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Title: The Right of American Slavery
Author: True Worthy Hoit
Release Date: May 1, 2008 [EBook #25277]
Language: English
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THE
RIGHT
OF
AMERICAN SLAVERY.
BY
T. W. HOIT,
OF THE ST. LOUIS LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION.
SOUTHERN AND WESTERN EDITION.
FIRST AND SECOND EDITIONS, 500,000 COPIES.
FOR SALE BY THE PRINCIPAL PUBLISHERS THROUGHOUT THE UNION.
ST. LOUIS, MO.:
PUBLISHED BY L. BUSHNELL.
1860.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860,
By T. W. HOIT,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States
in and for the District of Missouri.
BAKER & GODWIN, PRINTERS,
Printing-House Square, opposite City Hall,
NEW YORK.
PREFACE.
TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE.
_My Fellow Countrymen:_--Upon what manner of times have we fallen? Is
our supposed experiment of self-government about to prove a failure?
Are we so blind as not to see the abyss into which we are about to
plunge? Section hostile against section; States arrayed against the
Constitution; Churches sundered; the springs of intelligence poisoned
at their source; treason stalking at noonday; insurrection rife; the
equality of States and citizens denied, and derided; justice rebuked;
treachery applauded; traitors canonized; anarchy inaugurated; monarchy
calculating the end of republicanism; and the wheels of government
clogged by the minions of despotism! All this, my Countrymen, and you
passive, silent, sightless; reckless of your own and your children's
doom? And while all this is true, you go about your usual avocations,
as though the eyes of the civilized world were not upon you; as though
the great, the good, the magnanimous of all lands were not breathless,
and spell-bound, and appalled at the spectacle; as though the
prophetic admonitions of the Father of our Country were forgotten, and
nature, with an ominous silence, conspired to lull you into
forgetfulness, the more to astound you with the wonders and the woes
of an approaching catastrophe!
What fatal error is there in our Republican principle? What virus
sickens our body politic? What fascination lures us from the shrine of
freedom? What infatuation hath seized the American people, that they
should put to hazard this priceless inheritance,--the home, and
refuge, and hope, of the down-trodden nations?
I aver there is a fatal fallacy adopted by a large number of the
American people, which, if not rejected, will lead us down to national
oblivion. That fallacy is exposed in the following pages, by showing
what is right, and what is wrong, and explaining the fundamental error
by which our public opinion is divided, and the way of a reunion
pointed out. No one can desire to remain in error. It is the desire to
do right which animates the great mass of the American people. It was,
perhaps, the _desire_ to do right, that made John Brown a rebel and a
traitor, and which consigned him to a traitor's doom. There is no
safety, then, in _desiring_ to do right; but to KNOW what is right,
and to DO it. The time has now arrived when the American people must
do right, or suffer the penalty of doing wrong.
Good _intentions_ will not do. Good DEEDS are demanded,--actions
founded upon truth and justice, and in accordance with nature's
irrevocable laws. We boast of our greatness, and power, and
intelligence. Of what avail are all these, if they will not save us
from national ruin? What boots it that a slumbering giant dreams of
his strength while he is falling upon the bosom of a burning lake? The
mightiest empires have sunk to oblivion. Are we soon to follow them?
Our material greatness and vigor seem to forbid the idea of premature
decay; but let us not be blind to the delusive dream of an immortality
springing from mental imbecility, nor the chimera of a political
finality in governmental system which establishes and tolerates
INJUSTICE, nor the permanence of a State in the midst of
preponderating elements of fluctuating popular delusion.
Either the institutions under which we live are founded in truth, or
they are founded in error. Our constitution is the work of wisdom, or
of folly. It is founded in justice, or injustice; in RIGHT, or
_wrong_. Shall we honor the astuteness of its founders, and
perpetuate these institutions to remotest ages? or shall we prove
recreant to this trust, unworthy of these manifold blessings, and in
our mental blindness and moral imbecility invoke the scorn of future
ages, and the just execrations of all mankind?
The _material_ elements of greatness of the Great American Republic,
must be vivified and enlivened by a corresponding degree of INTELLECT;
they must be permeated by an adequate element of illuminating soul, or
they will fall, a lifeless mass, into chaotic ruin. Let us remember
"That trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay,
As ocean sweeps the labored mote away;
Whilst self-dependent power can time defy,
As rocks resist the billows and the sky."
THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.
INTRODUCTION.
AFRICAN SLAVERY is, at present, the subject of all-absorbing interest
to the American mind; for, our people, almost intoxicated with their
own freedom, seem unsatisfied with those manifold blessings acquired
by the labors of their sires; and while they are conscious of not
excelling them in wisdom, virtue, or valor, they are becoming ideal,
and seem willing to sacrifice the practical, safe rules of republican
action, for mere idealisms, born in the dizzy sphere of their own
over-wrought imaginations. They tremble at the name of Washington,
whose purity and moral power shed lustre upon the name of man, and
they worship him as a god; but while the REAL WASHINGTON commands the
homage of mankind, and stands the intermediate between the race of men
and the Infinite, we find the imaginations of men ignoring reason, and
embarked upon a voyage aerial, amid the clouds. There they revel high
above the mountain tops of Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, where
the atmosphere is pure, where the light is clear, and where the
lightnings play; but, alas for human weakness and frailty! they are
there only in imagination, though the splendid illusion is to them a
reality, and the pleasing dream of ideal beauty, which, by the magic
power of transmutation, annihilates or obliterates the reason and
memory, destroys those distinctions of great and little, right and
wrong, weakness and power, which nature has arbitrarily made, and the
experience of mankind recognized as fundamental; upon which all law is
based, and all order and civilization sustained and advanced, for the
security and elevation of nations and of men.
THE IDEAL AND THE REAL
This ideal element so predominates, in consequence of over or false
_culture_; by the reading of a spurious literature, which dwells in
the regions of fiction and romance, to the proportionate neglect of
the stirring incidents of our time, which actually go to make up true
history--which seem marvellous enough of themselves, without the
necessity of invention, or the aid of artificial novelties, except for
mere embellishment.
It would seem that the rise and progress of this Republic; the spread
of our ocean commerce; the building of a thousand cities; the rush of
the world to our shores; the peopling of our boundless plains; the
rapid birth of new States into our Union; the triumph of our arms; our
repeated accessions of territory; our maritime and commercial
superiority; our foreign discoveries; our inventions in mechanism; our
discoveries in science; the use of steam, and electricity; our
statesmanship, and foreign diplomacy; a thousand miraculous incidents
of individual enterprise and success; the discovery of gold, of
silver, and iron; our internal improvements and meliorations; our
national _prestige_; and finally, our greatness and glory as a
nation,--ought to suffice for any reasonable conception of the
marvellous, as they outstrip the more ignoble creations of fancy, and
absolutely invade the former domain of fiction and romance. Hence the
seeming puerility of fiction when contrasted with these more wondrous
phenomena of fact. The substitution of fiction for fact is, therefore,
unnecessary and absurd, as it defeats the very purpose intended, by
its own inferiority. Its chief effect, then, is but to mislead the
mind.
