I think I may trust you will not regard this letter as intrusive. I

should never have entertained an idea of writing it, had you not opened

the correspondence. If you think any thing in it harsh, review your

own--which I regret that I lost soon after it was received--and you will

probably find that you have taken your revenge beforehand. If you have

not, transfer an equitable share of what you deem severe, to the account

of the abolitionists at large. They have accumulated against the

slaveholders a balance of invective, which, with all our efforts, we

shall not be able to liquidate much short of the era in which your

national debt will be paid. At all events, I have no desire to offend

you personally, and, with the best wishes for your continued health, I

have the honor to be,

Your obedient servant,

J. H. HAMMOND.

THOS. CLARKSON, Esq.

FOOTNOTE:

[255] On this subject, J. Q. Adams, in his letter to the citizens of

Bangor, Maine, July 4th, 1843, said: "It is only as _immortal_ beings

that all mankind can in any sense be said to be born equal; and when the

Declaration of Independence affirms as a self-evident truth that all men

are born equal, it is precisely the same as if the affirmation had been

that all men are born with immortal souls."--Life of J. Q. Adams, page

395.--_Editor._

LETTER II.

Ignorance of Abolitionists--Arguments of

Abolitionists refuted--Abolitionism leads to

Infidelity--Law of Force a law of Love--Wages of

Slaves and of hired labor--Results of emancipation

to the world--Falsehoods of Abolitionists--English

estimate of our Northern citizens--British

interference in the politics of our

country--Sensitiveness of the Southern

People--Rise and progress of Fanaticism.

SILVER BLUFF, S. C., March 24, 1845.

SIR--In my letter to you of the 28th January--which I trust you have

received ere this--I mentioned that I had lost your circular letter soon

after it had come to hand. It was, I am glad to say, only mislaid, and

has within a few days been recovered. A second perusal of it induces me

to resume my pen. Unwilling to trust my recollections from a single

reading, I did not, in my last communication, attempt to follow the

course of your argument, and meet directly the points made and the terms

used. I thought it better to take a general view of the subject, which

could not fail to traverse your most material charges. I am well aware,

however, that for fear of being tedious, I omitted many interesting

topics altogether, and abstained from a complete discussion of some of

those introduced. I do not propose now to _exhaust_ the subject; which

it would require volumes to do; but without waiting to learn--which I

may never do--your opinion of what I have already said, I sit down to

supply some of the deficiencies of my letter of January, and, with your

circular before me, to reply to such parts of it as have not been fully

answered.

It is, I perceive, addressed, among others, to "such as have never

visited the Southern States" of this confederacy, and professes to

enlighten their ignorance of the actual "condition of the poor slave in

their own country." I can not help thinking you would have displayed

prudence in confining the circulation of your letter altogether to such

persons. You might then have indulged with impunity in giving, as you

have done, a picture of slavery, drawn from your own excited

imagination, or from those impure fountains, the Martineaus, Marryatts,

Trollopes, and Dickenses, who have profited by catering, at our expense,

to the jealous sensibilities and debauched tastes of your countrymen.

Admitting that you are familiar with the history of slavery, and the

past discussions of it, as I did, I now think rather broadly, in my

former letter, what can _you know_ of the true _condition_ of the "poor

slave" here? I am not aware that you have ever visited this country, or

even the West Indies. Can you suppose, that because you have devoted

your life to the investigation of the subject--commencing it under the

influence of an enthusiasm, so melancholy at first, and so volcanic

afterwards, as to be nothing short of hallucination--pursuing it as men

of _one idea_ do every thing, with the single purpose of establishing

your own view of it--gathering your information from discharged seamen,

disappointed speculators, factious politicians, visionary reformers and

scurrilous tourists--opening your ears to every species of complaint,

exaggeration and falsehood, that interested ingenuity could invent, and

never for a moment questioning the truth of any thing that could make

for your cause--can you suppose that all this has qualified you, living

the while in England, to form or approximate toward the formation of a

correct opinion of the condition of slaves among us? I know the power of

self-delusion. I have not the least doubt, that you think yourself the

very best informed man alive on this subject, and that many think so

likewise. So far as facts go, even after deducting from your list a

great deal that is not fact, I will not deny that, probably, your

collection is the most extensive in existence. But as to the _truth_ in

regard to slavery, there is not an adult in this region but knows more

of it than you do. _Truth_ and _fact_ are, you are aware, by no means

synonymous terms. Ninety-nine facts may constitute a falsehood: the

hundredth, added or alone, gives the truth. With all your knowledge of

facts, I undertake to say that you are entirely and grossly ignorant of

the real condition of our slaves. And from all that I can see, you are

equally ignorant of the essential principles of human association

revealed in history, both sacred and profane, on which slavery rests,

and which will perpetuate it forever in some form or other. However you

may declaim against it; however powerfully you may array atrocious

incidents; whatever appeals you may make to the heated imaginations and

tender sensibilities of mankind, believe me, your total blindness to the

_whole truth_, which alone constitutes _the truth_, incapacitates you

from ever making an impression on the sober reason and sound common

sense of the world. You may seduce thousands--you can convince no one.

Whenever and wherever you or the advocates of your cause can arouse the

passions of the weak-minded and the ignorant, and bringing to bear with

them the interests of the vicious and unprincipled, overwhelm common

sense and reason--as God sometimes permits to be done--you may triumph.

Such a triumph we have witnessed in Great Britain. But I trust it is far

distant here; nor can it, from its nature, be extensive or enduring.

Other classes of reformers, animated by the same spirit as the

abolitionists, attack the institution of marriage, and even the

established relations of parent and child. And they collect instances of

barbarous cruelty and shocking degradation, which rival, if they do not

throw into the shade, your slavery statistics. But the rights of

marriage and parental authority rests upon truths as obvious as they are

unchangeable--coming home to every human being,--self-impressed forever

on the individual mind, and can not be shaken until the whole man is

corrupted, nor subverted until civilized society becomes a putrid mass.

Domestic slavery is not so universally understood, nor can it make such

a direct appeal to individuals or society beyond its pale. Here,

prejudice and passion have room to sport at the expense of others. They

may be excited and urged to dangerous action, remote from the victims

they mark out. They may, as they have done, effect great mischief, but

they can not be made to maintain, in the long run, dominion over reason

and common sense, nor ultimately put down what God has ordained.

You deny, however, that slavery is sanctioned by God, and your chief

argument is, that when he gave to Adam dominion over the fruits of the

earth and the animal creation, he stopped there. "He never gave him any

further right over his fellow-men." You restrict the descendants of Adam

to a very short list of rights and powers, duties and responsibities, if

you limit them solely to those conferred and enjoined in the first

chapter of Genesis. It is very obvious that in this narrative of the

Creation, Moses did not have it in view to record any part of the law

intended for the government of man in his social or political state. Eve

was not yet created; the expulsion had not yet taken place; Cain was

unborn; and no allusion whatever is made to the manifold decrees of God

to which these events gave rise. The only serious answer this argument

deserves, is to say, what is so manifestly true, that God's not

expressly giving to Adam "any right over his fellow-men" by no means

excluded him from conferring that right on his descendants; which he in

fact did. We know that Abraham, the chosen one of God, exercised it and

held property in his fellow-man, even anterior to the period when

property in land was acknowledged. We might infer that God had

authorized it. But we are not reduced to inference or conjecture. At the

hazard of fatiguing you by repetition, I will again refer you to the

ordinances of the Scriptures. Innumerable instances might be quoted

where God has given and commanded men to assume dominion over their

fellow-men. But one will suffice. In the twenty-fifth chapter of

Leviticus, you will find _domestic slavery--precisely such as is

maintained at this day in these States--ordained and established by God,

in language which I defy you to pervert so as to leave a doubt on any

honest mind that this institution was founded by him, and decreed to be

perpetual_. I quote the words:

Leviticus xxv. 44-46: "Both thy bond-men and thy bond-maids which thou

shalt have, shall be of the heathen [Africans] that are round about you:

of _them ye shall buy bond-men and bond-maids_.

"Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you,

of them shall ye buy, _and of their families that are with you which

they begat in your land_ [descendants of Africans?] and they shall be

your possession.

"_And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you,

to inherit them for a possession._ THEY SHALL BE YOUR BOND-MEN FOREVER."

What human legislature could make a decree more full and explicit than

this? What court of law or chancery could defeat a title to a slave

couched in terms so clear and complete as these? And this is the _law of

God_, whom you pretend to worship, while you denounce and traduce us for

respecting it.

It seems scarcely credible, but the fact is so, that you deny this law

so plainly written, and in the face of it have the hardihood to declare

that "though slavery is not _specifically_, yet it is _virtually_,

_forbidden_ in the Scriptures, because all the crimes which necessarily

arises out of slavery, and which can arise from no other source, are

reprobated there and threatened with divine vengeance." Such an unworthy

subterfuge is scarcely entitled to consideration. But its gross

absurdity may be exposed in few words. I do not know what crimes you

particularly allude to as arising from slavery. But you will perhaps

admit--not because they are denounced in the decalogue, which the

abolitionists respect only so far as they choose, but because it is the

_immediate interest_ of most men to admit--that disobedience to parents,

adultery, and stealing, are crimes. Yet these crimes "necessarily arise

from" the relations of parent and child, marriage, and the possession of

private property; at least they "can arise from no other sources." Then,

according to your argument, it is "virtually forbidden" to marry, to

beget children, and to hold private property! Nay, it is forbidden to

live, since murder can only be perpetrated on living subjects. You add

that "in the same way the gladiatorial shows of old, and other barbarous

customs, were not specifically forbidden in the New Testament, and yet

Christianity was the sole means of their suppression." This is very

true. But these shows and barbarous customs thus suppressed were not

_authorised by God_. They were not ordained and commanded by God for the

benefit of his chosen people and mankind, as the purchase and holding of

bond-men and bond-maids were. Had they been they would never have been

"suppressed by Christianity" any more than slavery can be by your party.

Although Christ came "not to destroy but fulfill the law," he

nevertheless did formally abrogate some of the ordinances promulgated by

Moses, and all such as were at war with his mission of "peace and

good-will on earth." He "specifically" annuls, for instance, one

"barbarous custom" sanctioned by those ordinances, where he says, "ye

have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a

tooth; but I say unto you that ye resist not evil, but whosoever shall

smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." Now, in the

time of Christ, it was usual for masters to put their slaves to death on

the slightest provocation. They even killed and cut them up to feed

their fishes. He was undoubtedly aware of these things, as well as of

the law and commandment I have quoted. He could only have been

restrained from denouncing them, as he did the "_lex talionis_," because

he knew that in despite of these barbarities the institution of slavery

was at the bottom a sound and wholesome, as well as lawful one. Certain

it is, that in his wisdom and purity he did not see proper to interfere

with it. In your wisdom, however, you make the sacrilegious attempt to

overthrow it.

You quote the denunciation of Tyre and Sidon, and say that "the chief

reason given by the prophet Joel for their destruction, was, that they

were notorious beyond all others for carrying on the slave trade." I am

afraid you think we have no Bibles in the slave States, or that we are

unable to read them. I can not otherwise account for your making this

reference, unless indeed your own reading is confined to an expurgated

edition, prepared for the use of abolitionists, in which every thing

relating to slavery that militates against their view of it is left out.

The prophet Joel denounces the Tyrians and Sidonians, because "the

children also of Judah and the children of Jerusalem have ye sold unto

the Grecians." And what is the divine vengeance for this "notorious

slave trading?" Hear it. "And I will sell your sons and daughters into

the hands of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the

Sabeans, to a people far off; for the Lord hath spoken it." Do you call

this a condemnation of slave trading? The prophet makes God himself a

participator in the crime, if that be one. "The Lord hath spoken it," he

says, that the Tyrians and Sidonians shall be _sold into slavery to

strangers_. Their real offense was, in enslaving the chosen people; and

their sentence was a repetition of the old command, to make slaves of

the heathen round about.

