the sole danger of the so-called slavery
question, and it involves possibilities that are fearful to think of,
though scarcely dangerous at all if our own people were truly
enlightened on the general subject.
In a previous chapter it has been shown how climatic and industrial laws
govern our mixed populations, and, without the slightest interference of
government, the negro element goes just where its own welfare as well as
that of the white citizenship and the general interests of civilization
demand its presence. This law of industrial adaptation has carried it
from northern ports into the Central States, from the latter to the
Border States, and is now, with even increased activity, carrying it
from Virginia, etc., into the Gulf States, and thus permitted to go on,
with all obstacles removed from the path of its progress, a time will
come when the negro population of the New World will be within the
centre of existence where it was created, and where the Almighty Creator
has provided for its well-being. A sectional party in the North, taking
advantage of popular ignorance, and actually enacting a law prohibiting
it to exist anywhere where white labor is best adapted, could not by
that sole act do any practical injury to the social order of the South.
Such an act would indeed be a violation of the spirit of the federal
compact, and, as an adjunct of the hostile policy of the foreign enemies
of republican institutions, its moral bearings would be full of
mischief; but, disconnected or disunited with the British free negro
policy, it would be harmless, for, as Mr. Webster once declared, it
would only be a “reënactment of the will of God.” But, as already
observed, the danger of this whole question lies beyond the boundaries
of the American Union, and if it be true that we have a considerable
number in our midst disaffected to democratic institutions—then every
man opposed to the existing condition, or so-called slavery, is, however
ignorant of it, to a certain extent an instrument of the enemies of
these institutions; and the policy of any such party, as well as the
action of any among us, whether in concert with, or independently of any
such party, for the same common object or end, becomes treason, and
treason the most wicked and revolting that the mind can conceive of, for
it involves the natural supremacy of the white man over the negro, as
well as the permanence, peace, and prosperity of our republican system.
The Spanish, still less the Portuguese conquerors of America, have never
exhibited that healthy natural instinct which preserves the integrity of
races, so universally as the Anglo-Americans have done. They have
intermixed and amalgamated with the Indians or Aboriginals with little
hesitation; and though they have always manifested a certain repugnance
to an equality with the still more subordinate negro, they have largely
intermixed, and therefore, extensively deteriorated and ruined
themselves.
In Brazil there are nearly four millions of negroes that are called
slaves, but held more by the bonds of pecuniary interest than they are
by nature, as with us. There is a large mulatto and mongrel population,
often highly educated, possessing vast wealth, with, of course, all the
advantage? that these things give when society does not rest on natural
distinctions. A mulatto or mongrel in Virginia or Mississippi may be
left to take cure of himself, or be a so-called freeman, but he can
never be a citizen—can never in any thing whatever be legally endowed
with the social attributes, any more than he can with the natural
attributes, of the white man. But in Brazil, and, indeed, in Cuba, the
mulatto, mongrel, or negro may by law become a citizen, may own slaves,
may, in short, be artificially invested with all the “rights” by the
government that nature—that God himself has withheld or forbidden. The
white man in Cuba is a slave to a foreign dominion, and this same
foreign power, while it withholds from him his natural rights, forces
the negro by the same arbitrary power into legal equality with him. The
arbitrary force is less in Brazil, but the low grade of manhood in the
white element, its extensive affiliation and consequent deterioration
with the subject race, has rendered them incapable of either
comprehending liberty or of enjoying free institutions. The negro that
was a slave once becomes a citizen, with all the legal rights of the
white man, and, if he inherits wealth, educates his children, etc., then
these artificial and accidental things, instead of the distinctions of
nature, become the line of demarcation in society. If a planter has a
family of children by his negro slaves, and educates them and leaves
them his wealth, then they become influential citizens, makers of the
government, etc., and leaders of fashion, perhaps, in Rio Janeiro and
other cities. The white man is so degraded, the instinct of race so
perverted, the sense of superiority so obtuse—in short, the nature of
the Caucasian so completely corrupted by extensive affiliations with the
subject race, that natural distinctions are no longer a line of
demarcation, and wealth, accident, etc., as in Europe, and as the
Federalists once desired, are the basis of the political and social
order. It is somewhat different in Cuba, for here the American instinct
of race and the high appreciation of manhood common to all societies
based on the order of nature have a certain influence. But even in Cuba,
in our own neighborhood, within a few hours’ sail of our coast, society
rests upon an artificial basis, and what is called slavery rather
involves pecuniary considerations than a question of races.