Let us, then, control the imagination; discard the _ideal_ in
practical affairs, hold it in its sphere, and adopt the REAL, in order
that by the exercise of right reason we may be enabled to consider the
present subject as it _is_, and not as it would be when weighed in the
scale of the ideal; for in this way, and this alone, can we come to
just conclusions, and our labors result in practical benefit to those
most concerned in the premises. In the spirit of truth, of candor, of
sober reality, let us, therefore, approach the subject of American
Slavery.
THE NEGRO EVER A SLAVE.
The Negro has been a slave from time immemorial. This is shown from
the earliest Egyptian monuments, paintings, and traditions. Herodotus,
the father of Grecian History, tells us of negro slavery in Ancient
Greece. It existed in Rome also. During the tenth century of the
Christian era, the Moors, from Barbary, established an extensive
traffic in the cities of Nigritia, where they bought large numbers of
slaves; and the merchants of Seville brought slaves from the western
coast of Africa, and established slavery in that city, and in
Andalusia, long before the time of Columbus.[1] It is also a curious
fact in history, that Hanno, the great Carthagenian commander and
discoverer, having explored Africa from the Straits of Gibraltar to
the bounds of Arabia, brought back to Carthage a cargo of
ourang-outangs, which he supposed to be Negro men and women; _showing
more historically his estimate of African character, than his
familiarity with Natural History_. The Negro has ever been a slave;[2]
and it is to be considered whether his quick and sudden transition
from slavery to freedom, by emancipation, is probable or possible, or
is sanctioned by the history of human development and progress.
TWO PHASES OF SLAVERY.
Slavery has two phases; the moral, which involves the RIGHT, and the
prudential, which is the expedient. But strictly, the moral is the
principal and controlling view of the subject, and that which has made
and will continually constitute the criterion of action from which the
expediency is deduced, and the anomaly of slavery in our Republic
understood, the paradox of a slaveholding democracy explained, and the
institution of slavery justified with human equality, by justly
discriminating between barbarism and humanity, civilization and
savagism, justice and injustice, right and wrong.
THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.
I assert the right and justice of slavery, and found my arguments on
the subject in right alone. If it can be shown to be right, then it is
expedient; if wrong, then it cannot be shown to be expedient, and, if
possible, it ought to be abolished. It is the _idea_ of the _wrong_ of
slavery which has misled, and is continuing to mislead, the American
mind.
By what process of reasoning, then, can slavery be shown to be just? I
answer, because RIGHT holds a just and hereditary control over
_wrong_. I answer, that it is right that barbarism should subserve
civilization. I assert that barbarism is _wrong_, and civilization is
RIGHT; that the former conduces to the misery and the latter to the
happiness of mankind. Barbarism--with its pagan idolatries, its
monstrous superstitions, its devil-worship, its false religious rites,
its heathen orgies, its cruelties, its cannibalism--is wrong. Who will
deny this? Who are its apologists and advocates? Let them stand forth
and show the right of barbarism! Let us have a homily on its beauties!
let them picture to us the meliorations of cannibalism! Will any one
do it? No; it is a self-evident wrong. To attempt, even, to prove it
wrong, would seem to be a work of supererogation. Barbarism it
repugnant to the common sense of the Anglo-Saxon race; a violation of
the conscience of civilization. Cannibalism is an almost inconceivable
outrage against all right, in moral, social, or even superior animal
existence. Few animals or even reptiles devour their kind. It is,
therefore, an act repugnant to human nature, and in violation of the
amenities even of a nobler animal existence. In a word, it is
unmitigated wrong, showing its subjects and votaries to be incarnate
devils.
BARBARISM OF THE AFRICAN RACE.
The African race is a race of barbarians, and civilization to that
race would be an artificial state of existence.[3] The vestiges of
barbarism characterize the African, in his normal state. The latent
principle of cannibalism, lurks, in dormant energy, within the very
core of his being, and constitutes a prominent characteristic of his
animal existence. The economy and order of nature is no less marked in
the _carnivorous_ than in the herbivorous mammalia and quadrumana; and
although their physical distinctions are not always so marked as to
render apparent, to superficial observation, the uses and functions of
their entire organism, yet science has been a tolerably faithful
interpreter of cause and effect, and has not failed to recognize those
organic qualities, and the structural adaptability of the African
race, which qualify it for its mission as the representative of
barbaric fury and degradation, and the type, in human form, of that
chaotic element of self-annihilation, which nature has kindly
restricted to the fewest number of the lowest orders of animated
being.[4] The inhabitants of Southern and Central Africa, from whence
our slaves are drawn, the Feejeean, the Caffrarian, the New-Zealander,
and the Hottentot, are stamped by nature with the unmistakable
character of unmitigated barbarism, and absolute antagonism to
civilization; and their improvement when brought in contact with
civilization is so slow as almost to escape detection. Indeed it is
doubtful whether the arts of European and American civilization have
succeeded in so fascinating the African race among us as to warrant
the expectation of permanency to the colony of Liberia, except from
the light reflected by constant and continued emigration; and it is
believed, by many shrewd philanthropists whose efforts have been long
devoted to the cause of African colonization, that should emigration
to the colony cease, the Negroes there would immediately relapse into
their former habits and customs, and ultimately resume their original
character of cannibals.
THE AFRICAN NOT INTENDED FOR FREEDOM.
No race will remain slaves which the God of nature intended, or which
is fit, to be free; and it is the history of the African in this
country, that the more fit to be free the more he is inclined to
remain a slave. That portion of the African race here which have been
most benefited by our civilization, scorn the false philanthropy which
would restore them to barbarism, and beg the immunity of perpetual
thralldom. This is a clear proof that the African is not intended for
freedom, and at the same time shows that _instinct_ teaches him, as it
teaches all our domestic animals, to know the path of safety better
than it can be learned in the school of fanaticism, or from the
dialect of fools.
It is, therefore, in the philosophical aspect of the subject, in which
it should be viewed, since philosophy searches down into the deep
recesses of nature, and drags to light those hideous deformities of a
race of barbarians, whose inherent passions revel in a sphere
infinitely beneath the dignity of our domestic animals, and from whose
frenzied rage for self-annihilation, enkindled by a morbid desire to
devour their kind, the gentler beasts of the forest turn away in
disgust, and humanity shrinks back with unmitigated horror!
BARBARISM SHOULD SUBSERVE CIVILIZATION.
To say, then, that it is JUST that barbarism should subserve
civilization is a laconical axiom, which decides a plain question of
right and wrong. The wrong is, that the African is a barbarian, and
devours his kind; the right is, that in his service due and rendered
to civilization, he receives its protection, and is compelled to
forego the, to him, exquisite pleasure of devouring his kind. It will
be observed that this view of the subject justifies, not only the
perpetuation, but the inception of slavery, and renders emancipation
absurd and cruel, and the inception of slavery just; leaving the
continued transfer of barbarians to the midst of civilized
communities, a right, the exercise of which could not involve or
sacrifice any right of the barbarian, but must depend upon the
enlightened decision of civilization, as to the reciprocal benefits to
be derived therefrom. The conscience of civilization is the tribunal
at which to try barbarism, as well as every other grade of inferior
subjective existence. It stands above and controls all below it. The
conscience of civilization decides both the right to summon the
barbarian, and to hold him subject to its dictates; to weigh the
benefits to civilization against the evils resulting from the adoption
of the element of this super-animal force as an aid to civilization.