I have dwelt upon your scriptural argument, because you profess to

believe the Bible; because a large proportion of the abolitionists

profess to do the same, and to act under its sanction; because your

circular is addressed in part to "professing Christians;" and because it

is from that class mainly that you expect to seduce converts to your

anti-christian, I may say, infidel doctrines. It would be wholly

unnecessary to answer you, to any one who reads the Scriptures for

himself, and construes them according to any other formula than that

which the abolitionists are wickedly endeavoring to impose upon the

world. The scriptural sanction of slavery is in fact so palpable, and so

strong, that both wings of your party are beginning to acknowledge it.

The more sensible and moderate admit, as the organ of the Free Church of

Scotland, the _North British Review_, has lately done, that they "_are

precluded by the statements and conduct of the Apostles from regarding

mere slaveholding as essentially sinful_," while the desperate and

reckless, who are bent on keeping up the agitation at every hazard,

declare, as has been done in the _Anti-Slavery Record_, "If our inquiry

turns out in favor of slavery, IT IS THE BIBLE THAT MUST FALL, AND NOT

THE RIGHTS OF HUMAN NATURE." You can not, I am satisfied, much longer

maintain before the world the Christian platform from which to wage war

upon our institutions. Driven from it, you must abandon the contest, or,

repudiating REVELATION, rush into the horrors of NATURAL RELIGION.

You next complain that our slaves are kept in bondage by the "law of

force." In what country or condition of mankind do you see human affairs

regulated merely by the law of love? Unless I am greatly mistaken, you

will, if you look over the world, find nearly all certain and permanent

rights, civil, social, and I may even add religious, resting on and

ultimately secured by the "law of force." The power of majorities--of

aristocracies--of kings--nay of priests, for the most part, and of

property, resolves itself at last into "force," and could not otherwise

be long maintained. Thus, in every turn of your argument against our

system of slavery, you advance, whether conscious of it or not, radical

and revolutionary doctrines calculated to change the whole face of the

world, to overthrow all government, disorganize society, and reduce man

to a state of nature--red with blood, and shrouded once more in barbaric

ignorance. But you greatly err, if you suppose, because we rely on force

in the last resort to maintain our supremacy over our slaves, that ours

is a stern and unfeeling domination, at all to be compared in

hard-hearted severity to that exercised, not over the mere laborer only,

but by the higher over each lower order, wherever the British sway is

acknowledged. You say, that if those you address were "to spend one day

in the South, they would return home with impressions against slavery

never to be erased." But the fact is universally the reverse. I have

known numerous instances, and I never knew a single one, where there was

no other cause of offense, and no object to promote by falsehood, that

individuals from the non-slaveholding States did not, after residing

among us long enough to understand the subject, "return home" _to defend

our slavery_. It is matter of regret that you have never tried the

experiment yourself. I do not doubt you would have been converted, for I

give you credit for an honest though perverted mind. You would have seen

how weak and futile is all abstract reasoning about this matter, and

that, as a building may not be less elegant in its proportions, or

tasteful in its ornaments, or virtuous in its uses, for being based upon

granite, so a system of human government, though founded on force, may

develope and cultivate the tenderest and purest sentiments of the human

heart. And our patriarchal scheme of domestic servitude is indeed well

calculated to awaken the higher and finer feelings of our nature. It is

not wanting in its enthusiasm and its poetry. The relations of the most

beloved and honored chief, and the most faithful and admiring subjects,

which, from the time of Homer, have been the theme of song, are frigid

and unfelt compared with those existing between the master and his

slaves--who served his father, and rocked his cradle, or have been born

in his household, and look forward to serve his children--who have been

through life the props of his fortune, and the objects of his care--who

have partaken of his griefs, and looked to him for comfort in their

own--whose sickness he has so frequently watched over and

relieved--whose holidays he has so often made joyous by his bounties and

his presence; for whose welfare, when absent, his anxious solicitude

never ceases, and whose hearty and affectionate greetings never fail to

welcome him home. In this cold, calculating, ambitious world of ours,

there are few ties more heartfelt, or of more benignant influence, than

those which mutually bind the master and the slave, under our ancient

system, handed down from the father of Israel. The unholy purpose of the

abolitionists is, to destroy by defiling it; to infuse into it the gall

and bitterness which rankle in their own envenomed bosoms; to poison the

minds of the master and the servant; turn love to hatred, array _"force"

against force_, and hurl all

"With hideous rain and combustion, down

To bottomless perdition."

You think it a great "crime" that we do not pay our slaves "wages," and

on this account pronounce us "robbers." In my former letter, I showed

that the labor of our slaves was not without great cost to us, and that

in fact they themselves receive more in return for it than your

hirelings do for theirs. For what purpose do men labor, but to support

themselves and their families in what comfort they are able? The efforts

of mere physical labor seldom suffice to provide more than a livelihood.

And it is a well known and shocking fact, that while few operatives in

Great Britain succeed in securing a comfortable living, the greater part

drag out a miserable existence, and sink at last under absolute want.

Of what avail is it that you go through the form of paying them a

pittance of what you call "wages," when you do not, in return for their

services, allow them what alone they ask--and have a just right to

demand--enough to feed, clothe and lodge them, in health and sickness,

with reasonable comfort. Though we do not give "wages" _in money_, we do

this for _our slaves_, and they are therefore better rewarded than

_yours_. It is the prevailing vice and error of the age, and one from

which the abolitionists, with all their saintly pretensions, are far

from being free, to bring every thing to the standard of money. You make

gold and silver the great test of happiness. The American slave must be

wretched indeed, because he is not compensated for his services _in

cash_. It is altogether praiseworthy to pay the laborer a shilling a

day, and let him starve on it. To supply all his wants abundantly, and

at all times, yet withhold from him _money_, is among "the most

reprobated crimes." The fact can not be denied, that the mere laborer is

now, and always has been, everywhere that barbarism has ceased,

enslaved. Among the innovations of modern times, following "the decay of

villeinage," has been the creation of a new system of slavery. The

primitive and patriarchal, which may also be called the sacred and

natural system, in which the laborer is under the personal control of a

fellow-being endowed with the sentiments and sympathies of humanity,

exists among us. It has been almost everywhere else superseded by the

modern _artificial money power system_, in which man--his thews and

sinews, his hopes and affections, his very being, are all subjected to

the dominion of _capital_--a monster without a heart--cold, stern,

arithmetical--sticking to the bond--taking ever "the pound of

flesh"--working up human life with engines, and retailing it out by

weight and measure. His name of old was "Mammon, the least erected

spirit that fell from heaven." And it is to extend his empire that you

and your deluded coadjutors dedicate your lives. You are stirring up

mankind to overthrow our heaven-ordained system of servitude, surrounded

by innumerable checks, designed and planted deep in the human heart by

God and nature, to substitute the absolute rule of this "spirit

reprobate," whose proper place was hell.

You charge us with looking on our slaves "as chattels or brutes," and

enter into a somewhat elaborate argument to prove that they have "human

forms," "talk," and even "think." Now the fact is, that however you may

indulge in this strain for effect, it is the abolitionists, and not the

slaveholders, who, practically, and in the most important point of view,

regard our slaves as "chattels or brutes." In your calculations of the

consequences of emancipation, you pass over entirely those which must

prove most serious, and which arise from the fact of their being

_persons_.

You appear to think that we might abstain from the use of them as

readily as if they were machines to be laid aside, or cattle that might

be turned out to find pasturage for themselves. I have heretofore

glanced at some of the results that would follow from breaking the bonds

of so many _human beings_, now peacefully and happily linked into our

social system. The tragic horrors, the decay and ruin that would for

years, perhaps for ages, brood over our land, if it could be

accomplished, I will not attempt to portray. But do you fancy the blight

would, in such an event, come to us alone? The diminution of the sugar

crop of the West Indies affected Great Britain only, and there chiefly

the poor. It was a matter of no moment to capital, that labor should

have one comfort less. Yet it has forced a reduction of the British duty

on sugar. Who can estimate the consequences that must follow the

annihilation of the cotton crop of the slaveholding States? I do not

undervalue the importance of other articles of commerce, but no calamity

could befall the world at all comparable to the sudden loss of two

millions of bales of cotton annually. From the deserts of Africa to the

Siberian wilds--from Greenland to the Chinese wall,--there is not a spot

of earth but would feel the sensation. The factories of Europe would

fall with a concussion that would shake down castles, palaces, and even

thrones; while the "purse-proud, elbowing insolence" of our Northern

monopolist would soon disappear forever under the smooth speech of the

pedlar, scourging our frontiers for a livelihood, or the bluff vulgarity

of the South Sea whaler, following the harpoon amid storms and shoals.

Doubtless the abolitionists think we could grow cotton without slaves,

or that at worst the reduction of the crop would be moderate and

temporary. Such gross delusions show how profoundly ignorant they are of

our condition here.

You declare that "the character of the people of the South has long been

that of _hardened infidels_, who fear not God, and have no regard for

religion." I will not repeat what I said in my former letter on this

point. I only notice it to ask you how you could possibly reconcile it

to your profession of a Christian spirit, to make such a malicious

charge--to defile your soul with such a calumny against an unoffending

people?

"You are old;

Nature in you stands on the very verge

Of her confine. You should be ruled and led

By some discretion."

May God forgive you.

Akin to this, is the wanton and furious assault made on us by Mr.

Macaulay, in his late speech on the sugar duties, in the House of

Commons, which has just reached me. His denunciations are wholly without

measure, and, among other things, he asserts "that slavery in the United

States wears its worst form; that, boasting of our civilization and

freedom, and frequenting Christian churches, we breed up slaves, nay,

beget children for slaves, and sell them at so much a-head." Mr.

Macaulay is a reviewer, and he knows that he is "nothing if not

critical." The practice of his trade has given him the command of all

the slashing and vituperative phrases of our language, and the turn of

his mind leads him to the habitual use of them. He is an author, and as

no copy-right law secures for him from this country a consideration for

his writings, he is not only independent of us, but naturally hates

every thing American. He is the representative of Edinburgh; it is his

cue to decry our slavery, and in doing so he may safely indulge the

malignity of his temper, his indignation against us, and his capacity

for railing. He has suffered once, for being in advance of his time in

favor of abolition, and he does not intend that it shall be forgotten,

or his claim passed over, to any crumb which may now be thrown to the

vociferators in the cause. If he does not know that the statements he

has made respecting the slaveholders of this country are vile and

atrocious falsehoods, it is because he does not think it worth his while

to be sure he speaks the truth, so that he speaks to his own purpose.

"Hic niger est, hunc tu, Romane caveto."

Such exhibitions as he has made, may draw the applause of a British

House of Commons, but among the sound and high-minded thinkers of the

world they can only excite contempt and disgust.

But you are not content with depriving us of all religious feelings. You

assert that our slavery has also "demoralized the Northern States," and

charge upon it not only every common violation of good order there, but

the "Mormon murders," the "Philadelphia riots," and all "the

exterminating wars against the Indians." I wonder that you did not

increase the list by adding that it had caused the recent inundation of

the Mississippi, and the hurricane in the West Indies--perhaps the

insurrection of Rebecca, and the war in Scinde. You refer to the law

prohibiting the transmission of abolition publications through the mail,

as proof of general corruption! You could not do so, however, without

noticing the late detected espionage over the British post office by a

minister of state. It is true, as you say, it "occasioned a general

outburst of national feeling"--from the opposition; and a "Parliamentary

inquiry was instituted"--that is, moved, but treated quite cavalierly.

At all events, though the fact was admitted, Sir James Graham yet

retains the Home Department. For one, I do not undertake to condemn him.

Such things are not against the laws and usages of your country. I do

not know fully what reasons of state may have influenced him and

justified his conduct. But I do know that there is a vast difference in

point of "national morality" between the discretionary power residing in

your government to open any letter in the public post office, and a

well-defined and limited law to prevent the circulation of certain

specified incendiary writings by means of the United States mail.

