West India Islands," an evidently dispassionate and disinterested
view of the condition of these islands. An attentive consideration
of his stateements would go far to relieve the matter of emancipation
of some of the difficulties with which to many it seems environed.
"These people," he remarks, "who live comfortably and independently,
own houses and stock, pay taxes and poll votes, and pay their
money to build churches, are the same people whom we have heard
represented as idle, worthless, fellows, obstinately opposed to
work, and ready to live on an orange or banana, rather than earn
their daily bread."
Together with this plastic docility, the African has another which
at first sight seems in flagrant contradiction;--the race has
a peculiar power of resistance permanence. It is said, probably
truthfully, that no race has ever been able to abide a close contact
with the Anglo-Saxon. One of two results has always followed;--either
it has been swallowed up and lost as a river in an ocean, or
it has gone down and been swept away. But this race has neither
been absorbed nor destroyed. It has grown under the most adverse
influences, and asserts itself in all its peculiar characteristics
under foreign skies, and after the lapse of two centuries. The
negro of America is a true African still.
This race has not greatly mingled with other races. It is, we are
inclined to believe, rather a characteristic of it not to seek an
amalgamation with another people, its tendency is to remain apart.
We are well aware, indeed, that this is exactly contrary to the
views of many who have built their opinions on popular assertions
and prejudice rather than on observed facts. The assumption is
that the negro desires to mingle his blood with that of the white
races. The reverse is the fact. There is, though it may seem to
some unaccountable, a certain pride of race, which leads the negro
to exult in the purity of his blood, and to regard a foreign element
in it as not only not desirable, but even objectionable. This
feeling does not belong simply to the negro on his own continent;
it perpetuates, perhaps magnifies itself when surrounded by another
people. Among them in this country a pure-blooded negro will, with
biting sarcasm, taunt the mulatto with the fact that the blood of
another race is in his veins.
This feeling, which must have been noticed by any one whose
observation has been extensive or intelligent enough to collect
the facts, leads the race to remain by itself; and when left to its
natural course, such is the result. The statistics of this country
show that the free black does not and cannot mingle with the white
race. No elevation or freedom can produce such an intermixture. Here
and there, but so seldom as to present but perhaps a single case
only in widely separated communities, there is an inter-marriage.
This seeming want of inclination, coupled with a natural and
insuperable repugnance on the part of the white, must ever keep
the two races apart when they stand on an equal footing of freedom.
The often repeated argument against emancipation, founded on the
notion that it would be necessarily followed by amalgamation, is
the product of the grossest ignorance and thoughtlessness, while
at the same time it betrays a shameful want of confidence in the
white race itself. It surely argues no great power or stability
in a people when they are not able to keep themselves from being
mixed up with a confessedly inferior race. But facts point in
a wholly different direction: so far from freedom promoting this
intermixture, the only condition in which these two races are found
mingling is where the negro is in a state of servitude. Here the
process goes on freely and under the working of natural causes. The
influences which on either side under other circumstances make it
impossible, here become inoperative, and are overborne by other and
more powerful ones. The close intimacies, beginning with infancy
and extending over the whole life, destroying what under other
circumstances might seem to be a natural separation; a servile desire
to please on the part of the slave, lust and cupidity on the part
of the master, all combine to make the blood of the two races flow
in the same veins. Slavery is the source of amalgamation. The
mulatto and the quadroon tell you unerringly of a present or a
former servitude.
With this pliant ductility and this permanence of race, there is
another striking characteristic;--the negro's attachment to place.
It is probably a natural trait, but from easily perceived causes it
is perhaps intensified in the case of the American negro. He loves
his home and seldom goes willingly away from it, whether slave or
free. The number of fugitives from bondage would be prodigiously
multiplied were this feeling more easily overcome. Many a poor
bondman has turned back to slavery when the hard alternative has
been forced upon him to remain in it or go forever away from the
familiar and dear scenes of his childhood's home. It is necessity
scarcely less powerful than death that compels him to leave them
behind.
The efforts which philanthropy has made to promote their colonization
have met with an insuperable obstacle here, and will be compelled
to contend, more or less unsuccessfully with it, till there shall
be strength and education enough given the black to rise above it.
Among the many objections which have been urged against emancipation,
this has been a very common one, and has had great force in the
popular mind;--it will flood the Northern States with free blacks.