The social condition, therefore, or so-called slavery may be overthrown
any day in Brazil or Cuba, for, resting on a basis of property instead
of the distinctions of nature common with us, there is no permanent
security for the social safety, and in view of the policy of England on
this subject and its influence in Brazil, we should not be surprised at
any moment to hear that a revolution had broken out, and that slavery
was overthrown in every portion of the Brazilian empire. This result
which may happen at any moment, and which circumstances alone may
protract for an indefinite period, would seem to be ultimately
inevitable—for the white element is every day becoming more deteriorated
and feeble; and, without the mental and moral power, without the healthy
instinct of the race to buoy it up amid such corrupt and corrupting
tendencies, without that high sense of manhood which makes the American
“slaveholder” the perfect type and complete embodiment of the strength
and power of the great master race of mankind, without, in short, the
natural superiority of the white man to restrain this negro and mongrel
population, it is certain sooner or later to escape from all legal
restraint, and any hour the whole social fabric may collapse into utter
and hopeless ruin. It will be well for Americans who desire to preserve
American institutions and American civilization to heed this and ponder
well on the uncertain and rotten foundations of social order in Brazil
and Cuba, and which, already fatally undermined, may at any moment, as
has been said, collapse into a huge mass of free negroism, and thus
become a portion of that diseased, monstrous, and nameless condition
which ignorance, and folly, and imposture, and hatred to American
democracy have combined to pervert language as well as stultify reason
and call freedom.
Elsewhere it has been shown that the negro isolated in Africa is in a
natural condition, for he multiplies himself, but that he is in his
normal, healthy, educated or civilized condition at the South, for he
then multiplies with vastly greater rapidity than in a state of
isolation, and consequently, _must_ be more in harmony with those fixed
and eternal decrees that God has ordained for the government of all His
creatures. It has also been shown that the negro abandoned and left to
himself in Virginia, etc., dies out, but, of course, less rapidly than
at the North where the notion prevails that he is the same being as
themselves, and therefore, in their efforts to make him manifest the
same qualities, or, in other words, to force on him the same “rights,”
he rapidly tends to extinction. But there is still another phase of free
negroism vastly more extended and more dangerous to republican
institutions and the future civilization of America.
The negro is a creature of the tropics, and his labor is essential to
the cultivation of tropical and tropicoid products, which, in turn, are
essential to the happiness and well-being of all mankind. But, as has
been shown, his _mental_ organism renders him incapable—as absolutely
and inevitably as the _physical_ organism of the white man renders _him_
incapable of tropical production. In the brief space allowed in this
work to the consideration of this vital and most momentous truth, the
author could only present a few leading facts in its support, but these
_facts_ are so overwhelming that no rational or honest mind in
Christendom will venture to dispute the truth in question. Furthermore
it may be stated without chance or possibility of historical
contradiction, that in the entire experience of mankind no single
instance has ever been known when the isolated negro or the labor of the
white man has cultivated the soil or grown the products of the tropics.
The mind of the white man and the body of the negro—the intellect of the
most elevated and the industrial capacities of the most subordinate of
all the known human races, therefore, constitute the elements and motive
forces of tropical civilization. Every mind capable of reasoning at all
will know that civilization is impossible without production, and
production in the great tropical centre of our continent being forever
absolutely and necessarily impossible without negro labor guided,
controlled, and managed by the higher intelligence of the white man—it
is therefore absolutely certain that the social relation which English
writers have taught the world to regard as a condition of slavery, is
simply that social adaptation of the industrial forces of the
subordinate race, essential, not alone to their own welfare but to the
welfare of all mankind, and without which there can no more exist what
we call civilization in a large portion of America than there can be
life without food or light without the sun. This is obvious, and indeed
unavoidable to those who are in actual juxtaposition with negroes. But
in Europe where there are white men only, and where negroes, Indians,
Malays, etc., are in the popular imagination beings like themselves
except in the complexion, and only need to be civilized, as they
suppose, to be like others, it was an easy matter to excite a public
feeling hostile to the prosperity of the people of the tropics. The
theory, or rather dogma of a single race, that all mankind was a unit,
and negroes, Indians, etc., had a common origin and common nature, and
therefore common rights, had been set up by English writers during the
conflict with the American colonies; and Dr. Johnson, with his usual
coarseness of expression, had declared that “the Virginia slaveholders
were the loudest yelpers for liberty”—thus, in utter unconsciousness,
paying them a compliment when he believed he was inflicting a sarcasm of
peculiar virulence.