Having now referred to every thing like argument on the subject of

slavery, that is worthy of notice in your letter, permit me to remark on

its tone and style, and very extraordinary bearing upon other

institutions of this country. You commence by addressing certain classes

of our people, as belonging to "a nation whose character is _now so low_

in the estimation of the civilized world;" and throughout you maintain

this tone. Did the Americans who were "under your roof last summer"

inform you that such language would be gratifying to their

fellow-citizens "having no practical concern with slaveholding?" Or do

the infamous libels on America, which you read in our abolition papers,

induce you to believe that all that class of people are, like the

abolitionists themselves, totally destitute of patriotism or pride of

country? Let me tell you that you are grossly deceived. And although

your stock-brokers and other speculators, who have been bitten in

American ventures, may have raised a stunning "cry" against us in

England, there is a vast body of people here besides slaveholders, who

justly

"Deem their own land of every land the pride,

Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside,"

and who _know_ that at this moment we rank among the first powers of the

world--a position which we not only claim, but are always ready and able

to maintain.

The style you assume in addressing your Northern friends, is in perfect

keeping with your apparent estimation of them. Though I should be the

last, perhaps, to criticise mere style, I could not but be struck with

the extremely simple manner of your letter. You seem to have thought you

were writing a tract for benighted heathen, and telling wonders never

before suggested to their imagination, and so far above their untutored

comprehension as to require to be related in the primitive language of

"the child's own book." This is sufficiently amusing; and would be more

so, but for the coarse and bitter epithets you continually apply to the

poor slaveholders--epithets which appear to be stereotyped for the use

of abolitionists, and which form a large and material part of all their

arguments.

But, perhaps, the most extraordinary part of your letter is your bold

denunciation of "_the shameful compromises_" of our Constitution, and

your earnest recommendation to those you address to overthrow or

revolutionize it. In so many words you say to them, "_you must either

separate yourselves_ from all political connection with the South, and

make your own laws; or if you do not choose such a separation, you must

break up _the political ascendency which the Southern have had for so

long a time over the Northern States_. The italics in this, as in all

other quotations, are your own. It is well for those who circulate your

letter here, that the Constitution you denounce requires an overt act to

constitute treason. It may be tolerated for an American by birth, to use

on his own soil the freedom of speaking and writing which is guaranteed

him, and abuse our Constitution, our Union, and our people. But that a

foreigner should use such seditious language, in a circular letter

addressed to a portion of the American people, is a presumption well

calculated to excite the indignation of all. The party known in this

country as the abolition party has long since avowed the sentiments you

express, and adopted the policy you enjoin. At the recent presidential

election, they gave over 62,000 votes for their own candidate, and held

the balance of power in two of the largest States--wanting but little of

doing it in several others. In the last four years their vote has

quadrupled. Should the infatuation continue, and their vote increase in

the same ratio for the next four years, it will be as large as the vote

of the _actual slaveholders_ of the Union. Such a prospect is,

doubtless, extremely gratifying to you. It gives hope of a contest on

such terms as may insure the downfall of slavery or our Constitution.

The South venerates the Constitution, and is prepared to stand by it

forever, _such as it came from the hands of our fathers_; to risk every

thing to defend and maintain it _in its integrity_. But the South is

under no such delusion as to believe that it derives any _peculiar_

protection from the Union. On the contrary, it is well known we incur

_peculiar danger_, and that we bear far more than our porportion of the

burdens. The apprehension is also fast fading away that any of the

dreadful consequences commonly predicted will necessarily result from a

separation of the States. And _come what may_, we are firmly resolved

that OUR SYSTEM OF DOMESTIC SLAVERY SHALL STAND. The fate of the Union,

then--but, thank God, not of republican government--rests mainly in the

hands of the people to whom your letter is addressed--the "professing

Christians of the Northern States having no concern with slaveholding,"

and whom with incendiary zeal you are endeavoring to stir up to

strife--without which fanaticism can neither live, move, nor have any

being.

We have often been taunted for our sensitiveness in regard to the

discussion of slavery. Do not suppose it is because we have any doubts

of our rights, or scruples about asserting them. There was a time when

such doubts and scruples were entertained. Our ancestors opposed the

introduction of slaves into this country, and a feeling adverse to it

was handed down from them. The enthusiastic love of liberty fostered by

our Revolution strengthened this feeling. And before the commencement of

the abolition agitation here, it was the common sentiment that it was

desirable to get rid of slavery. Many thought it our duty to do so. When

that agitation arose, we were driven to a close examination of the

subject in all its bearings, and the result has been an _universal

conviction_ that in holding slaves we violate no law of God,--inflict no

injustice on any of his creatures--while the terrible consequences of

emancipation to all parties and the world at large, clearly revealed to

us, make us shudder at the bare thought of it. The slaveholders are,

therefore, indebted to the abolitionists for perfect ease of conscience,

and the satisfaction of a settled and unanimous determination in

reference to this matter. And could their agitation cease now, I

believe, after all, the good would preponderate over the evil of it in

this country. On the contrary, however, it is urged on with frantic

violence, and the abolitionists, reasoning in the abstract, as if it

were a mere moral or metaphysical speculation, or a minor question in

politics, profess to be surprised at our exasperation. In their

ignorance and recklessness, they seem to be unable to comprehend our

feelings or position. The subversion of our rights, the destruction of

our property, the disturbance of our peace and the peace of the world,

are matters which do not appear to arrest their consideration. When

revolutionary France proclaimed "hatred to kings and unity to the

republic," and inscribed on her banners "France risen against tyrants,"

she professed to be only worshiping "abstract rights." And if there can

be such things, perhaps she was. Yet all Europe _rose_ to put her

sublime theories down. They declared her an enemy to the common peace;

that her doctrines alone violated the "law of neighborhood," and, as Mr.

Burke said, justly entitled them to anticipate the "damnum nondum

factum" of the civil law. Danton, Barrere, and the rest were apparently

astonished that umbrage should be taken. The parallel between them and

the abolitionists holds good in all respects.

The rise and progress of this fanaticism is one of the phenomena of the

age in which we live. I do not intend to repeat what I have already

said, or to trace its career more minutely at present. But the

legislation of Great Britain will make it historical, and doubtless you

must feel some curiosity to know how it will figure on the page of the

annalist. I think I can tell you. Though I have accorded and do accord

to you and your party, great influence in bringing about the

parliamentary action of your country, you must not expect to go down to

posterity as the only cause of it. Though _you_ trace the progenitors of

abolition from 1516, through a long stream with divers branches, down

to the period of its triumph in your country, it has not escaped

contemporaries, and will not escape posterity, that England, without

much effort, sustained the storm of its scoffs and threats, until the

moment arrived when she thought her colonies fully supplied with

Africans; and declared against the slave trade, only when she deemed it

unnecessary to her, and when her colonies, full of slaves, would have

great advantages over others not so well provided. Nor did she agree to

West India emancipation, until, discovering the error of her previous

calculation, it became an object to have slaves free throughout the

Western world, and, on the ruins of the sugar and cotton-growers of

America and the Islands, to build up her great slave empire in the East;

while her indefatigable exertions, still continued, to engraft the right

of search upon the law of nations, on the plea of putting an end to the

forever increasing slave trade, are well understood to have chiefly in

view the complete establishment of her supremacy at sea.[256] Nor must

you flatter yourself that your party will derive historic dignity from

the names of the illustrious British statesmen who have acted with it.

Their country's ends were theirs. They have stooped to use you, as the

most illustrious men will sometimes use the vilest instruments, to

accomplish their own purposes. A few philanthropic common places and

rhetorical flourishes, "in the abstract," have secured them your "sweet

voices," and your influence over the tribe of mawkish sentimentalists.

Wilberforce may have been yours, but what was he besides, but a wealthy

county member? You must, therefore, expect to stand on your own merits

alone before posterity, or rather that portion of it that may be curious

to trace the history of the delusions which, from time to time, pass

over the surface of human affairs, and who may trouble themselves to

look through the ramifications of transcendentalism, in this era of

extravagances. And how do you expect to appear in their eyes? As

Christians, piously endeavoring to enforce the will of God, and carry

out the principles of Christianity? Certainly not, since you deny or

pervert the Scriptures in the doctrines you advance; and in your

conduct, furnish a glaring contrast to the examples of Christ and the

apostles. As philanthropists, devoting yourselves to the cause of

humanity, relieving the needy, comforting the afflicted, creating peace

and gladness and plenty round about you? Certainly not, since you turn

from the needy, the afflicted; from strife, sorrow and starvation which

surround you; close your eyes and hands upon them; shut out from your

thoughts and feelings the human misery which is real, tangible, and

within your reach, to indulge your morbid imagination in conjuring up

woes and wants among a strange people in distant lands, and offering

them succor in the shape of costless denunciations of their best

friends, or by scattering among them "firebrands, arrows and death."

Such folly and madness, such wild mockery and base imposture, can never

win for you, in the sober judgment of future times, the name of

philanthropists. Will you even be regarded as worthy citizens? Scarcely,

when the purposes you have in view, can only be achieved by

revolutionizing governments and overturning social systems, and when you

do not hesitate, zealously and earnestly, to recommend such measures. Be

assured, then, that posterity will not regard the abolitionists as

Christians, philanthropists, or virtuous citizens. It will, I have no

doubt, look upon the mass of the party as silly enthusiasts, led away by

designing characters, as is the case with all parties that break from

the great, acknowledged ties which bind civilized man in fellowship. The

leaders themselves will be regarded as _mere ambitious men_; not taking

rank with those whose ambition is "eagle-winged and sky-aspiring," but

belonging to that mean and selfish class, who are instigated by

"rival-hating envy," and whose base thirst is for _notoriety_; who cloak

their designs under vile and impious hypocrisies, and, unable to shine

in higher spheres, devote themselves to fanaticism, as a trade. And it

will be perceived that, even in that, they shunned the highest walk.

Religious fanaticism was an old established vocation, in which something

brilliant was required to attract attention. They could not be George

Foxes, nor Joanna Southcotes, nor even Joe Smiths. But the dullest

pretender could discourse a jumble of pious bigotry, natural rights, and

driveling philanthropy. And, addressing himself to aged folly and

youthful vanity, to ancient women, to ill-gotten wealth, to the

reckless of all classes, who love excitement and change, offer each the

cheapest and the safest glory in the market. Hence, their numbers; and,

from number and clamor, what impression they have made on the world.

Such, I am persuaded, is the light in which the abolitionists will be

viewed by the posterity their history may reach. Unless, indeed--which

God forbid--circumstances should so favor as to enable them to produce a

convulsion which may elevate them higher on the "bad eminence" where

they have placed themselves.

I have the honor to be

Your obedient servant,

J. H. HAMMOND.

THOMAS CLARKSON, Esq.

NOTE.--The foregoing Letters were not originally intended for

publication. In preparing them for the press, they have been revised.

The alterations and corrections made, however, have been mostly verbal.

Had the writer felt at liberty to condense the two letters into one, and

bring up the history of abolition to the period of publication, he might

have presented a more concise and perfect argument, and illustrated his

views more forcibly, by reference to facts recently developed. For

example, since writing the first, the letter of Mr. Clarkson, as

President of the British Anti-Slavery Society, to Sir Robert Peel,

denouncing the whole scheme of "Immigration," has reached him; and after

he had forwarded the last, he saw it stated, that Mr. Clarkson had, as

late as the first part of April, addressed the Earl of Aberdeen, and

declared, that all efforts to suppress the African slave trade had fully

failed. It may be confidently expected, that it will be ere long

announced from the same quarter, that the "experiment" of West India

emancipation has also proved a complete abortion.

Should the terms which have been applied to the abolitionists appear to

any as unduly severe, let it be remembered, that the direct aim of these

people is to destroy us by the most shocking of all processes; and that,

having a large portion of the civilized world for their audience, they

daily and systematically heap upon us the vilest calumnies and most

unmitigated abuse. Clergymen lay aside their Bibles, and females unsex

themselves, to carry on this horrid warfare against slave holders.

FOOTNOTE:

[256] On these points, let me recommend you to consult a very able Essay

on the Slave Trade and Right of Search, by M. Jollivet, recently

published; and as you say, since writing your Circular Letter, that you

"burn to try your hand on another little Essay, if a subject could be

found," I propose to you to "try" to answer this question, put by M.