Civilization deciding to take and hold the barbarian, it becomes right
by the decision of the highest arbiter. The taking of the barbarian,
and his employment as an adjunct of civilization, being in consequence
of his moral delinquency, and his consequent mental imbecility, is no
arrogation of right, because it is just; it is no assumption of right,
because the empire of right is universal; it is no violation of right,
because the act in itself is the exercise of the prerogative of right,
of justice, in civilization, to suppress wrong and compel it to
subserve right. In this view emancipation is no less unjust to the
African than opposed to the law of right. To seize him and drag him
away to barbarism, against his will, is an act in favor of barbarism
and in violation of right. It restores to barbarism its victim, and
robs the African of his supposed natural prerogative and choice, of
service to civilization. The act, of itself, is the abnegation of that
same right which it is designed or intended to assert.
THE AFRICAN'S AVERSION TO COLONIZATION.
Go ask the African his opinion of Liberia! Consult him as to the
choice of his future home. He looks upon this land as a paradise, and
upon that with instinctive dread and apprehension. Go ask the very
slaves of the inventor of Central American Colonization (that devout
apostle of _political philanthropy_, and most zealous advocate of
emancipation), go ask _his slaves_ their opinion of the merits of
their master's invention, and their faces will kindle with the half
ingenuous blush of conscious degradation, as they denounce his
project, as the last device of insolence to degrade and oppress them.
IMPRACTICABILITY OF COLONIZATION.
The impracticability of African colonization[5] had long since become
a foregone conclusion, so far as it could be made applicable to the
present or prospective transfer of 4,000,000 of negroes from this
republic to Liberia. A mathematical solution of that problem shows the
cost of purchase and transportation to be no less a sum than
$2,400,000,000, or ten times the amount of all the gold and silver
coin in the United States. The purchase of these Negroes, alone,
would cost $2,000,000,000, or eight times the amount of all our coin;
and if we add to this the cost of transportation to Central America,
the entire cost would not be less than $2,200,000,000. It will be seen
that one scheme is as practicable as the other; and the alternative
remains, of either robbing the people of nearly half the States of the
Union of their property, or the Negro must remain a slave. No sane man
will say that the purchase of this property is practicable or
possible. Fancy, if you please, the Negroes bought and paid for; the
estates of all the people of this country involved in the vain chimera
of transferring to our Southern States, in remuneration, all the coin
in Europe and America, and all that will be added thereto in a hundred
years to come, and you have a picture not very suggestive of
practicability or expediency.
But, even if the citizens of our Southern States should magnanimously
propose the totally improbable act of voluntary and gratuitous
manumission of their slaves, for the purpose of elevating them to
political equality, what would be the effect upon our country? Three
millions and a half of Negroes let loose upon our community, in
competition, in the main departments of industry, with free white
labor. Or would you, in accordance with the legislation of many of the
States, exclude the negro from the Northern, Middle, and Western
States, and the Territories, and thus, by confining him to the South,
give him political preponderance over the white man in many of the
States of the Union? Imagine the pure crystal pillars of this temple
of freedom turned to ebony; the radiant eyes of Freedom's Goddess
shocked at the gloomy spectacle of symbolic night, and suffused with
tears at such a desecration of her shrine!
GRADUAL OR PROSPECTIVE EMANCIPATION.
There is another popular idea of emancipation, which is unjust,
fallacious, and impossible of application. It is known by the specious
though plausible appellation of gradual or prospective emancipation;
by which it is proposed to destroy, by legislation, the productiveness
and the value of this species of property, after a limited period, by
declaring the _confiscation of its increase_. This has been tried by
mistaken philanthropy, or by organized duplicity, with no other effect
but to transfer the slaves from State to State, and from the North to
the South; but while this process has been going on, the number of
slaves in the United States has increased more than four-fold,--from
less than one to more than four millions. This is emancipation with a
vengeance. In this ratio, prospective or gradual _emancipation_ would
give us, in seventy years more, 16,000,000 slaves. It will be seen
that this process is not emancipation, but merely transposition, or
change of locality. The very name of emancipation, thus applied, is a
misnomer.
OF PARTIAL LEGISLATION.
But of the injustice of that partial legislation which would
discriminate against the property of one class of citizens, to destroy
its value, by proposing the confiscation of its increase, or excluding
it from the State,--this is oppression. It may be submitted to, but it
is unjust, partial legislation, and an arbitrary act of tyranny, and
if persisted in will, some day, lead to war. Besides, it does not
effect the purpose intended. It does not diminish slavery, but only
changes its locality. What would be said if it were attempted to
invalidate any other species of property, by the confiscation of its
increase, or an attempt to legislate it out of the State? To declare
by legislation a forfeiture of rents of houses or lands, after a
specified period, or the increase of any species of stocks, or other
property? What is this but agrarianism? what but the first blow of the
_levelers_? And if this is done with impunity, how long before some
other species of property, in the shape of fancied _superfluous_
individual wealth, will also be confiscated? There is no safety in
establishing such a precedent.
PURPOSES OF BRITISH EMANCIPATION.
Emancipation contemplates the social and political equality of the
races. It proposes to mix the pure Anglo-Saxon blood with the dark
blood of Ethiopia! It proposes the amalgamation of civilization with
barbarism. It proposes the debasement and downfall of this Republic,
and the erection upon its ruins of a mighty military despotism. The
alienation of that friendly sentiment and brotherly affection which
existed among our people in the days of the Revolution, is prophetic
of this; and unless reason resume her seat, and the convulsed sea of
American mind, now lashed to fury by blind zealots and European
emissaries among us, be calmed, and the angry wave of fanaticism be
stayed, such will most certainly be the sad and startling
consummation.
OF THE RIGHT TO ENSLAVE THE BARBARIAN.
It is pretended by certain sophists and visionary theorists, that the
RIGHT does not exist to enslave the barbarian; that to assert such
right is fatal to the principle of human equality. To which I answer,
that barbarity is not humanity, but its opposite, and the right of the
one to control the other is supported by law, founded upon the
immutable principles of justice. The experience of mankind has
demonstrated, and the judgment of mankind has decided, that certain
acts are wrong in themselves; that to kill is an act abhorrent to the
soul of man, and as it is also a violation of natural right, the
murderer shall die--that in his death an element of chaos and
destruction, in him, is annihilated--and the principle or element of
murder in the wicked be thereby repressed. Here is an instance wherein
the right is asserted, to take, not only the liberty, but the life of
an individual. Some deny this right, but they do not deny the right to
deprive the murderer of his liberty. All will agree that the murderer
shall, at least, be deprived of his liberty. So with other crimes.