The doctrine of the Declaration of Independence had reacted in Europe,
and the French Revolution, which followed so closely on the American,
threatened to overthrow the whole social fabric in the Old World and to
reconstruct its governments on the basis of the great American idea
promulgated by Jefferson. To counteract these tendencies, the English
statesmen of the day sought to distract the attention of the people from
their own wrongs to the fancied wrongs of the negro—and Wilberforce, Dr.
Johnson, and other tory leaders and writers, originated that world-wide
delusion and imposture which, in the name of freedom, has probably done
more damage to freedom than all other influences combined, within the
last seventy years. The assumption of a single race—that the negro was a
_black_-white man, and therefore entitled to all the rights of white
men, naturally attracted the attention and aroused the sympathies of the
English masses, and when the supposed wrongs of the negro in America
were contrasted with their own, the latter, doubtless, seemed utterly
insignificant in comparison.
The English government, therefore, entered on an “anti-slavery” policy,
which, beginning with the abrogation of the “slave trade” has continued
ever since, and though it has impoverished, and, in fact, destroyed some
of the finest provinces of the British empire, it is as avowed, defined,
and energetic at this moment, perhaps even more so than at any other
period since it was commenced. Mr. Calhoun and others have supposed that
the so-called emancipation of negroes in the British West India Islands
originated in a spirit of commercial rivalry, and in order to monopolize
tropical production in their East Indian possessions that they were
willing to sacrifice utterly their West Indian colonies. There can be no
doubt that British statesmen universally believed that the example they
were about to give us in this respect would be followed by universal
“emancipation” in the United States, as, indeed, it has been followed by
all the European governments owning American possessions. But while this
was expected by every body in England, and thus far may be said to have
been the prime motive of their action, it is not reasonable to assume
that British statesmen were prompted by a spirit of commercial rivalry
or believed for a moment that they were concocting a grand scheme for
securing a monopoly of tropical products. The policy begun by Pitt forty
years previous, naturally and necessarily culminated in the
“emancipation” of 1832, though the desire to neutralize the popular
excitement then prevailing in respect to parliamentary reform, doubtless
hastened the action of the government. English statesmen may be unable,
and probably are unable to explain the motives for their “anti-slavery”
policy, but they never mistake or fail to recognize its vital importance
to the preservation of their system. Democracy and aristocracy are
necessarily antagonistic in all their tendencies, and the progress,
strength, and extension of the former necessarily involve the downfall
and destruction of the latter. And, as it is the South—the
“slaveholders,” the States, and the people whose social life rests upon
natural distinctions that have always struck the deadliest blows at the
British system, and, as declared by the old tory, Dr. Johnson, eighty
years ago, have been the warmest supporters of liberty, British
statesmen, in their turn, desired to break down a condition thus
dangerous and thus in conflict with their own.
Indeed, they can not avoid making war upon the social order of the
South. It is a necessity that exists in the nature of things, and
springs spontaneously from the circumstances that constitute the
opposing conditions, and therefore, from 1776 to 1860 this warfare,
openly or secretly, on the battle-field, or the still more dangerous
arena of public opinion, has been uninterrupted. Their system is based
on artificial distinctions—on things of human invention; ours on natural
distinctions—those fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty; and so
long as England is an American power her policy must be in conflict with
our own. If it could ever be successful—if the twelve millions of
negroes on this continent could ever be forced from their normal
condition of subordination into a legal equality with the whites—then it
is obvious democratic institutions would be rendered impracticable. A
simple statement of the facts involved would seem to be sufficient to
convince every American mind not corrupted by British opinions, that the
British “anti-slavery” policy is part and parcel of the British system,
and therefore must go on as it has gone on until it either overthrows
our republican institutions, or England, and indeed all other European
governments and European influences are driven from the New World. The
_causes_ of West Indian “emancipation,” therefore, lie deeper and are
far wider in their scope, and immeasurably more deadly in their
consequences than any temporary schemes of commercial rivalry, as
suggested by Mr. Calhoun, to monopolize tropical products.