Jollivet to England: "_Pourquoi sa philanthropie n'a pas daigne, jusqu'

a present, doubler le cap de Bonne-Esperance?_"

[Illustration]

SLAVERY

IN THE LIGHT OF ETHNOLOGY.

BY

S. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D.

OF LOUISIANA.

SLAVERY

IN

THE LIGHT OF ETHNOLOGY.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEGRO CONSTITUTION, ELICITED BY QUESTIONS PROPOUNDED

BY DR. C. R. HALL, OF TORQUAY, ENGLAND, THROUGH PROF. JACKSON, OF

MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL COLLEGE, BOSTON, TO SAML. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D., NEW

ORLEANS.

[Reprinted from the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal.]

To PROF. JACKSON, Boston:--

_Dear Sir:_--The paper of mine, alluded to by your London correspondent,

Dr. Hall, which he saw in the medical work you mention, is not, as he

supposes, "_The Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the

Negro race_," the physicians of Louisiana, in convention assembled,

appointed me to make; but only some additional observations intended for

students and those persons whose want of knowledge of Comparative

Anatomy prevented them from understanding the Report. The Appendix,

intended for students, was published in the _Charleston_ (South

Carolina) _Medical Journal_, and also in the work you mention, under the

caption of the original Report to the Medical Convention, and _the

Report itself was omitted_ by the editors of those works under the

erroneous impression, that the Appendix for students contained the

substance of that paper; whereas it does so only in the sense that the

four first rules contain the substance of the arithmetic. No wonder your

intelligent correspondent should not find, in the Appendix of the

Report, the information he was seeking, and hence the questions he asks

you to refer to me for solution. I herewith beg leave to send you a copy

of the "_Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro

race_," which the Louisiana physicians appointed me to make to the State

Medical Society. In that paper your correspondent will find most of the

questions he asks already answered.

I thank you for the opportunity thus afforded me of supplying an

omission in the Southern works above alluded to, of a paper, very

imperfect and defective, it is true, yet embodying in a small space the

results of the experience and observation of a Southern practitioner,

extending through a period of active service of a third of a century's

duration, and which had the honor to meet with the approbation of the

physicians generally of the South. To the few questions not answered

therein I propose to reply, and at the same time to extend my remarks on

that branch of the subject more directly connected with the particular

object of your correspondent's investigations.

To the question, "Is not Phthisis very common among the slaves of the

slave States and unknown among the native Africans at home?" I reply in

the negative, that Phthisis, so far from being common among the slaves

of the slave States, is very seldom met with. As to the native Africans

at home, little or nothing is known of their diseases. They have no

science or literature among them, and never had. The word Consumption,

is applied to two very different diseases among negroes. The Cachexia

Africana, Dirt-eating of the English, and Mal d'Estomac of the French,

commonly called Negro Consumption, is a very different malady from

Phthisis Pulmonalis, properly so called. The Cachexia Africana, like

other spanoemic states of the system, may run into Phthisis, or become

complicated with it. Dr. Hall asks, in what does the peculiarity of

Negro Consumption consist? It consists in being an anoematosis and not a

tuberculosis. Not having seen my Report, he may have inferred that it

was a tubercular disease--whereas it is an erythism of mind connected

with spanoemia. Negroes, however, are sometimes, though rarely,

afflicted with tubercula pulmonum, or Phthisis, properly so called,

which has some peculiarities. With them it is more palpably a secondary

disease than it appears to be among white people. European physicians

are just beginning to see and acknowledge the truth taught by our Rush

in the last century, that what is called Phthisis Pulmonalis is not a

primary, but a secondary disease; the tubercles of the lungs not being a

cause, but an effect of the primary or original vice of blood origin, or

as he called it, general debility. For half a century the attention of

the medical profession has been directed to the special and ultimate

results of Phthisis, instead of the primary condition of the system

causing the formation of tubercles. The new knowledge, derived from the

stethoscope, by detecting those abnormal deposits of abortive nutrition,

called tubercles, has been received for more than its worth, and has

greatly served to keep up the delusion of treating effects instead of

causes. The tubercular deposits, revealed by auscultation, are not only

the effects of abortive nutrition, but the latter is itself the effect

of some derangement in the digestive and respiratory functions,

vitiating the nutritive fluids, and producing what Rush called general

debility. The defect in the respiratory organs arises from the fact,

long overlooked, that in a great many persons, particularly the

Anglo-Saxons, the lungs are inadequate to the task of depurating the

superabundant blood, which is thrown upon them at the age of maturity,

unless aided by an occasional blood-letting, active and abundant

exercise of the muscles in the open air, and a nutritious diet, as

advised by the American Hippocrates, Benjamin Rush. White children

sometimes have Phthisis, but here, as everywhere, it is a rare complaint

before maturity (twenty-one in the male and eighteen in the female.) The

lymphatic and nervous temperament predominating until then, secures them

against this fell destroyer of the master race of men. Phthisis is, par

excellence, a disease of the sanguineous temperament, fair complexion,

red or flaxen hair, blue eyes, large blood vessels, and a bony

encasement too small to admit the full and free expansion of the lungs,

enlarged by the superabundant blood, which is determined to those organs

during that first half-score of years immediately succeeding puberty.

Well-formed chests offer no impediment to its inroads, if the volume of

blood be out of proportion to the expansibility and capacity of the

pulmonary organs. Hence it is most apt to occur precisely at, and

immediately following, that period of life known as matureness, when the

sanguineous system becomes fully developed and gains the mastery, so to

speak, over the lymphatic and nervous systems. With negroes, the

sanguineous never gains the mastery over the lymphatic and nervous

systems. Their digestive powers, like children, are strong, and their

secretions and excretions copious, excepting the urine, which is rather

scant. At the age of maturity they do not become dyspeptic and feeble

with softening and attenuation of the muscles, as among those white

people suffering the ills of a defective system of physical education,

and a want of a wholesome, nutritious diet.

Your correspondent asks, "_Do the slaves consume much sugar, or take rum

in intoxicating quantities?_"

They do not consume much sugar, but are occasionally supplied with

molasses. Their diet consists principally of pickled pork and corn

bread, rice, hominy, beans, peas, potatoes, yams, pumpkins and turnips.

Soups, tea, coffee and slops, are seldom used by those in health, and

they object to all such articles of diet, as making them weak. They

prefer the fattest pork to the lean. In the Atlantic States salted fish

is substituted for or alternated with pork--the shad, mackerel and

herring, principally the latter. In Cuba pickled beef is used, but they

prefer pork. Their diet is of the most nutritious kind, and they will

not labor with much effect on any other than a strong, rich diet. With

very few exceptions, they do not take rum or other intoxicating drinks,

except as a medicine, or in holiday times. Something equivalent to the

"_Maine Liquor Law_," (which you can explain to your correspondent,) has

long been in practical operation on all well regulated Southern

plantations. The experience of two centuries testifies to the advantages

of restraining the black population, _by arbitrary power_, from the free

use of intoxicating poisons. Man has no better natural right to poison

himself or his neighbor, than to maim, wound or kill himself or his

neighbor. In regard to intoxicating drinks, the negroes of the South are

under wiser laws than any other people in the Union--those of Maine

excepted. But these wise unwritten laws do not so well protect those

negroes who reside in or near towns and villages, and are not under

proper discipline. The Melanic race have a much stronger propensity to

indulge in the intemperate use of ardent spirits than white people. They

appear to have a natural fondness for alcoholic drinks and tobacco. They

need no schooling, as the fair skin races do, to acquire a fondness for

either. Nearly all chew tobacco or smoke, and are not sickened and

disgusted with the taste of that weed as white men always are when they

first begin to use it. As an instance of their natural love for ardent

spirits, I was called to a number of negro children, who found a bottle

of whisky under a bed, and drank it all without dilution, although it

was the first they had ever tasted. It contained arsenic, and had been

placed where they found it by the father of some of the children, with a

view of poisoning a supposed enemy. But with that want of forethought,

so characteristic of the negro race, he did not think of the greater

probability of his own children finding and drinking the poison than the

enemy he intended it for.

I am asked, "_If I have determined by my own observation the facts in

regard to the darker color of the secretions, the flesh, the membranes

and the blood of the negro than the white man--or is the statement made

on the authority of others?_"

The statement is made on the authority of some of the most distinguished

anatomists and physiologists of the last century, confirmed by my own

repeated observations. The authorities to which I particularly refer are

Malpighi, Stubner, Meckel, Pechlin, Albinus, Soemmering, Virey and Ebel.

Almost every year of my professional life, except a few years when

abroad, I have made post mortem examinations of negroes, who have died

of various diseases, and I have invariably found the darker color

pervading the flesh and the membranes to be very evident in all those

who died of acute diseases. Chronic ailments have a tendency to destroy

the coloring matter, and generally cause the mucous surfaces to be paler

and whiter than in the white race.

I now come to the main and important question--the last of the series,

and the most important of all, viz: "_How is it ascertained that negroes

consume less oxygen than white people?_"

I answer, by the spirometer. I have delayed my reply to make some

further experiments on this branch of the subject. The result is, that

the expansibility of the lungs is considerably less in the black than

the white race of similar size, age and habit. A white boy expelled from

his lungs a larger volume of air than a negro half a head taller and

three inches larger around the chest. The deficiency in the negro may be

safely estimated at 20 per cent, according to a number of observations I

have made at different times. Thus, 174 being the mean bulk of air

receivable by the lungs of a white person of five feet in height, 140

cubic inches are given out by a negro of the same stature. It must be

remembered, however, that great variations occur in the bulk of air

which can be expelled from the chest, depending much upon the age, size,

health and habits of each individual. But, as a general rule, it may be

safely stated, that a white man, of the same age and size, who has been

bred to labor, is, in comparison to the negro, extra capacious. To judge

the negro by spirometrical observations made on the white man, would

indicate, in the former a morbid condition when none existed. But I am

free to confess that this is a subject open to further observations. My

estimate may be under or over the exact difference of the capacity of

the two races for the consumption of oxygen.

The question is also answered _anatomically_, by the comparatively

larger size of the liver, and the smaller size of the lungs; and

_physiologically_, by the _roule_ the liver performs in the negro's

economy being greater, and that of the lungs and kidneys less, than in

the white man. But I have not the honor to be the first to call

attention to the difference in the pulmonary apparatus of the negro and

the white man, and to the fact of the deficiency in the renal secretion.

The honor is due to Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United

States. In his Notes on Virginia, Mr. Jefferson suggested that there was

a difference in the pulmonary apparatus of negroes, and that they do not

extricate as much caloric from the air by respiration, and

consesequently consume less oxygen. He also called attention to the fact

of the defective action of the kidneys. He remarks, "To our reproach be

it said, that although the negro race has been under our eye for a

century and a half, it has not been considered as a subject of natural

history." Another half century has passed away, and nothing has yet been

done to acquire a knowledge of the diseases and physical peculiarities

of a people, constituting nearly a moiety of the population of fifteen

States of the American confederacy, and whose labor, in cultivating a

single plant, which no other operatives but themselves can cultivate

without sacrificing ease, comfort, health and life, affords a cheap

material, in sufficient abundance, to clothe the naked of the whole

world. Even the little scientific knowledge heretofore acquired

concerning them, has been so far forgotten, that when I enumerated a few

of their anatomical and physical peculiarities, well known to the

medical men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I was supposed

by some of my cotemporaries in the South to be broaching novelties and

advancing speculations wild and crude. But I would not be understood as

underrating the editors of the _Charleston Medical Journal_ and some

other Southern writers, for mistaking anatomical facts for wild

speculations, and condemning them as such in their editorial apologies

for not publishing the same. The fault lies not with them, but in that

system of education which seems intended to keep physicians, divines,

and all other classes of men in Egyptian darkness of every thing

pertaining to the philosophy of the negro constitution. It is only the

country and village practitioners of the Southern States (among

professional men,) who appear to know any thing at all about the

peculiar nature of negroes--having derived their knowledge, not from

books or schools, but in the field of experience. It is the latter class

of medical men, by far the most numerous in the South, who have with

great unanimity sustained my feeble efforts to make the negro's peculiar

nature known, and the important fact that he consumes less oxygen than

the white man. Until his defective hæmatosis be made an element in

calculating the best means for improving the negro's condition, our

Northern people ought not to wonder at finding their colored population,

born to freedom by the side of the church and school-house door, in a

lower species of degradation, after trying for half a century or more to

elevate them, than an equal number of slaves any where to be found in

the South. "Will not a lover of natural history," says Mr. Jefferson,

"one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye

of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those of the department of man

as distinct as nature formed them?" But no effort has since been made to

draw the distinctions between the black and the white races by the knife

of the anatomist, but much false logic has been introduced into our

books and schools, to argue down the distinctions which nature has made.