There is a tolerable agreement in civilized communities, that for
certain crimes men shall be deprived of their natural right to
freedom. So, the principle is established, that communities have the
right to deprive men of their liberties. Laws are established and
executed by this principle. Every State, and almost every small
community, endorses this principle, and constantly illustrates it by
the punishment of offenders against law, who are confined in jails and
prisons. And it is folly to deny a right founded upon the universal
usage and experience of mankind. So with nations. Did we not repress
the wrong exercised against us by Mexico and Algeria? Did we not even
deny the right of maritime isolation to Japan, on the score of cruelty
or neglected hospitality to our shipwrecked mariners? Suppose she slay
our ambassador, or our resident minister; would we not still further
force upon her, in a summary manner, those well-known rules of law,
and amenities of civilization, and principles of justice, which are
proclaimed to be right by the united voice of nations?
We are considering the subject of the enslavement of the African race
in this Republic. We are inquiring into the RIGHT of African Slavery.
We have asserted the right of slavery, as founded upon the principle
that universal right holds a just and hereditary control over wrong;
and as the African is a race of barbarians, and barbarism is wrong,
it follows that it is the right of civilization to hold the African
subject to those rules of justice which pertain to civilization, and
to protect him from the injustice, violence, and degradation, which
are the concomitants of barbarism. To deny this is to deny the
superiority of RIGHT over _wrong_. He who denies this, becomes the
advocate of barbarism; for, barbarism being below civilization, he
asserts its equality with civilization, and thus becomes its apologist
and advocate.
VIOLATION OF NATURAL RIGHT.
Such an one will claim that involuntary labor performed by the
African, in behalf of civilization; or the production, by his labor,
of material or fabrics to hide his nakedness, or adorn the human race,
or protect them from the cold, degrades the barbarian, because it
encroaches upon his natural right to go naked and houseless, and
perish with the cold. He is quite _primitive_ in his ideas of dress,
and ought to emigrate to a warm climate, like South Africa or South
America, where the elements of nature do not conspire with
civilization to degrade and oppress him. He perceives that our unjust
and oppressive laws actually punish, as an offense, the exposure to
view of man's natural external beauties! This is about as far as it is
safe to go on the subject of natural right, both from considerations
of propriety and modesty, and also, as it almost amounts to a
digression from the subject immediately under consideration; but we
are merely following the advocate of emancipation, on the score of
equality and natural right, just where his principles lead him; and as
it forcibly suggests the inexpediency of emancipation, and consequent
barbarism, on the score of morality and decency, it seems entirely
apposite to the subject.
But it is claimed by some, that the African slave here has ceased to
be a barbarian, which I deny. His nature is not essentially changed;
his habits are forced; and he would at once fall, as he has fallen,
and is falling, in San Domingo, Jamaica, and Canada, but for
coercion. It is, therefore, an external power which holds him up, and
no innate principle within him.
THE DEBT OF THE BARBARIAN.
But even for argument, admitting the African were civilized, still he
is not legally entitled to his freedom. Why? Because on account of his
barbarism he became the property of another, who has a vested right in
him. His transition from barbarism to civilization was at the expense
of civilization, and he owes a just equivalent therefor. His debt is
the difference between barbarism and civilization, and will be
estimated according as the one in held higher than the other.
THE RIGHT OF THE AFRICAN TO REMAIN A SLAVE.
If the African is entitled to his freedom, he is also entitled to the
privilege of remaining in servitude; a privilege which nine tenths of
the Negroes in this country are well known to crave. But we deny his
right of choice in the premises. His barbarism was the oblivion of his
right to choose his own proper position; and the absence of inherent
right in him subjects him at once to the dominion of universal or
external right in civilization. His right of choice, therefore, has no
real validity, and should not even be tolerated to denounce the
heinous wrong of his emancipation, and consequent restoration to
barbarism. His right to remain a slave is not his own, but the right
of civilization; and even his willingness to remain in servitude,
though a double evidence of his barbarism and of his appreciation of
his partially ameliorated condition as an accessory of civilization,
is not available in deciding as to his present or future condition;
because the right exercised in his subjection to the rules of
civilization is primordial, and sovereign, and all-controlling, as
Universal Right, and is in no case subject to the will of barbarism.
THE MELIORATION OF THE AFRICAN.
With regard to the degradation of the African slave, that is admitted;
but at the same time his position as an accessory to civilization is
far higher than that wherein he was wholly the subject of barbarism.
Now, he is dignified to the useful avocations of the civilized race;
learns their rudimental arts and customs, and methods of subsistence;
is subject to, and protected by law; becomes semi-civilized, and in
rare, individual instances, as a _lusus naturæ_, even aspires to the
nobler prerogatives of mind. The meanest slave that wears the shackle
or feels the whip of civilization, in the reluctant performance of
coerced labor, is a far nobler being than the African barbarian in his
native wilds.
OF THE DEGRADATION OF LABOR.
Labor degrades no man. Labor is honorable, because the products of
labor feed and clothe the world, and thus conduce to the welfare and
happiness of mankind. Coerced labor is better than no labor. Coercion
itself does not necessarily degrade man; rather may it ennoble and
elevate, when it is exercised to summon the barbarian to the lessons
of civilization. Coercion degrades not the man whom it compels to do
right; it only exposes that degradation which is the result of doing
wrong. The man only is degraded who, voluntarily or by coercion, does
wrong, or neglects to do right. To talk of the degradation of labor,
whether coerced or free, is, therefore, preposterous.
HUMAN EQUALITY.
But the question of emancipation is started and agitated on the ground
of human _equality_. It is the supposed equality of the African with
the white race, that is the pretext for emancipation, and the
foundation of the assumed right and expediency of emancipation. It has
been supposed by some, that the enunciation of human equality in the
American Declaration of Independence was intended for all the races
of men in the world. Such a supposition is totally unfounded, and
unwarrantable in the very nature of things. In the first place, it is
not true; and in the next place, the writer of that Declaration meant
no such thing, for he held slaves, and knew their inferiority. What a
monstrous act of hypocrisy and folly it would have been in the author
of that instrument, and his cotemporaries, to declare that all men are
created _free_ when they knew millions are born slaves, or when they
knew no _equality_ existed, even of right, between the barbarian and
the man whose sense of justice and perception of RIGHT secured to him
the approbation of Heaven and his own conscience, by a recognition of
and obedience to the laws of morality, and conformity to the just
rules of civilization. They wrote that Declaration for white
men,--meaning white men,--because it did not and could not apply to
the barbarous and savage nations. They saw the world in chains, and
knew the bondage of mankind to be the result of their violation of
moral right, and their incapacity for self-government. They estimated
rightly when they announced freedom to the white race in these
colonies; for, up to this time, the fact of self-government by our
people has verified their prophetic annunciation; but the sages who
founded this Republic, excluded, by legislation, the African and the
Indian from this boon of freedom, and they and their descendants have
held the African in the condition of servitude.
INCAPACITY OF THE MINGLED RACES FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT.