They strike at the national life—at the heart of republicanism, at the
fundamental principle that underlies our system, at the everlasting
truth that all who belong to the race are created free and equal; and
should it ever be successful, should our people ever become so corrupted
in opinion, and so debauched in their instincts as to assent to the
British “anti-slavery” policy and “abolish slavery”—distort and
transform themselves into equality with negroes, then it could not be
long before the forms as well as the spirit of republicanism would
disappear from the New World, and whatever might happen in the course of
centuries, all that Washington and Jefferson and the glorious spirits of
1776 labored for would be lost to mankind.
While British and monarchical writers, therefore, have labored to
corrupt the nation at the heart—to delude the reason and debauch the
instincts of our people—to teach them that the negro was a man like
themselves, and that the instincts which God gave them for their
guidance in these respects were unworthy prejudices—that to retain this
inferior and different being in a subordinate social position
corresponding with his wants and our own welfare was wrong—an evil, a
sin—in short, “enslaving him”—while European writers and their dupes
among us were thus at work corrupting the intellect of a great people,
the British government have steadily labored to reduce their teachings
to practice and to “abolish slavery” in all their American possessions.
It has been estimated that something like five hundred millions of money
have been expended within the last seventy years to carry out the
British “anti-slavery” policy, to abolish the natural supremacy of the
white man over the negro, to obliterate the distinctions fixed by the
Almighty Creator, and equalize those _He_ has created unequal. This vast
expenditure is wrung, of course, from the toil, and sweat, and misery of
the English laboring classes, and to pay the annual interest on it every
laborer in England is compelled to give a certain portion of every day’s
toil, which is thus taken from the mouths of his children to carry on a
policy at war with liberty in America, but which through the monstrous
delusions of the day is represented to be the noblest philanthropy! An
aristocracy, a class, a mere fraction of the people, have laid this
enormous burden on their brethren, their own race—those whom God created
their equals—in order to obliterate the distinctions by which the
Almighty has separated white men and negroes; or, in other words, to
preserve _their_ distinctions—those which they have invented, which
separate themselves from their brethren, the British aristocracy have
mortgaged the bodies and souls of unborn generations of their kind in an
impious and fruitless effort to destroy the distinctions that separate
races, and equalize white men and negroes in America. The interest for a
single year on this enormous sum, this mighty burden laid on the working
classes of England, expended on popular education, would doubtless react
in a wide-spread revolution and the utter annihilation of those who,
under the pretence of philanthropy, or of liberating negroes in America,
have imposed these stupendous burdens on the people.
A few years since, an awful dispensation of Providence in a neighboring
island swept away in a brief space of time something like three millions
of people—but, if the annual interest paid on the debt contracted under
pretence of benefiting negroes in America had been applied to the relief
of the Irish, probably all or nearly all of these unfortunate white
people might have been saved. Indeed, it is reasonable to suppose that,
if the money taken from Irish laborers within the last seventy years and
expended for the assumed benefit of the negro had been applied to their
relief during the famine in Ireland, few if any would have perished, and
that awful calamity never would have disfigured the annals of mankind.
It is the practice of some ignorant and superficial people among us to
glorify this stupendous misery inflicted on the ignorant and helpless of
their own race under the pretence of benefiting the negro. If it had
done so—if, instead of an almost equal mischief to the negro, it had
done him a boundless good—the crime against their own helpless and
miserable people—the poor, ignorant, overworked, and under-fed laboring
millions of their own race—would still scarcely find its parallel in the
history of human wrongs. But it inflicted a still greater crime on the
white people of the islands for it has doomed them to extinction—not
absorption by the negro blood, as already explained, but entire
extinction—that result being simply a question of time. Such, briefly
considered, are the causes and the results, so far as the dominant race
are concerned, of the British “anti-slavery” policy, which, beginning in
the latter part of the last century, has been steadily and vigorously
persisted in, and is, probably, in the face of all its failures in
respect to its avowed objects, more energetic and active at this moment
than ever before. All the islands are now, whether owned by England or
other European powers, substantially turned over to the negro. The
governments are simply means for working out this ultimate result.
England, for example, sends out to Jamaica a governor, secretary, and a
few other officials, perhaps to carry on the government of that island.
The governor probably selects his council from the white element, for
the reason that the intelligence of the negro is incompetent to the
functions attached, and in respect to the more important official
positions generally, they are, from the same cause, filled by white men,
or by those of predominating white blood. But the policy of the
government is to place power in the hands of the blacks, and therefore
all the subordinate official positions are filled by these people, as,
indeed, all the higher and more important places would be if there was
sufficient intelligence to perform the functions properly.