It is to anatomy and physiology we should look, when vindicating the

liberty of human nature, to see that its dignity and best interest be

preserved. "Among the Romans," says Mr. Jefferson, "emancipation

required but one effort, but with us a second is necessary, unknown to

history." This second belongs properly to natural history; the

difference in the last not being artificial, as among the Romans, or the

present Britons, requiring only an act of legislation or a revolution to

efface forever, but natural, which no human laws or governmental changes

can ever obliterate. The framers of our Constitution were aware of these

facts, and built the Constitution upon the basis of natural distinctions

or physical differences in the two races composing the American

population. A very important difference between the two will be found in

the fact of the greater amount of oxygen consumed by the one than the

other. If the Constitution be worth defending, surely the great truths

of natural history, on which it rests as a basis, are worth being made

known and regarded by our statesmen. That negroes consume less oxygen

than the white race, is proved by their motions being proverbially much

slower, and their want of muscular and mental activity. But to

comprehend fully the weight of this proof of their defective hæmatosis,

it is necessary to bear in mind one of the great leading truths

disclosed by comparative anatomy. Cuvier was the first to demonstrate

beyond a doubt that muscular energy and activity are in direct

proportion to the development and activity of the pulmonary organs. In

his 29th lesson, vol. vii, p. 17, D'Anatomie Comparée, he says, "_Dans

les animaux vertebrés cette quantité de respiration fait connaître

presque par un calcul mathématique la nature particulière de chaque

class_." In the preceding page he says,--"That the relations observed in

the different animals, between the quantity of their respiration and the

energy of their motive force, is one of the finest demonstrations that

comparative anatomy can furnish to physiology, and at the same time one

of the best applications of comparative anatomy to natural history." The

slower motions of the owl prove to the natural historian that it

consumes less oxygen than the eagle. By the same physiological principle

he can tell that the herring is the most active among fish, and the

flounder the slowest, by merely seeing the gills of each: those of the

herring being very large, prove that it consumes much oxygen and is very

active; while the flounder, with its small gills, consumes but little,

and is very slow in its motions as a necessary consequence. Hence the

habitual slower motions of the negro than the white man, is a positive

proof that he consumes less oxygen. The slow gait of the negro is an

important element to be taken into consideration in studying his nature.

I have the authority of one of the very best observers of mankind, that

this element in the negro's economy is particularly worthy of being

studied. It is no less an authority than the father of his country, the

first President of the United States, the illustrious Washington.

Washington knew better, perhaps, than any other man what the white man

could do; his power of endurance and strength of wind under a given

speed of motion. Yet he found that all his observations on the white

race were inapplicable to negroes. To know what they could do, and to

ascertain their power of endurance and strength of wind, new

observations had to be made, and he made them accordingly. He made them

on his own negroes. He saw they did not move like the soldiers he had

been accustomed to command. Their motions were much slower, and they

performed their tasks in a more dilatory manner; the amount of labor

they could perform in a given time, with ease and comfort to themselves,

could not be told by his knowledge of what white men could do. He

therefore noted the gait or movements natural to negroes, and made

observations himself of how much they could effect in a given time,

under the slow motions or gait natural to them. He did this to enable

him to judge of what would be a reasonable service to expect from them,

and to know when they loitered and when they performed their duty. Those

persons unacquainted with the important truth that negroes are naturally

slower in their motions than white people, judging the former by the

latter, often attempt to drive them into the same brisk motions. But a

day's experience ought to be enough to teach them that every attempt to

drive negroes to the performance of tasks equal to what the white

laborer would voluntarily impose upon himself, is an actual loss to the

master; who, instead of getting more service out of them, actually gets

less, and soon none, if such a course be persisted in; because they

become disabled in body and indisposed in mind to perform any service at

all. Every master or overseer, although he may know nothing of the law

above mentioned, discovered by Cuvier, may soon learn from experience

the important fact, that there is no other alternative than to let their

negroes assume, _by their own instincts_, the natural gait or movement

peculiar to them, and then, like Washington, observe what can be

effected in a given time by that given gait or movement, and to ask for

nor expect more. In vol. ii, pages 511 to 512, (Washington's Writings,

published by Jared Sparks) are recorded a few of the observations made

by the father of his country on his own slaves, as an illustration of

the preceding remarks. It is to be regretted that Mr. Sparks, out of

deference to a modern species of idolatry (all fanaticism is idolatry,)

which has taken deep root in Great Britain and despotic Europe, and has

from thence been transplanted into our republic, particularly in the

Northern portion of it, should have suppressed so much of the valuable

observations of Washington on the negro race, as only to publish a small

fragment of the extensive knowledge his comprehensive mind had stored

up on this important subject, well known to his neighbors. The fragment

informs us, that on a certain day he visited his plantations, and found

that certain negro slaves there mentioned, by the names of George, Tom

and Mike, had only hewed a certain number of feet--whereupon Washington

sat down and observed their motions, letting them proceed their own

way," and ascertained how many feet each hewed in one hour and a

quarter. He also made observations on his sawyers at the same time and

in the same manner. From the data thus acquired he ascertained, in the

short space of an hour and a quarter, how many feet would be a day's

work for hewing, and how many for sawing, under their usual slow gait or

movement. This hewing and sawing were of poplar. "What may be the

difference, therefore," says Washington, "between the working of this

wood and other, some future observations must make known." But Mr.

Sparks, out of deference to the new school of idolatry, having its head

quarters in Exeter Hall, omitted, almost entirely, the publication of

any more observations on the subject. It is no less idolatry to set up

an anti-scriptural dogma and to make it a rule of action, than to

worship a block or a graven image in the place of the true God. The true

God has said in the Pentateuch, the most authentic books of the Bible,

"_And of the heathen shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids_ [slaves] _and

your children shall inherit them after you, and they shall be your

bondmen_ [slaves] _forever._" Leviticus, chap. xxv, verses 44, 45, 46.

But the Dogma or Negro god of Exeter Hall says that "_negro slavery is

sin_," and that it is contrary to the moral sense or conscience.

Medicine was anciently called the divine art; to be entitled to hold

that appellation, ought it not to lend its aid to arrest in this happy

republic the progress of idolatry, which is only another name for

fanaticism? And will your learned correspondent help to arrest it in

England? Or will he, like Prichard, Todd, and others, make science bow

to the policy of his government?--To build up India at the expense of

our Union? The subject of his investigations, tubercular disease, if

properly studied, leads directly to that species of knowledge, enabling

him to determine on physiological principles, which is the best system

of ethics, that taught in the Bible, _to enslave the Canaanite_, or that

taught in Exeter Hall, _to set him free_? It will lead him to the

discovery, that the negro, or Canaanitish race, consume less oxygen

than the white, and that as a necessary consequence of the deficient

aeration of the blood in the lungs, a hebetude of mind and body is the

inevitable physiological effect; thus making it a mercy and a blessing

to negroes to have persons in authority set over them, to provide for

and take care of them. Under the dogma or new commandment to free the

Canaanite, practically exercised in Van Dieman's Land and at the Cape of

Good Hope, the poor negro race have become nearly annihilated. Whereas

under that system of ethics taught in the Bible and made a rule of

action in the Southern States, the descendants of Canaan are more

rapidly increasing in numbers, and have more of the comforts and

pleasures of life, and more morality and Christianity among them than

any others of the same race on any other portion of the globe. They are

daily bought and sold, and inherited as property, as the Scriptures said

they should be. Whereas in all those countries and places in which they

are set free, in obedience to the dogma that "slavery is sin," they

rapidly degenerate into barbarism, as they are doing in the West Indies,

or become extinct as in Van Dieman's Land. The physiological fact that

negroes consume less oxygen indicates the superior wisdom of the

precepts taught in the Bible regarding those people, to any promulgated

from Exeter Hall. Experience also proves the former to be the best. You

hear of the poor negroes, or colored people, as you call them, being

beaten with many stripes by their masters and overseers. But owing to

the fact that they consume less oxygen than white people, and the other

physical differences founded on difference of structure, they beat one

another, when free from the white man's authority, with ten stripes

where they would get one from him. They are as much in slavery in Boston

as in New Orleans. They suffer more from corporeal or other punishments

in the cellars and dark lanes and alleys of Boston, New York and

Philadelphia, by the cruel tyranny practiced by the strong over the weak

and helpless, than an equal number in Southern slavery. In slavery the

stripes fall upon the evil disposed, vicious, buck negro fellows. But

when removed from the white man's authority, the latter make them fall

on helpless women and children, the weak and the infirm. Good conduct,

so far from being a protection, invites aggression.

But what connection have these observations, you may say, with the

subject of Dr. Hall's inquiries, and what light do they throw on

tubercular disease? They show that there exists an intimate connection

between the amount of oxygen consumed in the lungs and the phenomena of

body and mind. They point to a people whose respiratory apparatus is so

defective, that they have not sufficient industry and mental energy to

provide for themselves, or resolution sufficiently strong to prevent

them, when in freedom, from being subjected to the arbitrary, capricious

will of the drunken and vicious of their own color, who may happen to

have greater physical strength and more cunning; they show that Phthisis

is a disease of the master race, and not of the slave race--that it is

the bane of that master race of men, known by an active hæmatosis; by

the brain receiving a larger quantity of aerated blood than it is

entitled to; by the strong development of the circulating system; by the

energy of intellect; by the strength and activity of the muscular

system; the vivid imagination; the irritable, mobile, ardent and

inflammatory temperament, and the indomitable will and love of freedom.

Whereas the negro constitution, being the opposite of all this, is not

subject to Phthisis, although it partakes of what is called the

scrofulous diathesis. In the negro constitution, as the Frenchman would

say, "_l'arbre arteriel cede sa prominance à l'arbre veineuse_,"

spreading coldness, languor and want of energy over the entire system.

The white fluids, or lymphatic temperament, predominating, they are not

so liable as the fair race, to inflammatory diseases of the lungs, or

any other organ; but from the superabundant viscidities and mucosities

of their mucous surfaces, they are more liable to engorgements and

pulmonary congestions than any other race of men. In proof of which I

beg leave to refer your correspondent to a standard work entitled

"Observations sur les Maladies des Negres, par M. Dazille. Paris, 1776."

Pneumonia, without subjective symptoms, is very common among them.

Diphtheretic affections, so common among white children, are very rare

among negroes. Intercurrent Pneumonia is more common among them than any

other class of people. It is met with in Typhoid fevers, Rheumatism and

hepatic derangements, to which they are very liable in the cold season.

The local malady requires a different treatment, to correspond with the

general disorder. Bad, vicious, ungovernable negroes are subject, to

what might properly be termed, Scorbutic Pneumonia--a blood disease,

requiring anti-scorbutics. Scorbutic negroes are always vicious or

worthless. A course of anti-scorbutics will reform their morals, and

make good negroes out of worthless ones. They are liable to suffocative

orthopnoea after measles, and die unless bled and purged. But purgatives

are injurious in almost all their other affections involving the

respiratory organs, except such as act especially on the liver. They

check expectoration, says Dazille, and lay the foundations of those

effusions and depots of matter so often mistaken for genuine Phthisis.