The objection is vulgar and thoughtless. If the simple economic
law of supply and demand, as powerful over men as materials, were
not sufficient to keep this people where they are needed, and to
prevent them from going where they are not, the love of home would
be strong enough to bar such result. The slave needs all the mighty
stimulus of a prospective deliverance from slavery to induce him to
leave the place of his birth, and that even is often enough; why,
then, when he has that boon in his hand, and walks the old haunts
a freeman, with work requited and enough, why should he now go away
to strangers and strange land? No, the States which have meanly
and and disgracefully passed their laws excluding the freed black
from a home within their borders, might have spared themselves
the dishonor. The dreaded calamity would never have occurred. The
enactments were the assumption of a gratuitous infamy.
The effect of emancipation will be the reverse of this fear. Instead
of the freed slaves flocking northward, the free blacks of the
North will gradually go South; in place of Northern States being
overrun with the one, they will, in process of time, be stripped
of the other. With slavery out of the way, the black will naturally
bend his steps to the region where climate, congenial employments,
habits, associations, all welcome him; he will go away from a people
who do not understand him, and whose prejudices keep him down, to
be near a people who have grown up with him, who know him, and are
better able to do him good. This consolidation of the race in one
part of the land will have an important bearing on its future.
Emancipation only will fully accomplish it.
Passing these characteristics, common to the race both in Africa and
in this country, let us consider others, which have been superadded
by the residence of the negro in America. These are marked and
important. The residence of the Jewish people for some two hundred
years in Egypt, had a controlling influence over the whole national
character and destiny. The Hebrew would never have been the man he
was, nor would he have had the after history had he not known the
bondage in the land of the Pharaohs. So, we think, the negro will,
in all the coming time, be a man essentially different because of
these two hundred years of slavery in America. * Nor will it be a
temporary or limited effect; it will probably mould all the history
of the race on its native continent. Africa will in future times
look back upon slavery in America much in the same way that the
Jew did upon his Egyptian bondage, and will be able to trace the
wonder-working power of Divine Providence in the results which have
flowed from it.
*There are some curious analogies between the bondage in Egypt and
slavery in America. It seems as if slavery were about to come to
an end in this country after almost identically the same period of
existence. As far as the best calculations can fix the time, the
bondage in Egypt lasted something more than two hundred years, and
it is about that time since the first cargo of African slaves were
landed by the Dutch at Jamestown, in 1620. The Hebrews went out
suddenly and unexpectedly, under the pressure of tremendous judgments
Will it be so in America?
Strangely enough, one of the marked effects of the residence of the
black in this country has been to give a new and foreign element
to the mental and physical structure of the negro. It has created
an admixture of blood with a superior race. The natural effect of
slavery has been to infuse the best blood of the master in the veins
of the slave. This fact has not, perhaps, received the attention
which it deserves as having an influence upon the future of the
negro race. We do not speak of it in the way of sarcasm or reproach,
but as something which, while it cannot be concealed or denied,
ought not to be overlooked. It cannot be when the coming history
of this people is under consideration.
The intermingling of race has been extensive; so much so, that in
many places the pure-blooded negro is in the minority of the whole
colored population. Here is not the place to make any extended
observations on the intellectual and physiological effects of the
union of different races in the same people, to elevate and give
them tone and character. The facts are very familiar. We can see
that in the case before us these effects will be of the same general
character.
In the new social order which will come into being on the abolition
of slavery, this intermixture of race will be less and less frequent,
but what has already taken place will tend greatly to hasten the
elevation and advancement of the black. The energy, the fire, and
activity, the ingenuity and perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon, joined
to the plastic docility of the African, is a strange combination,
yet one which may be seen every day, and which when made free and
permitted to exert its unrestrained power, will be of unmeasured
value. The mulatto makes a very bad slave, Anglo-Saxon blood being
never intended to run in the veins of a voluntary bondman, but will
be a noble freedman.
It need not be a perpetuated intermingling of race. It will not
be when slavery has gone, and it is well. Physically the mulattoes
are a feeble people, and destined usually to an early death; nor
are they prolific. By the force of merely natural causes, in process
of time, they will almost wholly disappear. The immobility of the
race will assert itself. But in the meanwhile they will have done
their work in assisting the rise of their brethren. It is a force
imparted for a special occasion. strangely given, but not in vain.
It is a spoil taken from the enemy, one of the marvellous instances
in which human passions and crime go to help human progress; it is
the blood of the master given to make by-and-by a speedier elevation
and a more perfect manhood for the slave.
Together with this transfusion of lineage in a part of the colored
population, the actual contact of the whole with the white race
is another fact which must be attentively regarded. This otherwise
isolated people, isolated not only by continental separation, but
by color from the rest of the human family, have been brought into
the closest possible relationship with one of t he foremost people
of the world. They have been introduced into families, making part
of the household; have, to a certain extent, been brought under
the influences of the civilization and enlightenment of this white
race. Upon such a susceptible people, receiving impressions so
easily, and being moulded so completely by them, this association
cannot but have an unmeasured influence, hastening their elevation
whenever the time of freedom comes.