The question of the enfranchisement of the African, therefore,
involves the question of the capacity of the mingled races for
self-government; a problem which is already solved in Mexico, in
Jamaica, in San Domingo, and several of the Spanish American States.
There, the mixed races have no common bond of union. The predominance
of one petty State, or military chieftain, is the signal for the
semi-barbarous hordes of mingled races to combine for the purpose of
destruction. Urged on by the emissaries of that colossal superstition
which casts its shadow over this Republic (whose home is a foreign
kingdom, and whose head is a foreign prince), the semi-barbarous
hordes of mingled races in the South American States, are a prey to
successive bloody revolutions, through that imbecility which is the
sure result of the amalgamation of civilization with barbarism.
WRONG SHOULD SUBSERVE RIGHT.
In considering the subject of slavery, there is one principle which
must not, and cannot be lost sight of, as it underlies all else, and
is the root from which springs the tree of all knowledge on this
subject, as well as all others; to wit: That RIGHT holds a just and
hereditary control over _wrong_. Not because right is the strongest,
but because it is the BEST. It is very common when right asserts its
prerogative, that we hear the subjects and votaries of _wrong_
denounce RIGHT as mere _might_. This is a common foible of vice, to
conceal its own deformity; a mere subterfuge, which, when pushed to
the wall, vice adopts, and meets the executioner of justice with the
accusation that he is the mere instrument of might; the servile tool
of arbitrary power. This glozing of vice avails not. Justice stands
erect in the dignity of its own moral beauty, and commends itself to
the intellect and conscience of mankind. All the affections, all the
wisdom, and all the experience of men, do homage at the shrine of
justice, as the arbiter of right. This great moral tribunal,
established at the dawn of creation, has existed through all time, and
still exists; and at this tribunal we try barbarism, and find it to be
wrong, because it conduces to the misery and degradation of men. At
this tribunal, we find civilization to be right, because it conduces
to the happiness and welfare of mankind. This being so (and the man
who denies it, is a barbarian), it follows, that civilization,
carrying with it the preponderating elements of right and justice,
holds a just and hereditary control over barbarism, which is wrong.
When we assert, therefore, the right of slavery, because it is just
that barbarism shall subserve civilization, we only say it is just
that wrong should subserve right;--a proposition, which, certainly,
ought to commend itself to the common sense, the intellect, and the
conscience of every good man.
Some assert that civilization should subserve barbarism; but when
tried by our rule, they at once see that it is preposterous to assume
that right should subserve wrong.
FORFEITURE OF NATURAL RIGHT.
Some propose, that the advantages of the great and little, the served
and the servant, the good and the bad, should be reciprocal; that that
which is used is, or should be, as much advantaged in the using as is
the user. I would ask them--what particular advantage it is to the
oyster to be devoured? or what return can the earth make to the sun
for his rays, constantly poured upon it? Some assert that every human
being is unqualifiedly endowed by nature with the right of individual
freedom. This we deny. We assert that barbarism is not humanity, and
cannot claim to exercise the prerogative of civilization, which it has
ignored, or which it never knew. We assert that the murderer has
forfeited that right; and more than this, with the element of murder
developed in him, originally, he never was entitled to freedom.
Prisons, and even dungeons, are as necessary and proper as schools and
colleges, but not more so than servitude to the barbarian. They are
all appliances of right and justice and civilization, not to make the
good subserve the bad, but to make the bad subserve the good.
TAKING THE EXCEPTION FOR THE RULE.
It will not do for men to pretend that they do not know which is right
and which is wrong; what is civilization and what is barbarism. The
exception for the rule is as proper to adopt in the one case as in the
other. We cannot condemn civilization for the incidents of bad
government in some cases, false religion in others, and crime in
others, when the general tenor of civilization is to protect the weak
against the strong, give security to life and property, and by
developing the intellect and cultivating the moral faculties, elevate
and ennoble the race. Neither can we acquit barbarism if it affords
occasional instances of _immoderate instinct_, closely approximating
to intellect, or even intellect itself, and moral worth, or the
absence of ferocity, or the presence of positive amiability, render it
possible that the barbarian is not a fiend, or that he may be schooled
to tolerable docility, while the general tenor of barbarism is to
wrong, cruelty, violence, and self-annihilation.
PASSION; SYMPATHY MISAPPLIED.
Nor will it do to ignore reason, and adopt passion when we consider
the subject of slavery. Passions have their uses, but how often they
are perverted! Reason is sometimes perverted too, and never more than
when exercised against truth, justice, and civilization, and in favor
of barbarism. There is false sympathy, amounting to passion, that is
blindly lavished upon objects which neither need nor appreciate it. We
often see it exercised in behalf of the brute animals, whose proper
natures are totally unconscious of it; while their gentleness and
quietness seem to rebuke this shallow, human sentimentality, as
something wandering from its sphere, or as seed wasted upon the sand.
Your sympathy has its legitimate uses, and it is against the economy
of nature to misuse it, or bestow it upon natures foreign to its own.
If we pity the slave because he is not like ourselves, we shall
probably receive his pity, in return, for some weakness or power in
us, that covers an abyss which he cannot fathom, and from which he
turns away in terror. He is adapted to his place, and so are we, if we
are content.
PERFECTION OF NATURE'S WORK.
It has been said, with how much truth let us consider,
"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise;"
the reverse of which is, "Where knowledge is bliss, 'tis folly to be
ignorant." The first proposition was evidently intended for the Negro,
and the last for the white man; as intellectual pleasures and
knowledge are esteemed highest by the latter, and animal pleasures by
the former. Happiness is the aim of both; the difference is in the
mode of attaining it, and the degree of it when attained. The negro is
perfect in his kind. Sympathy will not make him a white man. Would you
interrogate nature on the wisdom of her works? Would you denounce them
as imperfect? Can you improve upon the architecture of the honey-bee,
or the method of his distillation? or on nature's processes of
germination and vegetation? Your cup of liquid poison is but a mean
equivalent for his treasured nectar; your hot-house culture yields
nought for the beauties of Flora, nor the sweetness of her priceless
perfumes. The spider would not be a butterfly even if you could give
him wings. The power to fly would only enable him to spin his web in
air, and obscure the sunlight. His own way is best, both for him and
man.
THE NEGRO SATISFIED WITH HIS CONDITION.
Reason will bring all things right. We must take things as they ARE,
not as fancy would paint them. It is of no use to get exasperated
because the Negro is dark of skin, and because his inferiority and
degradation adapt him to the rougher, or rudimental departments and
pursuits of civilization. Pity for him on account of the labor which
makes his sleep sweet, and his digestion perfect, is thrown away. He
knows nothing of the ennui of sloth, nor the misanthropy of idle
declaimers. He has his rude affections, and does not hate wrongs which
he does not know nor feel, nor is he shocked at manacles which he
cannot see, and which hold him from falling into the abyss of
barbarism, whence they have lifted him. He loves his condition as a
slave to civilization, because his instinct tells him it is better
than subjection to the usages and wrongs of the condition from whence
he has risen. If he is satisfied with his present condition, it is
from an intuitive instinct, teaching him his fitness for it, and
shows, by the slowness of the transition from barbarism to
civilization, how wide and deep is the gulf which divides the one from
the other.