Auscultation cannot well be made available with them. The nose pleads to

the eye and touch to form the diagnosis, without calling into

requisition the ear. A single examination by auscultation, in persons

abounding with so much phlegm, is not sufficient to arrive at a correct

diagnosis. Repeated examinations in various postures are too tedious in

execution, and too offensive to the auscultator, to come into general

use in diagnosing the diseases of the Melanic race. This valuable mode

of exploration, so useful in many cases, as practiced by experts, has of

late years been carried to a ridiculous extreme, in being made to

deceive and delude more practitioners than it enlightens, from the haste

and inexperience of those who practice it. With negroes it is

unnecessary, except in some rare instances. Their diseases, like their

passions, have each its peculiar expression stamped in the countenance.

They are like young children in this respect. They cannot disguise their

countenance like white people. An intelligent and observant observer can

tell from their countenance when they are plotting mischief, or have

committed some crime; when they are satisfied or dissatisfied; when in

pleasure or in pain; when troubled or disturbed in mind; or when telling

a falsehood instead of the truth. An observant physician has only to

bring the old science of prosoposcopia, so much used by Hippocrates in

forming his diagnosis, to bear upon negroes, to be able, by a little

experience, to ascertain the most of them at a glance by the expression

of their countenance.

They are very subject to fevers, attended with an obstructed circulation

of air and blood in the pulmonary organs. Their abundant mucosities

often prevent the ingress of air into the air cells, bloating their lips

and cheeks, which are coated with a tenacious saliva. A cessation of

digestion from too full a meal, or some hepatic or other derangement, is

soon attended with such a copious exudation of mucosities, filling the

air cells and tracheal passages, as to cause apoplexy, which with them

is only another name for asphyxia. The head has nothing to do with it.

So abundant are the mucosities in negroes, that those in the best health

have a whitish, pasty mucus, of considerable thickness on the tongue,

leading a physician not acquainted with them to suppose that they were

dyspeptic, or otherwise indisposed. The lungs of the white man are the

main outlets for the elimination of carbonic acid formed in the tissues.

Negroes, however, by an instinctive habit of covering their mouth, nose,

head and face with a blanket, or some other covering, when they sleep,

throw upon the liver an additional duty to perform, in the excretion of

carbonic acid. Any cause, obstructing the action of the liver, quickly

produces with them a grave malady, the retention of carbonic acid in the

blood soon poisoning them.

Hence with white people a moderate degree of hepatic obstruction, by a

residence in swampy districts, is often found beneficial in diminishing

the exalted sensibility and irritability of phthisical patients. Viscous

engorgements of the lungs destroy more negroes than all other diseases

combined. They are distinguished from inflammatory affections by the

pyrexial symptoms not being strongly marked, or marked at all--by the

puffy or bloated appearance of the face and lips--by the slavering

mouth--the highly charged tongue--and by the torpor of mind and body. In

a word, all the symptoms point to a deficient aeration of the blood, or

a kind of half way asphyxia. A torpid state of the system, listlessness

and inactivity almost approaching to asphyxia from the diminished

quantity of oxygen consumed by the lungs of the negro, form a striking

contrast with the energetic, active, restless, persevering Anglo-Saxon,

with a tendency to phlogosis and phthisis pulmonalis, from the surplus

quantity of oxygen consumed by his lungs. Blistering the nape of the

neck, so irritating in nearly all of the diseases of the Saxon race, is

almost a sovereign remedy or specific for a large proportion of the

complaints that negroes are subject to; because most of them arise from

defective respiratory action. Hence whipping the lungs to increased

action by the application of blisters over the origin of the respiratory

nerves, a remedy so inexpedient and so often contra-indicated in most of

the maladies of the white man, has a magic charm about it in the

treatment of those of the negro. The magic effect of a blister to that

part of the Ethiopian's body, in a large class of his ailments, although

well known to most of the planters and overseers of the Southern

States, is scarcely known at all to the medical profession beyond those

boundaries. Even here, where that portion of the profession who have had

much experience in the treatment of their diseases, and are aware of the

simple fact itself, do not profit by it in many cases where it is

indicated; because they do not perceive the indication clearly, so long

as the rationale of the remedy remains unexplained.

Your asking for the proofs of my assertion, "that the negro consumes

less oxygen than the white man," has led me into a new, extensive and

unexplored field of science, where the rationale of that and many other

important facts may be found springing up spontaneously. We have medical

schools in abundance teaching the art of curing the ailments, and even

the most insignificant sores, incident to the half-starved, oppressed

pauper population of Europe--a population we have not got, never had and

never can have, so long as we have negro slaves to work in the cane,

cotton and rice fields, where the white man, from the physiological laws

governing his economy, _can not labor and live_: but where the negro

thrives, luxuriates and enjoys existence more than any laboring

peasantry to be found on the continent of Europe; yet we have no schools

or any chair in our numerous institutions of medical learning to teach

the art of curing and preventing the diseases peculiar to our immense

population of negro slaves, or to make them more efficient and valuable,

docile and manageable; comfortable, happy and contented by still further

improving their condition, which can only be done by studying their

nature, and not by the North and South bandying epithets--not by the

quackery which prescribes the same remedy, the liberty elixir, for all

constitutions. The two races, the Anglo-Saxon and the negro, have

antipodal constitutions. The former abounds with red blood, even

penetrating the capillaries and the veins, flushing the face and

illuminating the countenance; the skin white; lips thin; nose high; hair

auburn, flaxen, red or black; beard thick and heavy; eyes brilliant;

will strong and unconquerable; mind and muscles full of energy and

activity. The latter, with molasses blood sluggishly circulating and

scarcely penetrating the capillaries; skin ebony, and the mucous

membranes and muscles partaking of the darker hue pervading the blood

and the cutis; lips thick and protuberant; nose broad and flat; scalp

covered with a coarse, crispy wool in thick naps; beard wanting or

consisting of a few scattering woolly naps, in the "_bucks_,"

provincially so called; mind and body dull and slothful; will weak,

wanting or subdued. The study of such opposite organizations, the one

prone to Phthisis and the other not, can not fail to throw some light on

tubercular disease, the subject of your correspondent, Dr. Hall's

present investigation. In contrasting the typical white man, having an

excess of red blood and a liability to inflammatory and tuberculous

complaints and disorders of the digestive system, with the typical

negro, deficient aerated blood, and abounding in mucosites, having an

active liver and a strong digestion, and a proclivity strongly marked to

fall into congestions, or cold humid engorgements approaching asphyxia,

I hope he will be able to find in this unpolished communication

something useful.

I have the honor to be, with great respect,

SAML. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D.

_New Orleans, July 19th, 1852._

APPENDIX.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PROGNATHOUS SPECIES OF MANKIND.

It is not intended by the use of the term Prognathous to call in

question the black man's humanity or the unity of the human races as a

_genus_, but to prove that the species of the genus homo are not a

unity, but a plurality, each essentially different from the others--one

of them being so unlike the other two--the oval-headed Caucasian and the

pyramidal-headed Mongolian--as to be actually prognathous, like the

brute creation; not that the negro is a brute, or half man and half

brute, but a genuine human being, anatomically constructed, about the

head and face, more like the monkey tribes and the lower order of

animals than any other species of the genus man. Prognathous is a

technical term derived from _pro_, before, and _gnathos_, the jaws,

indicating that the muzzle or mouth is anterior to the brain. The lower

animals, according to Cuvier, are distinguished from the European and

Mongol man by the mouth and face projecting further forward in the

profile than the brain. He expresses the rule thus: _face anterior,

cranium posterior_. The typical negroes of adult age, when tried by this

rule, are proved to belong to a different species from the man of Europe

or Asia, because the head and face are anatomically constructed more

after the fashion of the simiadiæ and the brute creation than the

Caucasian and Mongolian species of mankind, their mouth and jaws

projecting beyond the forehead containing the anterior lobes of the

brain. Moreover, their faces are proportionally larger than their

crania, instead of smaller, as in the other two species of the genus

man. Young monkeys and young negroes, however, are not prognathous like

their parents, but become so as they grow older. The head of the infant

ourang outang is like that of a well formed Caucasian child in the

projection and hight of the forehead and the convexity of the vertea.

The brain appears to be larger than it really is, because the face, at

birth, has not attained its proportional size. The face of the Caucasian

infant is a little under its proportional size when compared with the

cranium. In the infant negro and ourang outang it is greatly so.

Although so much smaller in infancy than the cranium, the face of the

young monkey ultimately outgrows the cranium; so, also, does the face of

the young negro, whereas in the Caucasian, the face always continues to

be smaller than the cranium. The superfices of the face at puberty

exceeds that of the hairy scalp both in the negro and the monkey, while

it is always less in the white man. Young monkeys and young negroes are

superior to white children of the same age in memory and other

intellectual faculties. The white infant comes into the world with its

brain inclosed by fifteen disunited bony plates--the occipital bone

being divided into four parts, the sphenoid into three, the frontal into

two, each of the two temporals into two, which, with the two parietals,

make fifteen plates in all--the vomer and ethmoid not being ossified at

birth. The bones of the head are not only disunited, but are more or

less overlapped at birth, in consequence of the largeness of the

Caucasian child's head and the smallness of its mother's pelvis, giving

the head an elongated form, and an irregular, knotty feel to the touch.

The negro infant, however, is born with a small, hard, smooth, round

head like a gourd. Instead of the frontal and temporal bones being

divided into six plates, as in the white child, they form but one bone

in the negro infant. The head is not only smaller than that of the white

child, but the pelvis of the negress is wider than that of the white

woman--its greater obliquity also favors parturition and prevents

miscarriage.

Negro children and white children are alike at birth in one remarkable

particular--they are both born _white_, and so much alike, as far as

color is concerned, as scarcely to be distinguished from each other. In

a very short time, however, the skin of the negro infant begins to

darken and continues to grow darker until it becomes of a shining black

color, provided the child be healthy. The skin will become black whether

exposed to the air and light or not. The blackness is not of as deep a

shade during the first years of life, as afterward. The black color is

not so deep in the female as in the male, nor in the feeble, sickly

negro as in the robust and healthy. Blackness is a characteristic of the

prognathous species of the genus homo, but all the varieties of all the

prognathous species are not equally black. Nor are the individuals of

the same family or variety equally so. The lighter shades of color,

when not derived from admixture with Mongolian or Caucasian blood,

indicate degeneration in the prognathous species. The Hottentots,

Bushmen and aborigines of Australia are inferior in mind and body to the

typical African of Guinea and the Niger.

The typical negroes themselves are more or less superior or inferior to

one another precisely as they approximate to or recede from the typical

standard in color and form, due allowance being made for age and sex.

The standard is an oily, shining black, and as far as the conformation

of the head and face is concerned and the relative proportion of nervous

matter outside of the cranium to the quantity of cerebral matter within

it, is found between the simiadiæ[257] and the Caucasian. Thus, in the

typical negro, a perpendicular line, let fall from the forehead, cuts

off a large portion of the face, throwing the mouth, the thick lips, and

the projecting teeth anterior to the cranium, but not the entire face,

as in the lower animals and monkey tribes. When all, or a greater part

of the face is thrown anterior to the line, the negro approximates the

monkey anatomically more than he does the true Caucasian; and when

little or none of the face is anterior to the line, he approximates that

mythical being of Dr. Van Evrie, a _black white man_, and almost ceases

to be a negro. The black man occasionally seen in Africa, called the

_Bature Dutu_, with high nose, thin lips, and long straight hair, is not

a negro at all, but a Moor tanned by the climate--because his children,

not exposed to the sun, do not become black like himself. The typical

negro's nervous system is modeled a little different from the Caucasian

and somewhat like the ourang outang. The medullary spinal cord is larger

and more developed than in the white man, but less so than in the monkey

tribes. The occipital foramen, giving exit to the spinal cord, is a

third longer, says Cuvier, in proportion to its breadth, than in the

Caucasian, and is so oblique as to form an angle of 30° with the

horizon, yet not so oblique as in the simiadæ, but sufficiently so to

throw the head somewhat backward and the face upward in the erect

position. Hence, from the obliquity of the head and the pelvis, the

negro walks steadier with a weight on his head, as a pail of water for

instance, than without it; whereas, the white man, with a weight on his

head, has great difficulty in maintaining his centre of gravity, owing

to the occipital foramen forming no angle with the cranium, the pelvis,

the spine, or the thighs--all forming a straight line from the crown of

the head to the sole of the foot without any of the obliquities seen in

the negro's knees, thighs, pelvis and head--and still more evident in

the ourang outang.