In a state of slavery, while these influences are exerted and
their power is given, yet it must be more or less a latent power.
Slavery gives no opportunity for its exhibition. It is like throwing
electric sparks into the Leyden jar; it might seem that as they
flash and disappear, that all the power is lost, but when the proper
conditions are fulfilled the unseen force, slowly gathered, puts
itself forth with prodigious energy. When the impulse and opportunity
is given by freedom to the American negro for advancement, the
probabilities are that an example of rapid elevation will be given
by them such as the world has never seen. The elements which have
been working in and around them are such as have never been combined
in any people before. The facts are, when thoughtfully considered,
not only peculiar but wonderful. Here is an imitative and plastic
people dwelling in the most intimate associations with an enlightened,
energetic race, surrounded by the light of civilization, learning,
art, science; it is simply impossible that they shall not partake
in some degree of these great benefits. They may be seemingly excluded
from them all, but a subtile power is the while going forth and is
silently laying itself up in store, by-and-by to appear in their
sudden development.
But beyond and above all, the negro race in America is a Christian
race. Here are four millions of Christians. We mean, of course,
Christian in contradistinction from any other form of religious belief.
Before this one fact we may stand in silent wonder and admiration
at the processes of God's great providence. If any where on earth
the night of heathenism is dark, and the darkness is palpable, it
is in the negro's native home. Yet here are millions of the same race
maintaining their peculiar characteristics with great distinctness,
yet in all essential points a Christian people, infinitely above
their brethren in their original seat. The contrast in this regard
between the race here and there is simply immeasurable. They have
been taken out of the blackness of idolatry, and nurtured for two
centuries in the light of an advance Christianity, so that heathenism
has passed almost out of their traditions.
All this great result has been occasioned by slavery, sprung from
cupidity and the origin of unnumbered crimes! Perhaps human history
presents nowhere a more striking example of God's power to make
the wickedness of man bring honor to his name.
Here, then, are a Christian people, with very much of superstition,
with very much of ignorance, with, you may say, a low type of piety,
but yet, after all, a Christian people. They are more, a Protestant
people. Romanism has never obtained any extensive hold on them here.
* May we not say that in this, that these four millions of blacks
are a Protestant Christian people, there is an element of unbounded
promise?
*It is very striking in this connection that Romanism has never
made any progress or met with any permanent success in Africa. In
the North where Mohammedanism prevails, (see Barth,) it is repudiated
on account of its supposed proclivity to polytheism, and in other
parts of the continent different causes have prevented its taking
root. Indeed, West Africa presents the most striking instance on
record of the utter failure of the Romish religion to benefit a
heathen people. For more than two centuries the Portuguese had a
kingdom in Congo, and for a time it was powerful and extensive in
its influence. With it the Papacy sought an establishment. "It was
a work," says Wilson, ( Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan . 1852), "at which
successive missionaries labored with untiring assiduity for two
centuries. Among these were some of the most learned and able men
that Rome ever sent forth to the Pagan world. It was a cause that
ever lay near the heart of the kings of Portugal, when that nation
was at its climax of power and wealth. Yet before the close of the
eighteenth century, indeed, for any thing we know to the contrary,
before the middle of it, not only all their former civilization, but
almost every trace of Christianity had disappeared from the land,
and the whole country had fallen back into the deepest ignorance
and heathenism, and into greater weakness and poverty than had
ever been experienced even before its discovery." With a continent
wonderfully kept from Romanism there, and a people preserved from
it here, may we not see a divine adaptation for the future, a
finger-pointing to some signal good for the church and the world?
If we throw together these characteristics and facts in regard to
the negro race which we have now pointed out, we have this:--Here
is a nation with good mental endowments, peculiarly distinct and
seemingly destined to remain so, yet docile and ready to receive
the impression of all influences surrounding them, brought not
only in closest contact with one of the first races of the world,
but actually receiving a transfusion of its best blood, made at
least in part partakers of a very high civilization, and already
Christianized in a form where there is the least play of superstition
or error. Is it difficult to predict the future of such a people?
Is it certainly absurd to say that there is a history before it,
if not of the highest style, yet one good and even excellent; if
not the noblest, as aggressive in its good upon the world, yet one
sufficiently glorious for itself?
Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of this people, we think that
we are justified when we say, looking over the facts in the case,
that when they have removed from them the incubus of slavery,
and start forth on a career of freedom, that their rise will be
extremely rapid. Indeed, taking all the elements of progress which
they possess into consideration, it is simply impossible that it
should be otherwise.