UNITY OF THE AFRICAN RACES.
I use the term barbarism in contradistinction to civilization, and
very respectfully refer to authorities of repute in justification of
this use of the word, both to designate the quality of the _thing_,
and the precise locality of its fittest application; for although
Herodotus tells us that the Egyptians and Greeks applied the term
_barbari_ to all who spoke a language different from their own; and
even the Hindoos used almost the same word to express the quality
indicated, differing only by the accidental dissimilarity of the
Sanskrit orthography, which makes it _varvvarah_ or _varvvaras_, we
have the authority of Professor Wilson, who says it means "an outcast,
and in another sense, woolly or curly haired, as the hair of the
African." And for authorities showing the unity of the Negro races,
dialects, and languages, in Western, Southern, and Central Africa, I
refer to the writings of Progart, Ritter, Oldendorf, Marsden,
Bruseiotti, Harves, Grandpre, Vater, Salt, Ludolf, and Oldfield; who,
from other motives than those which have prompted the partial accounts
of more recent travelers and writers on the subject, have shown
conclusively, that the degrees of barbarism existing in the tribes
inhabiting the Western and Southern coasts of Africa, and the
interior, are, in fact, mere modifications of that same barbarism,
produced by local causes, and mitigated only by the force of nature
from without, rather than by any inherent quality belonging to any
portion of the Negro race. I speak of language as the connecting chain
which links together the various African tribes, showing, if not their
identity, their immediate connection, and holding to the account of
barbarism those exceptions to the rule of barbarism which suggest the
pretext for breaking down the barriers which divide barbarism from
civilization, and form the basis of all the false philanthropy and
efforts of political emancipation which are the curse of the age and
country in which we live.
According to Pritchard, and others familiar with the subject, the
slaves exported from Congo, which was long the principal resort of the
Portuguese traders in black men, have always been regarded by
slave-dealers and planters as genuine Negroes. If the physical traits
of the Mapoota tribe, who will, as I suppose, be admitted to be
undoubtedly of the Kafir race, so fairly represent the Negro
character, it will be less difficult to admit that the natives of
Mozambique and Congo belong to the same stock. All the inhabitants of
the great empire of Congo speak one language, though it is divided
into a number of dialects, including the dialect of Loango in the
_north_, that of Congo in the south, and _Banda_, or idiom of
Cassanga, in the interior, forming, collectively, one nearly allied
family of languages, or, in fact, one language.
TRAVELERS IN AFRICA.
Since emancipation contemplates the transfer of the slaves to Africa,
as the means of mitigating those supposed evils to which they are
subjected, having already established by way of derision a _republic_
there, I deem it legitimate to make some inquiry into the nature and
condition of the inhabitants of Africa, in order to ascertain if such
a change would be expedient or proper, with a view to the amelioration
of the condition of the slaves. Of course, to do this, we must take
the general authorities of history, and not confine ourselves to those
individual authorities of recent date, which may be influenced by the
popular delusion of _Negro equality_, or, for purposes of _gain_ or
from _political motives, have written books to sell, or_ been
_employed for pay_ to belie the KNOWN TRUTHS OF HISTORY.
CANNIBALISM.
With regard to cannibalism, I demand that the advocates of
emancipation either adopt it as right and proper, or denounce it, as
I do, as beneath the dignity of ordinary animal existence, and as the
most disgusting prerogative of barbarism. Probably they will adopt it
on the very antique authority of Zeno, Diogenes, Chrysippius, and the
Stoics, who esteemed it perfectly reasonable for men to devour one
another; or because, in China (and other countries) it is practiced,
where, according to Herrera, one great market is supplied with human
flesh alone, for the better sort of people; or because cannibalism was
universal before the days of Orpheus. I almost fear lest the
emancipationists, by adopting cannibalism as right, with such high
authorities and precedents to support their position, may endeavor to
palliate African cannibalism on the ground that it is not a monopoly,
and claim exemption from the great verdict of modern civilization
which denounces, as forfeited and condemned, this disgusting and
leading custom of barbarism. But if the common sense of the
Anglo-Saxon race did not almost universally denounce this hideous
custom, I would bring Sextus Empiricus to show that the first laws
ever enacted were to prevent men from devouring each other; and even
this may be declared, by our sophistical emancipationists, to be one
of the first violations of _natural right_. If the right of
cannibalism is claimed, then will nature assert its wrong, and
vindicate civilization. But if cannibalism is rejected by the
emancipationists, then let us see to what dangers and degradation he
would expose the now happy and contented slave.
CANNIBALISM IN AFRICA.
In the "UNIVERSAL VOCABULARY," which is compiled from the very highest
authority (p. 218), we learn that the Jagas, of the kingdom of Congo,
"take pleasure in _eating young women_!" And "a princess was so fond
of her gallants, that she _ate them successively_!" "Their choicest
food is _warm human blood_!" "The Jaga chieftain, Cassangi, used to
have _a young woman killed every day for his table_!" "Five or six
strong men will at once destroy and share the flesh of a captive."
"The women are equally as ferocious as the men, _delighting to
cleave the skull, and suck the warm brain of the slain_!" This is
solemn history, though almost horribly incredible.
From the same authority, and others, we learn that seven-eighths of
Africa is at present either savage or barbarous. This is _the present
condition of Africa_, by nearly the unanimous voice of enlightened
travelers, and scientific explorers.
According to Pritchard, "the Mumbas, a numerous and savage people who
live at the east and northeast of Te-te, and at Chicorango, are
cannibals."
Dos Sanctas says, "They have in their principal town a
slaughter-house, where they butcher men every day."
We learn from Pritchard, that "the Zimbas, or Mazimbas, are a
man-eating tribe near Senna." Also, that "the Múlúa tribe slaughter
fifteen or twenty men every day."
It is a well-authenticated fact, that the subjects of the Great Macaco
are anthropophagi, or cannibals. "This prince has a court so numerous,
as to require two hundred men to be butchered every day to supply his
table; a part of them criminals, and a part slaves furnished in the
way of tribute." It is a part of history, both ancient and modern,
that in the market-places in the principal towns and large villages
throughout southern, and in portions of central Africa, Negro flesh is
sold by the pound, as commonly as beef or mutton is sold throughout
these United States; and what is worse, it in only the wealthy or more
_intelligent_ classes who are able to indulge in so great a luxury;
while the poorer classes, the mass of the people, are envious
spectators of the traffic in this so great a luxury, as to tempt them
to every violence and crime to enable them to indulge in it.
SUPREMACY OF PAGANISM IN AFRICA.
This is the fate to which emancipation would consign the Negro. These
are a few of the selected examples of the horrors of barbarism,
furnished by historians, scientific travelers, and Christian
missionaries, whose testimony, as eye-witnesses, has become history
during the last few hundred years. Meanwhile, the light of
civilization has blazed upon Africa from three quarters of the globe,
even as the rays of the sun have enveloped the globe itself.