The nerves of organic life are larger in the prognathous species of

mankind than in the Caucasian species, but not so well developed as in

the simiadiæ. The brain is about a tenth smaller in the prognathous man

than in the Frenchman, as proved by actual measurement of skulls by the

French savans, Palisot and Virey. Hence, from the small brain and the

larger nerves, the digestion of the prognathous species is better than

that of the Caucasian, and its animal appetites stronger, approaching

the simiadiæ but stopping short of their beastiality. The nostrils of

the prognathous species of mankind open higher up than they do in the

white or olive species, but not so high up as in the monkey tribes. In

the gibbon, for instance, they open between the orbits. Although the

typical negro's nostrils open high up, yet owing to the nasal bones

being short and flat, there is no projection or prominence formed

between his orbits by the bones of the nose, as in the Caucasian

species. The nostrils, however, are much wider, about as wide from wing

to wing, as the white man's mouth from corner to corner, and the

internal bones, called the turbinated, on which the olfactory nerves are

spread, are larger and project nearer to the opening of the nostrils

than in the white man. Hence the negro approximates the lower animals in

his sense of smell, and can detect snakes by that sense alone. All the

senses are more acute, but less delicate and discriminating, than the

white man's. He has a good ear for melody but not for harmony, a keen

taste and relish for food but less discriminating between the different

kinds of esculent substances than the Caucasian. His lips are immensely

thicker than any of the white race, his nose broader and flatter, his

chin smaller and more retreating, his foot flatter, broader, larger, and

the heel longer, while he has scarcely any calves at all to his legs

when compared to an equally healthy and muscular white man. He does not

walk flat on his feet but on the outer sides, in consequence of the sole

of the foot having a direction inwards, from the legs and thighs being

arched outwards and the knees bent. The verb, from which his Hebrew name

is derived, points out this flexed position of the knees, and also

clearly expresses the servile type of his mind. Ham, the father of

Canaan, when translated into plain English, reads that a black man was

the father of the slave or knee-bending species of mankind.

The blackness of the prognathous race, known in the world's history as

Canaanites, Cushites, Ethiopians, black men or negroes, is not confined

to the skin, but pervades, in a greater or less degree, the whole inward

man down to the bones themselves, giving the flesh and the blood, the

membranes and every organ and part of the body, except the bones, a

darker hue than in the white race. Who knows but what Canaan's mother

may have been a genuine Cushite, as black inside as out, and that Cush,

which means blackness, was the mark put upon Cain? Whatever may have

been the mark set upon Cain, the negro, in all ages of the world, has

carried with him a mark equally efficient in preventing him from being

slain--the mark of blackness. The wild Arabs and hostile American

Indians invariably catch the black wanderer and make a slave of him

instead of killing him, as they do the white man.

Nich. Pechlin, in a work written last century entitled "De cute

Athiopum," Albinus, in another work, entitled "De sede et causa coloris

Athiop," as also the great German anatomists, Meiners, Ebel, and

Soemmering, all bear witness to the fact that the muscles, blood,

membranes, and all the internal organs of the body, (the bones alone

excepted,) are of a darker hue in the negro than in the white man. They

estimate the difference in color to be equal to that which exists

between the hare and the rabbit. Who ever doubts the fact, or has none

of those old and impartial authorities at hand--impartial because they

were written before England adopted the policy of pressing religion and

science in her service to place white American republican freemen and

Guinea negroes upon the same platform--has only to look into the mouth

of the first healthy typical negro he meets to be convinced of the

truth, that the entire membraneous lining of the inside of the cheeks,

lips and gums is of a much darker color than in the white man.

The negro, however, must be healthy and in good condition--sickness,

hard usage and chronic ailments, particularly that cachexia, improperly

called consumption, speedily extracts the coloring matter out of the

mucous membranes, leaving them paler and whiter than in the Caucasian.

The bleaching process of bad health or degeneration begins in the

blood, membranes and muscles, and finally extracts so much of the

coloring pigment out of the skin, as to give it a dull ashy appearance,

sometimes extracting the whole of it, converting the negro into the

albino. Albinoism or cucosis does not necessarily imply hybridism. It

occurs among the pure Africans from any cause producing a degeneration

of the species. Hybridism, however, is the most prolific source of that

degeneration. Sometimes the degeneration shows itself by white spots,

like the petals of flowers, covering different parts of the skin. The

Mexicans are subject to a similar degeneration, only that the spots and

stripes are black instead of white. It is called the pinto with them.

Even the pigment of the iris and the coloring matter of the albino's

hair is absorbed, giving it a silvery white appearance, and converting

him into a clairvoyant at night. According to Professors Brown, Seidy

and Gibbs, the negro's hair is not tubular, like the white man's, but it

is eccentrically elliptical, with flattened edges, the coloring matter

residing in the epidermis, and not in tubes. In the place of a tube, the

shaft of each hair is surrounded with a scaly covering like sheep's

wool, and, like wool, is capable of being felted. True hair does not

possess that property. The degeneration called albinoism has a

remarkable influence upon the hair, destroying its coarse, nappy, wooly

appearance, and converting it into fine, long, soft, silky, curly

threads. Often, the whole external skin, so remarkably void of hair in

the healthy negro, becomes covered with a very fine, silky down,

scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, when transformed into the albino.

Mr. Bowen, the celebrated Baptist missionary, [see his work entitled

Central Africa and Missionary Labors from 1849 to 1856, by T. J. Bowen,

Charleston, Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1857,] met with a

great many cases of leucosis in Soudan or Negroland, back of Liberia,

and erroneously concluded that these people had very little, if any

negro blood in them, and would be better subjects for missionary labors

than the blacks of the same country. They are, however, nothing but

_white_ black men, a degeneration of the negro proper, and are even less

capable of perpetuating themselves than the hybrids or mulattoes. Mr.

Bowen is at a loss to account for the depopulation, which he verifies

has been going on in Soudan the last fifty years, threatening to leave

the country, at no distant time, bare of inhabitants, unless roads be

constructed by the Christians of the Southern States for commercial

intercourse, and double exertions made to civilize and Christianize the

waning population of Central Africa before it entirely disappears. The

good missionary, though sent out from Georgia, was evidently taught in

that British school which assumes that there is only a single species in

the genus homo, in opposition to the Bible, that clearly designates

three. That school quotes the references in the sacred volume, implying

unity in the genus--a unity which no one denies--to disprove the

existence of distinct species, and upon this fallacy builds the theory

that negro, Indian and white men are beings exactly alike, because they

are human beings. _Ergo_, the liberty so beneficial to the white man,

would be equally so to the negro--disregarding as a fable those words of

the Bible expressly declaring that the latter _shall be servant of

servants_ to the former--words which would not have been there if that

kind of subordination called slavery was not the normal condition of the

race of Ham. To expect to civilize or Christianize the negro without the

intervention of slavery is to expect an impossibility.

Mr. Bowen's experience and natural good sense occasionally got the

better of his theoretical views. Thus, at page 90, we find him

confessing that "the native African negroes ought to have masters in

obedience to the demands of natural justice." At page 149 he lets us

into the secret of the depopulating process which has been going on in

Central Africa the last fifty years. While standing among some negroes

in Ikata, a town in Central Africa, a capricious mulatto chief sent some

officers among the company, who singled out a poor fellow who had

offended the chief by saying that as he let a white man into town, he

might let in a Dahomey man also, and presented him with an empty bag

with the message: "_The king says you must send me your head._" The Rev.

missionary, who was present at the beheading, made no comment further

than to state the fact. But he might have added that the blood of that

negro, and millions of others, will be required at the hands of Victoria

Regina and the United States for having officiously destroyed the value

of negro property in Africa by breaking up the only trade that ever

protected the native Africans against the butcheries, cruelties and

oppressions of their mulatto, Moorish and Mahommedan tyrants. It is

these butcheries and cruelties, and the little care taken of the black

man in Africa, the last fifty years, since he became valueless through

British and American philanthropy, that lie at the root of the

depopulating process which is going on in the dark land of the Niger.

Empty bags are now filled with heads instead of cowries. Mr. Bowen was

surprised to see so few black men in Soudan, where, half a century ago,

he says they were so numerous. But he rather regards it as a fortunate

circumstance, as he has no hope of Christianizing the typical negro,

except through slavery to Christian masters--and that idea is abhorrent

to the school in which he was taught; but he has more hope from the

mixed races, and these, he confesses, can not be effectually

Christianized until civilized. He deplores the bad example of the black

race, among them, their polygamy, etc., as greatly in the way of

civilizing the mulattoes. But he has overlooked the important fact, as

many do, that the existence of the hybrids themselves depends upon the

existence of the typical Africans. The extinction of the latter must, of

necessity, be soon followed by the extinction of the former, as they can

not, for any length of time, propagate among themselves.

Mr. Bowen inferred that the negroes of Central Africa, although

diminishing in numbers, are rising higher in the scale of humanity, from

the very small circumstance that they do not emit from their bodies so

strong and so offensive an odor as the negro slaves of Georgia and the

Carolinas do, nor are their skins of so deep a black. This is a good

illustration of the important truth, that all the danger of the slavery

question lies in the ignorance of Scripture and the natural history of

the negro. A little acquaintance with the negro's natural history would

prove to Mr. Bowen that the strong odor emitted by the negro, like the

deep pigment of the skin, is an indication of high health, happiness,

and good treatment, while its deficiency is a sure sign of unhappiness,

disease, bad treatment, or degeneration. The skin of a happy, healthy

negro is not only blacker and more oily than an unhappy, unhealthy one,

but emits the strongest odor when the body is warmed by exercise and the

soul is filled with the most pleasurable emotions. In the dance called

_patting juber_, the odor emitted from the men, intoxicated with

pleasure, is often so powerful as to throw the negro women into

paroxysms of unconsciousness, vulgo hysterics. On another point of much

importance there is no practical difference between the Rev. missionary

and that clear-headed, bold, and eccentric old Methodist, Dr. McFarlane.

Both believe that the Bible can do ignorant, sensual savages no good;

both believe that nothing but compulsatory power can restrain

uncivilized barbarians from polygamy, inebriety, and other sinful

practices.

The good missionary, however, believes in the possibility of civilizing

the inferior races by the money and means of the Christian nations

lavishly bestowed, after which he thinks it will be no difficult matter

to convert them to Christianity. Whereas the venerable Methodist

believes in the impossibility of civilizing them, and therefore

concludes that the Written Word was not intended for those inferior

races who can not read it. When the philosophy of the prognathous

species of mankind is better understood, it will be seen how they, the

lowest of the human species, can be made partakers, equally with the

highest, in the blessings and benefits of the Written Word of God. The

plantation laws against polygamy, intoxicating drinks, and other

besetting sins of the negro race in the savage state, are gradually and

silently converting the African barbarian into a moral, rational, and

civilized being, thereby rendering the heart a fit tabernacle for the

reception of Gospel truths. The prejudices of many, perhaps the majority

of the Southern people, against educating the negroes they hold in

subjection, arise from some vague and indefinite fears of its

consequences, suggested by the abolition and British theories built on

the false assumption that the negro is a white man with a black skin. If

such an assumption had the smallest degree of truth in it, the more

profound the ignorance and the deeper sunk in barbarism the slaves were

kept, the better it would be for them and their masters. But experience

proves that masters and overseers have nothing at all to fear from

civilized and intelligent negroes, and no trouble whatever in managing

them--that all the trouble, insubordination and danger arise from the

uncivilized, immoral, rude, and grossly ignorant portion of the servile

race. It is not the ignorant semi-barbarian that the master or overseer

intrusts with his keys, his money, his horse or his gun, but the most

intelligent of the plantation--one whose intellect and morals have

undergone the best training. An educated negro, one whose intellect and

morals have been cultivated, is worth double the price of the wild,

uncultivated, black barbarian of Cuba and will do twice as much work,

do it better and with less trouble.