While we give expression to these thoughts, let us not be understood
as affirming that the benefits of which we speak are the legitimate
results of slavery. Nothing could be farther from our intention. To
substitute a cause for an occasion is a very common error: indeed
some minds seem incapable of fully apprehending the world-wide
difference. The legitimate effect of slavery is to thrust the victim
as far down in the scale of being as is possible. The nearer the
brute, the better the slave , is the true law of slavery. Slavery
is the cause of ignorance, degradation, and crime. It, by a dreadful
necessity, strips the slave of every attribute of manhood; neither
soul nor body is his own; the one is kept in darkness as the
other is sold in the shambles. What can a system that locks up all
human knowledge, stalks through the soul trampling down all that
constitutes the man, not accidentally, but by the necessity of its
existence, what can such a system do for its victim?
There may be benefits such as we are now speaking of, coming to
the slave in his slavery, but slavery does not give them. The laws
which create slavery would shut out every thing, but they cannot.
In spite of them all, the good will come. So it has been with the
colored race in this country. This good can only be made to appear
in a state of freedom.
Just here there is forced upon us another thoughht of tremendous
significance. This gradual unseen, but mighty gathering of power
in the slave in this land cannot be forever without one day coming
into form. You cannot be evermore throwing electricity into the
jar; by-and-by its overcharged contents will burst out in sudden
explosion. While you may let the conductor take them safely and
usefully away! No one cares to follow in imagination where the
thought leads him. Emancipation must be given sooner or later, or
all goes down in a hideous ruin; and no experience can calculate
nicely when the last moment of safety is reached. It may come, and
the crashing thunderbolt tell that it has gone.
Of the way in which this freedom is to be brought about, it is not
the intention of this article to speak. To this writer, there seem
perhaps no problem which approaches it in difficulty. Emancipation--it
is easy to talk and declaim about, it is easy to prove right and
to show desirable, but how to bring about, that is the labor. He
is a rash man, who speaks very confidently on this matter. That
it should be brought about, that the well-being of the two races,
the interest of two continents, and humanity itself, the very
existence of this American people demand it, no thinking man ought
to doubt. It becomes this nation to address itself to this work,
and see that it is done and done well.
While, however, we stand aghast at the difficulties of the work,
it is comforting to know that the solution is not committed to
us, but that the providence of God is pushing it forward. Events
crowding upon each other with a rapidity which bewilders us, seem
steadily and swiftly bringing the freedom of the negro to its
accomplishments. No man is competent to say what the issue will
be, or to what new form the events will shape themselves. A little
while ago the most common consent of men looked toward a gradual
emancipation, to-day it seems more and more as if the fetters were
to be stricken off at a blow. How, or when, who shall say?
In whatever way it is done, one thing we may expect--it will not
be by the premeditated devices of men. The great works of God are
not done in that way. Smaller and comparatively unimportant ones may
be, but those which affect grand interests, and shape the history
of the world, the Great Jehovah takes into His own hand and brings
them to pass so marvellously that all men shall recognize His power
and "Know His name," (Isa. 52, 6.) "Therefore they shall know in that
day that I am He that doth speak; behold it is I!" In the meanwhile
it becomes all men reverently and obediently to be watching the
movements of His Providence, to keep abreast of them, and boldly
to take each new step as it is indicated, and as soon as it is. The
end may come sooner, as it probably be vastly easier in its coming
than we have dared to hope.
Taking the fact of emancipation as fixed, and to be realized, and
that there will here be a race of freedom rapidly rising civilization
and enlightenment, we are confronted with the question-- Is this
country to be the ultimate home of this people ? We answer, No. We
do not believe that this people were brought here that they might
have a permanent residence. They were brought to this land for
tutelage and trial. The Hebrew bondage is the example illustrating
it. Whatever may be said in respect to the right of the negro
to a perpetual home here, and we would be the last to dispute it;
whatever may be urged against the prejudice which thrusts them out
of association and into painful separation, and we would not for
an instant justify it; yet still we are of the opinion that here
the negro will not abide as a people. Social equality and the
enjoyment of every right are well nigh hopeless for him. Were there
nothing else in the way, the stigma of slavery is almost perpetual
and ineradicable.
He is here, not for America, but for Africa. He is here for a
training that could not have been gotten there. When it is complete,
he will go back and make the continent what it could never do without
him. When, under the influences which have shaped his character
and built him up, he has become a self-reliant, advanced Christian
man, and he is ready and able to do something for his race, he will
go back to do it.