Missionaries from Europe and America, from Rome, and London, and New
York, have striven with a zeal and fidelity known only to religious
enthusiasm, incited by mutual emulation, and armed with those terrors
which awe the soul, those allurements which beguile the affections,
and those fascinations which enkindle hope; but they have striven in
vain against the colossal power of barbarism; and to-day, those
heathen orgies which have darkened the annals of the world for four
thousand years, are as sacred, to paganism in Africa, as are the rites
and ceremonies of Christianity in London or in Rome.
Is this no evidence of the unfitness of the African for civilization?
And is it just, in the sight of heaven, to force him from his present
willing position of service to civilization, and consign him to a fate
more terrible than even death itself!
THE AFRICAN RACE ON THIS CONTINENT.
Look at the African race on this continent, in this Republic, in
Canada, and in the Islands of San Domingo and Jamaica. Compare the
African in this Republic, under the wholesome regimen of civilization,
with his emancipated brethren in the West Indies, or his recusant,
fugitive brother in the Canadas. Has he not advanced here, and
retrograded there? Compare his condition in these States, North and
South. Why do the free States enact laws to prohibit the African from
coming into them to settle? Is it because he is a civilized man, an
equal, and a good citizen? Is it not rather, because the Anglo-Saxon
race shuns the supposed contamination of barbarism? The wisdom of
these prohibitory laws will be seen in the future time; when the idea
of Negro equality has become exploded and obsolete; after the question
of emancipation has served its purpose in political combination; but
alas! not until the fallacy of negro equality has resulted in a
mongrel race which will have spread itself like the shadow of a cloud
over some of the fairest portions of freedom's heritage.
THE AFRICAN IS DEEMED A BARBARIAN IN THE NORTHERN STATES.
It will be seen that the arguments here advanced are predicated, to
some extent, upon the fact that the African is a barbarian. That he is
so in his native wilds, we have shown by high authority. That he is so
in this country, is obvious, from the fact that in the South he is
held a slave, and is satisfied with his condition; and because, as a
race, the African in this country, and on this continent, shows not
the least capacity for self-control. In the South, the African, in his
best estate, is a slave. In the North, laws are wisely enacted to
prevent him from going there, because of his barbarism, and because
that portion of the most advanced race on earth shrinks from contact
with it. The fact, then, of his barbarism is sustained, fully,--by his
normal condition in Africa; his condition of retrogradation in Jamaica
and San Domingo, where the experiment of emancipation has proved a
failure, where the relapse into barbarism is sure and irrevocable; and
in this country, where common sense and public opinion and public law,
both North and South, hold him in the condition of social, moral, and
physical vassalage and servitude, and confine him effectually within
certain prescribed limits, or hold him in that marked estimation of
inferiority which makes him forever conscious of his own degradation.
I have felt justified, therefore, not by way of opprobrium, nor in the
spirit of invidious or odious comparison, to name the category in
which he belongs, and then, by fair moral and philosophical argument
to deduce the justice and right of civilization in holding dominion
over him.
EMANCIPATION IS WRONG.
It is not our purpose to blame the African for being a barbarian; but
to insist that emancipation is wrong because it restores him to
barbarism, and that slavery is right because it holds him to those
roles of justice which pertain to civilization, and protects him from
the injustice, violence, and degradation which are the concomitants of
barbarism. As the slave of civilization, he is raised infinitely above
his former condition as the subject of barbarism. He knows this, and
it satisfied. His instinct teaches him to love his master, because he
is his protector, and because, mistrusting his own capacity for
self-government, he knows the necessity for a master; and instances
are numerous, of slaves, having misjudged their own capacity for
self-government, having fled from supposed wrongs, they found they
were mistaken as to the means of bettering their condition, and
returned to voluntary servitude, begging, with tears, to be again
admitted to the sacred precincts of the patriarchial care.
FITNESS OF THE AFRICAN FOR SLAVERY.
It is the fitness of things that makes the African a slave. His brawny
limbs, seconding and aiding the intellect of the superior race,
constitute the left hand and foot of labor. Slavery is the left hand
of our body politic. Free labor is the right hand. Intellect is the
head. All combined, constitute a power which is felt and feared by the
foes of this Republic. Hence their endeavor to detach one portion from
the other, and thus weaken the whole. To change the position of the
slave is to interrupt or reverse the order of nature.
"What if the foot, ordained the dust to tread,
Or hand to toil, aspired to be the head?
What if the head, the eye, or ear repined
To serve, mere engines of the ruling mind?
Just as absurd for any part to claim
To be another in this general frame;
Just as absurd to mourn the tasks or pains
The great directing Mind of All ordains."
ABSURDITY OF NEGRO EQUALITY.
The truth is, slavery is right, and is proved to be so,
notwithstanding all the noisy declamation we hear about human
equality. The Negro is a barbarian, and barbarism is not humanity but
inhumanity; hence the unfitness to the case, of such illogical
reasoning as is adopted by the advocates of Negro equality. Human
equality, as applied to the Negro, is an idle fantasy, without even
the shadow or semblance of plausibility. White men are equals in few
things; certainly not in physical nor mental capacity, nor power. The
equality declared by our Revolutionary Sires was the political
equality of white men. Let us arise from that lethargy in which we
have dreamed of universal equality, and escape the dangers of that
moral and intellectual somnambulism in which we have been groping to
the verge of social and political destruction.
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN RADICALISM.
This restless spirit of change, in a portion of our people, this
craving for universal equality, by the blind victims of popular
fanaticism, finds its parallel in the destructive element of European
radicalism, (that bane of European democracy,) which mistakes freedom
for the right of plunder, and Democracy for the right of popular
despotism. It is that blind spirit of rage which adapts not the means
to the end, but overreaches itself, and falls a prey to its own
cupidity, duplicity, and folly.
INEQUALITY OF RACES.
Universal equality,--the equality of the African with the Caucasian,
or the savage with the civilized races, is no more possible than to
blend right with wrong. The inequality exists in nature, as
indubitably as the varied magnitudes of the stars. And the
characteristics of the various savage races differ as widely as their
varied physiognomy. There is no equality among them, mental or
physical,--not even equality of degradation. The gigantic Patagonian,
and the dwarfish Laplander; the wild Feejeeian, and docile Guinea
Negro; the stolid Indian, and ant-like plodder of teeming India,--are
but the outward symbols of that contrariety of moral, or rather
immoral existence which is the fate of barbarism. They have no
equality of beauty nor ugliness, leanness nor obesity, vice nor
virtue, but varying differences, such as the spontaneous growth of
uncultured nature in different climes exhibits in the vegetable and
lower orders of the animal creation. What a contrast is this to
that trained, drilled conformation to the order and proper
conventionalities of civilized life, which our free schools, free
press, social rites, laws, and customs impose.
QUIBBLE OF THE SOPHIST.--TAKING THE EXCEPTION FOR THE RULE.