The prejudice against educating the negroes may also be traced to the

neglect of American divines in making themselves acquainted with Hebrew

literature. What little the most of them know of the meaning of the

untranslated terms occurring in the Bible, and the signification of the

verbs from which they are derived, is mostly gathered from British

commentators and glossary-makers, who have blinked the facts that

disprove the Exeter Hall dogma, that negro slavery is sin against God.

Hence, even in the South, the important Biblical truth, that the white

man derives his authority to govern the negro from the Great Jehovah, is

seldom proclaimed from the pulpit. If it were proclaimed, the master

race would see deeper into their responsibilities, and look closer into

the duties they owe to the people whom God has given them as an

inheritance, and their children after them, so long as time shall last.

That man has no faith in the Scriptures who believes that education

could defeat God's purposes, in subjecting the black man to the

government of the white. On the contrary, experience proves its

advantages, to both parties. Aside and apart from Scripture authority,

natural history reveals most of the same facts, in regard to the negro

that the Bible does. It proves the existence of at least three distinct

species of the genus man, differing in their instincts, form, habits and

color. The white species having qualities denied to the black--one with

a free and the other with a servile mind--one a thinking and reflective

being, the other a creature of feeling and imitation, almost void of

reflective faculties, and consequently unable to provide for and take

care of himself. The relation of master and slave would naturally spring

up between two such different species of men, even if there was no

Scripture authority to support it. The relation thus established, being

natural, would be drawn closer together, instead of severed, by the

inferior imitating the superior in all his ways, or in other words,

acquiring an education.

FOOTNOTE:

[257] Monkey tribes.--_Editor._

ON THE CAUCASIANS AND THE AFRICANS.

SEVERAL years ago we published some original and

ingenious views of Dr. Cartwright, of New Orleans,

upon the subject of negroes and their

characteristics. The matter is more elaborately

treated by him in the following paper:--_De Bows

Review._

THE Nilotic monuments furnish numerous portraits of the negro races,

represented as slaves, sixteen hundred years before the Christian era.

Although repeatedly drawn from their native barbarism and carried among

civilized nations, they soon forget what they learn and relapse into

barbarism. If the inherent potency of the prognathous type of mankind

had been greater than it actually is, sufficiently great to give it the

independence of character that the American Indian possesses, the world

would have been in a great measure deprived of cotton and sugar. The red

man is unavailable as a laborer in the cane or cotton field, or any

where else, owing to the unalterable ethnical laws of his character. The

white man can not endure toil under the burning sun of the cane and

cotton field, and live to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The African

will starve rather than engage in a regular system of agricultural

labor, unless impelled by the stronger will of the white man. When thus

impelled, experience proves that he is much happier, during the hours of

labor in the sunny fields, than when dozing in his native woods and

jungles. He is also eminently qualified for a number of employments,

which the instincts of the white man regard as degrading. If the white

man be forced by necessity into employments abhorrent to his instincts,

it tends to weaken or destroy that sentiment or principle of honor or

duty, which is the mainspring of heroic actions, from the beginning of

historical times to the present, and is the basis of every thing great

and noble in all grades of white society.

The importance of having these particular employments, regarded as

servile and degrading by the white man, attended to by the black race,

whose instincts are not repugnant to them, will be at once apparent to

all those who deem the sentiment of honor or duty as worth cultivating

in the human breast. It is utterly unknown to the prognathous race of

mankind, and has no place in their language. When the language is given

to them they can not comprehend its meaning, or form a conception of

what is meant by it. Every white man, who has not been degraded, had

rather be engaged in the most laborious employments, than to serve as a

lacquey or body servant to another white man or being like himself.

Whereas, there is no office which the negro or mulatto covets more than

that of being a body servant to a real gentleman. There is no office

which gives him such a high opinion of himself, and it is utterly

impossible for him to attach the idea of degradation to it. Those

identical offices which the white man instinctively abhors, are the most

greedily sought for by negroes and mulattoes, whether slave or free, in

preference to all other employments. North or South, free or slave, they

are ever at the elbow, behind the table, in hotels and steamboats; ever

ready, with brush in hand, to brush the coat or black the shoes, or to

perform any menial service which may be required, and to hold out the

open palm for the dime. The innate love to act as body servant or

lacquey is too strongly developed in the negro race to be concealed. It

admirably qualifies them for waiters and house servants, as their strong

muscles, hardy frames, and the positive pleasure that labor in a hot sun

confers on them, abundantly qualify them for agricultural employment in

a hot climate.

Hence, the primordial cell germ of the Nigritians has no more potency

than what is sufficient to form a being with physical power, when its

dynamism becomes exhausted, dropping the creature in the wilderness with

the mental organization too imperfect to enable him to extricate himself

from barbarism. If Nature had intended the prognathous race for

barbarism as the end and object of their creation, they would have been

like lions and tigers, fierce and untamable. So far from being like

ferocious beasts, they are endowed with a will so weak, passions so

easily subdued, and dispositions so gentle and affectionate, as readily

to fall under subjection to the wild Arab, or any other race of men.

Hence they are led about in gangs of an hundred or more by a single

individual, even by an old man, or a cripple, if he be of the white race

and possessed of a strong will. The Nigritian has such little command

over his own muscles, from the weakness of his will, as almost to

starve, when a little exertion and forethought would procure him an

abundance. Although he has exaggerated appetites and exaggerated

senses, calling loudly for their gratification, his will is too weak to

command his muscles to engage in such kinds of labor as would readily

procure the fruits to gratify them. Like an animal in a state of

hibernation, waiting for the external aid of spring to warm it into life

and power, so does the negro continue to doze out a vegeto-animal

existence in the wilderness, unable to extricate himself therefrom--his

own will being too feeble to call forth the requisite muscular exertion.

His muscles not being exercised, the respiration is imperfect, and the

blood is imperfectly vitalized. Torpidity of body and hebetude of mind

are the effects thereof, which disappear under bodily labor, because

that expands the lungs, vitalizes the blood, and wakes him up to a sense

of pleasure and happiness unknown to him in the vegeto-animal or

hibernating state. Nothing but will is wanting to transform the torpid,

unhappy tenant of the wilderness into a rational and happy thing--the

happiest being on earth, as far as sensual pleasures are concerned.

The white man has an exaggerated will, more than he has use for; because

it frequently drives his own muscles beyond their physical capacity of

endurance. The will is not a faculty confined within the periphery of

the body. It can not, like the imagination, travel to immeasurable

distances from the body, and in an instant of time go and return from

Aldabran, or beyond the boundaries of the solar system. Its flight is

confined to the world and to limits more or less restricted--the less

restricted in some than in others. The will has two powers--direct and

indirect. It is the direct motive power of the muscular system. It

indirectly exerts a dynamic force upon surrounding objects when

associated with knowledge. It gives to knowledge its power. Every thing

that is made was made by the Infinite Will associated with infinite

knowledge. The will of man is but a spark of the Infinite Will, and its

power is only circumscribed by his knowledge. A man possessing a

knowledge of the negro character can govern an hundred, a thousand, or

ten thousand of the prognathous race by his will alone, easier than one

ignorant of that character can govern a single individual of that race

by the whip or a club. However disinclined to labor the negroes may be,

they can not help themselves; they are obliged to move and to exercise

their muscles when the white man, acquainted with their character,

_wills_ that they should do so. They can not resist that will, so far as

labor of body is concerned. If they resist, it is from some other cause

than that connected with their daily labor. They have an instinctive

feeling of obedience to the stronger will of the white man, requiring

nothing more than moderate labor. So far, their instincts compel

obedience to will as one of his rights. Beyond that, they will resist

his will and be refractory, if he encroaches on what they regard as

their rights, viz: the right to hold property in him as he does in them,

and to disburse that property to them in the shape of meat, bread and

vegetables, clothing, fuel and house-room, and attention to their

comforts when sick, old, infirm, and unable to labor; to hold property

in him as a conservator of the peace among themselves, and a protector

against trespassers from abroad, whether black or white; to hold

property in him as impartial judge and an honest jury to try them for

offenses, and a merciful executioner to punish them for violations of

the usages of the plantation or locality.

With those rights acceded to them, no other compulsion is necessary to

make them perform their daily tasks than _his will be done_. It is not

the whip, as many suppose, which calls forth those muscular exertions,

the result of which is sugar, cotton, breadstuffs, rice, and tobacco.

These are products of the white man's will, acting through the muscles

of the prognathous race in our Southern States. If that will were

withdrawn, and the plantations handed over as a gracious gift to the

laborers, agricultural labor would cease for the want of that spiritual

power called the will, to move those machines--the muscles. They would

cease to move here, as they have in Hayti. If the prognathous race were

expelled the land, and their place supplied with double their number of

white men, agricultural labor in the South would also cease, as far as

sugar and cotton are concerned, for the want of muscles that could

endure exercise in the smothering heat of a cane or cotton field. Half

the white laborers of Illinois are prostrated with fevers from a few

days' work in stripping blades in a Northern corn field, owing to the

confinement of the air by the close proximity of the plants. Cane and

cotton plants form a denser foliage than corn--a thick jungle, where the

white man pants for breath, and is overpowered by the heat of the sun at

one time of day, and chilled by the dews and moisture of the plants at

another. Negroes glory in a close, hot atmosphere; they instinctively

cover their head and faces with a blanket at night, and prefer laying

with their heads to the fire, instead of their feet. This ethnical

peculiarity is in harmony with their efficiency as laborers in hot,

damp, close, suffocating atmosphere--where instead of suffering and

dying, as the white man would, they are healthier, happier, and more

prolific than in their native Africa--producing, under the white man's

will, a great variety of agricultural products, besides upward of three

millions of bales of cotton, and three hundred thousand hogsheads of

sugar. Thus proving that subjection to his will is normal to them,

because, under the influence of his will, they enjoy life more than in

any other condition, rapidly increase in numbers, and steadily rise in

the scale of humanity.

The power of a stronger will over a weaker, or the power of one living

creature to act on and influence another, is an ordinance of nature,

which has its parallel in the inorganic kingdom, where ponderous bodies,

widely separated in space, influence one another so much as to keep up a

constant interplay of action and reaction throughout nature's vast

realms. The same ordinance which keeps the spheres in their orbits and

holds the satellites in subordination to the planets, is the ordinance

that subjects the negro race to the empire of the white man's will. From

that ordinance the snake derives its power to charm the bird, and the

magician his power to amuse the curious, to astonish the vulgar, and to

confound the wisdom of the wise. Under that ordinance, our four millions

of negroes are as unalterably bound to obey the white man's will, as the

four satellites of Jupiter the superior magnetism of that planet. If

individual masters, by releasing individual negroes from the power of

their will, can not make them free or release them from subordination to

the instinctive public sentiment or will of the aggregate white

population, which as rigidly excludes them, in the so-called free

States, from the drawing room and parlor as it does pots and kettles and

other kinds of kitchen furniture. The subjugation of equals by artifice

or force is tyrrany or slavery; but there is no such thing in the United

States, because equals are on a perfect equality here. The subordination

of the Nigritian to the Caucasian would never have been imagined to be a

condition similar to European slavery, if any regard had been paid to

ethnology. Subordination of the inferior race to the superior is a

normal, and not a forced condition. Chains and standing armies are the

implements used to force the obedience of equals to equals--of one white

man to another. Whereas, the obedience of the Nigritian to the Caucasian

is _spontaneous_ because it is normal for the weaker will to yield

obedience to the stronger. The ordinance which subjects the negro to the

empire of the white man's will, was plainly written on the heavens

during our Revolutionary war. It was then that the power of the united

will of the American people rose to its highest degree of intensity.