A foreign power—an aristocracy of the Old World—employs a machinery, a
contrivance, or thing called a government, to exterminate the white
population in these islands, and to turn them over to the rule of the
negro. Under the English system, political or official position, unlike
ours, carries with it social importance, and a negro who is a member of
the legislature or a magistrate in Jamaica is elevated, in a social
sense, above the white who holds no official position, no matter what
his claims may be in other respects. With the same legal and political
rights, the same schools, and with largely predominating numbers, and
most of the official positions in their hands, which, under the British
system always gives social importance, the whole operation of the
government is employed to elevate the negro in the social scale, and to
depress the white man. Of course, intermarriage or affiliation—that
hideous admixture of the blood of different races which God has
eternally forbidden, and so fearfully punishes with extinction—is a
direct and necessary consequence of this governmental policy.
A short time since the Queen of England knighted a negro, and as this
factitious elevation placed him in a social position, quite above the
untitled white man of Jamaica, the white woman of fashion would,
doubtless, smother the instincts God gave for her guidance, and
desecrate her womanhood by an alliance with this creature whom God made
inferior, but whom a woman, four thousand miles distant, was pleased to
make her equal. The government, therefore—all the governments of the
British Islands, and, indeed of all other European powers, are simply
instruments that are employed to elevate the negro and to depress the
white man to a common level, to equalize races, to obliterate
distinctions fixed forever by the hand of the Almighty, and make the
negro the equal of the white man. It is no negative or _laissez faire_
policy—no neutral or indifferent desire to apply a theory and leave it
to work itself out—no mere abstract declaration that all are equal, and
therefore should be left free to ascend or descend in the social scale
according to their merits; but, on the contrary, the government is an
active and all-potent machinery, in constant operation to _force_ the
negro up, and the white man down, to a common level. And it is probable
that people in England look upon this policy as just and proper. The
negroes largely predominate in number—why should they not have most of
the offices? They have been wronged and oppressed, and are without
education, and therefore the higher places must be filled by white men;
but why should not they enjoy all the places they are fit for? Such,
doubtless, is the notion of those in Europe, who, utterly ignorant of
the negro, suppose him a man like themselves, except in his color. But
human ignorance and impiety can not change His eternal decrees or alter
the works of the Almighty. A middle-aged, respectable woman in England
may “Knight” a negro, and declare that _she_ thus makes him superior to
the common throng of white men, but the black skin, and woolly hair, and
flat nose, and gross organism, and semi-animal instinct, fixed by the
hand of the Eternal, remains just the same, unaltered and unalterable
forever. All that is possible with the middle-aged woman in question,
and those who surround her, is to corrupt, to debauch, to destroy, to
exterminate, to murder their own blood, to doom the white people of
those islands to a fate more horrible than the universal slaughter that
swept away the whites of San Domingo. The process of extinction now
rapidly destroying the white population of these islands has been
already considered, but it may be stated again in this place, for it
involves such tremendous consequences that it should be shouted in the
ears of the world with the voice of an earthquake. The legal and
political equality of the negro necessarily carries after it social
equality wherever they predominate in numbers, and when there are no
social distinctions of race or blood recognized, when that instinct
which God has given us to protect the integrity of the organism, is
debauched and trampled under foot—when, in short, the “prejudice against
color” is lost, then such depraved creatures do not hesitate to form
those hideous alliances that generate mulatto offspring. And when the
whole force of government is brought to bear against the “prejudice”
that revolts at social equality—the hideous affiliation, the monstrous
admixture of blood, the vile obscenity that they may term marriage,
follows with equal certainty. But the result of this admixture—the
wretched progeny—the diseased and sterile offspring—has a determinate
limit, and it is solely a question of time when it becomes wholly
extinct. Any one reflecting a moment on this subject—that is, any
American whose instincts are healthy and true—would surely prefer that
his offspring should perish from the earth rather than to mix their
blood with that of the negro; and as the white blood in Jamaica, etc.,
is rapidly mixing with the negro, and without foreign addition to the
white element it must soon be universally tainted with the base alloy;
and as all mongrels must of necessity ultimately perish, it is certain
that the fate of the white people of these islands is vastly more
deplorable than was that of those suddenly swept from existence in the
Island of Hayti.
The policy of England in this respect is universally adopted in the
other islands. The first step was a war upon the “slave trade”—then
“emancipation,” then the active employment of the government to enforce
the theory of a single race by forcing the negro up and the white man
down to an abhorrent, but, of course, impossible level; for those they
have transformed into a hideous kind of equality must finally perish,
and in the whole tropical centre of the continent, ultimately become
extinct. Meanwhile labor, production, and civilization are tending to
the same common extinction with the white blood. In Jamaica, Barbadoes,
and some other islands where there is yet a considerable white
population, the negro, despite the influence of the government, is kept
in a certain restraint. He labors little, it is true, but with little
patches of land he grows bananas and other products that in that genial
clime enable him to live in a certain comfort (to him), and thus—while
the same being would rapidly perish in Massachusetts—to multiply
himself. The horrible traffic in Mongols or coolies, since the negro was
released from labor in the islands, has enabled the owners of some of
the former flourishing plantations to continue their cultivation, and to
furnish in some places almost their former products, and thus to deceive
the world and to delude those who desire to be deluded in respect to the
non-productiveness of the free negro.
But, as has been shown, the negro neither does nor can labor, in our
sense of the word. His dominating sensualism forbids such a thing, while
his limited intellect, like that of the child, renders him unable to
labor for a remote result, or deny himself immediate indulgence, in
order to acquire an ultimate good. In his natural state, and isolated
from the white man, he calls into exercise his powerful senses for his
immediate wants, and with no winter or barren seasons to contend
against, and favored with a soil with its many and nutritious fruits
growing spontaneously all about him, he has little more to do than to
pluck and eat. In this way he lives, multiplies himself, and enjoys an
animal existence, which to us seems miserable enough certainly, and, in
comparison with his condition at the South, is indeed miserable enough;
but to this he is rapidly tending in the West Indian Islands, and the
whole power of the British and other European governments are rapidly
forcing him into this condition.
In Hayti he is now nearing this final condition—this inherent and
original Africanism to which he is tending in the whole of tropical
America. Seventy years ago the mulattoes rebelled against the whites;
they excited and impelled the negroes to join them; the whites—only
twenty-five thousand—were immolated or driven from the island. Then came
the conflict among themselves; the mulattoes and mongrels in turn were
massacred, or sought shelter in San Domingo, the Spanish part of the
island, and the negroes, masters of the field, with their natural
tendencies unchecked, without guides or masters, have finally culminated
in _Solouque_—a typical negro—a serpent worshipper and _Obi-man_, as
chief or emperor.
When the French expedition, under the command of General Le Clerc,
failed to recover the island in 1803, and the Haytians, though their
independence was not recognized by the French republic, were able,
through the aid of the British, to assume the position of an independent
power, they commenced a national existence peculiarly favored in many
respects. The mulattoes—generally the children of French masters—were
many of them highly educated, having been sent to Paris for this purpose
in childhood. They had the sympathy of the French people, and indeed of
the whole world on their side, for the worst tyrants and oppressors of
Europe, while laboring with all their might to crush out the liberty of
white men, were then as now deeply interested in the freedom of the
black. Moreover, they had the physical as well as the moral support of
England, and without a single enemy in the world to embarrass their
progress. But though without foreign enemies or wars of any kind to
check their advance, with the finest climate and most fertile soil in
the world, they have rapidly collapsed into their natural Africanism.
Internal commotions, as now in Mexico, began at once among the mongrels,
and bloodshed and misery of every kind prevailed until this element was
necessarily destroyed, and the stolid, idle, and useless savagism of
Africa became the essential characteristic of these people. Two causes
alone have held in check the tendencies to Africanism—the white blood
and the surrounding civilization. The mongrel element, though constantly
diminishing in numbers, naturally governed, until it became so feeble
that _Solouque_, a typical negro and an embodiment of Africanism, of
fetichism, and a worshiper of Obi, seized the supreme power and
inaugurated savagism. Accident of some kind or other has recently pushed
this worthy aside and placed one _Jeffrard_, a _griffe_, or “colored
man,” or mulatto, in power, who calls himself president, but he will
doubtless soon give place to some negro chief. Nevertheless, there is a
considerable infusion of white blood still in Hayti, and therefore, the
true negro condition—the natural condition when isolated, the condition
it has always been in and that it always must remain in when isolated
from the Caucasian man—is not yet entirely restored. Again, the
surrounding civilization—the contact with Europeans and Americans that
commerce or trade in fruits growing almost spontaneously together, with
the few adventurous spirits always attracted to such a fertile soil as
Hayti would, perhaps, always give to its people a somewhat different
external character from the African type.
But if we can be permitted to suppose the absence of these things—the
utter extinction of the Caucasian innervation and absolute isolation of
the negro as in Africa—then, in the tropics, the same climate with
similar soils, in short, similar circumstances to those surrounding him
in Africa, of course, the negro type, the negro nature, the negro being,
would be the same as it always has been and is now in Africa. On the
coast, where he is brought in contact with the white man, where there
are a good many with white blood in their veins, who therefore retain to
some extent the habitudes of the superior race, the traditions and
historic recollections of their former masters are preserved. But in the
interior, where the negro is permitted to live out his African
tendencies, he has lost all knowledge of the events of seventy years
ago. History, religion, even the French language has disappeared, and in
their place there is Obiism and African dialects, while probably not one
in a thousand has any perception, knowledge, or recollection whatever of
_Christophe_, _Dessalines_, or others of those notorious chiefs who a
little over half a century since filled the island with the terror of
their names. As observed, the utter extinction of the Caucasian
innervation and absolute isolation of the negro in Hayti, would of
necessity end in complete Africanism, and to this end, this final
culmination of savagism the whole British and European policy is now
necessarily tending. It is true, the existence of a white government by
mere juxtaposition as well as the prestige of power, holds in check the
strong tendencies to Africanism, but the policy—the official employment
of negroes always carrying with it under the monarchical _regime_ social
importance—tends powerfully to degrade the white blood and induce
amalgamation, to drag after it, of course, that inevitable extinction of
the mongrel progeny which the Almighty has decreed forever and
everywhere.
Thus, the British “anti-slavery” policy tends rapidly and constantly to
the restoration of Africanism, to savagery—to the building up of a
mighty barbarism in the very heart of the American continent—to the
establishment of a huge heathenism that shall spread itself over fifty
degrees of the most fertile and beautiful portion of the New World.
This, then, is the legitimate termination of that wide-spread delusion
of modern times, which has drawn into its fatal and monstrous embrace
multitudes of honest and well-meaning men, and while it already has
worked out evils so stupendous as to be almost beyond our powers of
computation to measure them, and never in an instance, direct or
indirect, done the slightest good whatever, at this moment it threatens
to inflict even greater evils on the world than those it has hitherto
cursed it with. The process through which all this mischief is worked
out can not or need not be mistaken—a man may run and read it, and
though a fool understand it. It is this: 1st. The dogma of a single
race—that the negro is a _black_-white man. 2d. The “anti-slavery”
policy of Pitt, nominally to put down the “slave trade.” 3d.
“Emancipation”—and whites and negroes declared equal. 4th. The policy of
European governments to elevate negroes and depress whites, inducing
social equality and consequent amalgamation. 5th. Absorption of the
white blood by mongrelism. 6th. Sterility and extinction of the mixed
element. 7th. Restoration of the African type and consequent savagism—a
huge heathenism—indeed, Africa itself literally lifted up and planted
down in the center of the New World—thus erecting a mighty barbarism
directly in the path of American civilization; and which, in all coming
time, as the ally or instrument of European monarchists, shall beat back
the waves of democracy, and dwarf the growth and limit the power of the
American Republic.
The “free negro” in our midst perishes; but in the tropics, in his own
climate, he poisons and destroys the white blood, and then relapses into
his inherent and organic Africanism, toward which he is rapidly impelled
by the British “anti-slavery policy.” If that policy could ever be
successful—if fifty degrees of latitude in the heart of this continent
should ever be permanently turned over to free negroism, or ever
occupied by a huge barbarism—which should not alone render the fairest
portion of the New World a barren waste, but interrupt that great law of
progress which impels us onward, to carry our system, our republican
idea of government, and our civilization, over the whole “boundless
continent,” then, indeed, might the friends of freedom despair of the
future. But it is not possible that the rising civilization of America
is to be thus broken down by the monarchists of the Old World. The law
of progress—of national growth, of very necessity—that has carried us to
the Gulf of Mexico and to the Pacific Ocean, will continue to impel us
onward, and to restore the rapidly perishing civilization of the great
tropical center of the continent. All humane and good men desire that
this grand result shall be worked out by moral causes, by the exposure
of the monstrous delusion in regard to negroes that has been productive
of so much evil; but either through an appeal to reason or to the
sword—through the operation of natural causes or through bloodshed and
national suffering—the final end _must be_ the restoration of the negro
to his normal condition, and consequent restoration of civilization in
the finest portion of our great continent.