And here comes the quibble of the sophist, who singles out instances
of law violated in civilized communities, and holds them up as the
criterion by which to judge civilization, and triumphantly exclaims,
Lo! the fruits of civilization--of that civilization which arrogates
to itself the right to enslave mankind! But this is merely a bare
perversion of truth. He deceives no one so much as himself, when he
imagines the world will take the _exception_ for the RULE of
civilization, or make it the pretext to sustain barbarism.
THE SUPREMACY OF MIND OVER MATTER.
It is safe to assert that right holds a just and hereditary control
over wrong. _Veritas vincit._ Justice and truth go hand in hand.
Barbarism must bow before the genius of civilization. And what is not
found in international law, nor suppressed by it, nor dictated by the
commercial rivalries of nations, nor the zealous diplomacy of kings,
will yet continue as it ever has, to recognize the power of mind over
matter, of reason over passion, of intellect over animal existence;
and the dominion and supremacy of written constitutions over citizens,
communities, States, and empires. The right of government in civilized
States more than suggests the right and supremacy of civilization over
barbarism. But the right of mind over matter, of intellect over mere
animal life, of reason over passion, is asserted upon the broadest
principles of philosophy in nature. The Infinite Spirit, unseen, moves
the visible material creation as the creature of his will.
He framed the universe, and instant twirled
Upon its orbit, this terrestrial world;
Bid chaos flee, and called the glittering train
Of constellations to the ethereal plain;
He built the fabric of creation fair;
Lit every sun that shines in glory there;
Strewed with his hand, to deck heaven's argent fields,
Each starry atom that refraction yields;
And holds in order, as it moves along,
Each seraph bright, of the celestial throng!
SHALL BARBARISM CONTROL CIVILIZATION?
Behold the order of heaven! Does any passion bear sway there? The
ponderous globes obey the mandate of spiritual superiority; and shall
the order of nature be reversed here, and the animal species lord it
over men? Shall barbarism again come on the track of civilization,
with fire and sword, and ruthless annihilation? Shall civilization
invoke the demon of destruction to its own downfall? Shall the frenzy
and rage of visionary enthusiasts, _or the dark schemes of the
emissaries of despotism in this Republic_, lay in ruins this fair
temple of freedom, the home, and refuge, and hope of the down-trodden
nations?
THE RAGE OF PASSION.
What are these dreams of sophists, these vagaries of imagination, this
rage of passion, this perversion of reason, and high-sounding
declamation, confounding right with wrong, civilization with
barbarism, but the paraphernalia of despotism arrayed against the
liberties of mankind? Emancipation is all a delusion, a foible,
a fantasy, an idle dream! The soul and intellect of man is
heaven-derived, and knows its order and beauty, and will hold in
abeyance these elements of chaos. The barbarian is indeed dark of
skin, and the radiance of a million constellations in a thousand ages
will not change him, nor the light of civilization fade to moral
brightness his gloomy mind!
EMANCIPATION OF THE WHITE RACES.
It will be observed that my argument on the subject of slavery is new,
and is drawn from the actual nature of the case. I offer no antique
authority to sustain the RIGHT of slavery. The history of the African
race for four thousand years is sufficient, which is, that in no
country nor condition has that race shown the capacity for or enjoyed
self-government. And, indeed, self-government with the superior white
races is still deemed but an experiment. The great mass of the white
races ever have been, and still are, governed by the strong hand of
despotism, or by the more plausible, but ofttimes not less diabolical
power of constitutional sovereignties, or hereditary or revolutionary
oligarchies. It is not, then, so great a disparagement to the African
that he is unfit for freedom, when nine-tenths of the foremost of the
white races, show not the capacity to enjoy it. Certainly, the African
is not their superior. Why, then, demand for him more than is allowed
to the superior white races? If emancipation is to be thought of,
would it not be well to emancipate the white races first?
THE ARGUMENT INVULNERABLE.
I have rested my argument on no antique authority to show the right of
slavery. I have appealed to no religious dogmas to show this right. I
have not even availed myself of the whole tenor of sacred history to
justify it, which has been done heretofore by others, and done in
vain. I have not labored to produce a voluminous collation of other
men's opinions to swell my pages. Sacred history is in the hands of
all, and its teachings need not my endorsement, recommendation, nor
reiteration. Indeed, if the right of slavery here asserted is not
based upon truth, and if it does not commend itself to the unbiased
judgment of my countrymen, then I demand that they discard it. I ask
if the argument here advanced, has been or can be refuted? If it can
be, let it be done fairly, openly, and without circumvention. Let it
be shown that barbarism ought not to subserve civilization. Let it be
shown that civilization is wrong, because it does not conduce to the
well-being and happiness of mankind; let it be shown that barbarism is
right because it does this. Let the apologists and advocates of
barbarism show its equality with civilization. Let it be denied, and
the denial proved, that the laws of universal right and justice hold
true and heaven-derived supremacy over wrong. Let it be shown that the
slave-owner has no legal right of property in his slaves. Or, if it be
admitted that he has such right, let any possible process of
emancipation be pointed out. Will the violent denunciations of
fanaticism induce him to free his slaves? Does the divided sentiment
and feeling evinced in even the division of the churches north and
south, indicate the willingness of the owners to free their slaves? If
not, then by what means are they to be set free? Is it to be by
purchase? and if so, is it proposed to pay the value of the slaves?
and how? Let it be shown that the purchase and transportation of
4,000,000 of Negroes to Africa will cost less than $2,400,000,000; or
to Central America less than $2,200,000,000. Let it be shown to be
expedient, practicable, or possible to do this; and even if done, let
it be shown to be a benefit to the slave or the master; a benefit
either to civilization or barbarism.
If none of these things can be shown, and I aver they cannot, then how
about the last startling alternative of robbing the slave-owner of his
property? of the freeing of the Negroes by servile insurrection and
civil war? What would be the cost in blood and treasure to effect
this? and the probable result of _such_ an effort at emancipation, on
the freedom and civilization of the world?
WHY ENGLAND ABOLISHED THE SLAVE TRADE,--HER DREAD OF OUR GREATNESS AND
POWER.
The truth is, the slave trade was abolished by British and Tory
influence, at about the time of the American Revolution, when slavery,
as an adjunct of colonial vassalage, could no longer subserve the
interests of British commerce. This was their first success in
circumventing us. Her complicity in the Cooley trade is an evidence of
this. She is willing to morally damn herself for purposes of
monarchical intrigue, in order to supplant us. Our agriculture and
commerce, and rapidly accumulating wealth and power, and republican
glory, are too much for her. Our example of success in freedom tempts
the loyalty of the most enlightened subjects of the British crown. The
fascinations of freedom beguile the ardent and noble aspirations of
the English democracy, and Britannia, with her antiquated and wrinkled
visage, shrinks abashed from the majestic presence of Freedom's
immortal and fadeless bloom!
This is the true cause of the present British Negro philanthropy, and
the occasion of her _assumed_ moral turpitude in elevating the heathen
barbarian of Africa to the primary plane of civilization, to the
protection of its laws, and the meliorations of its moral, political,
social, and religious institutions. It is because monarchy was
beginning to be odious in the eyes of the European democracy, when
contrasted with our antagonistical system of the divine right of the
people. It is her policy and her purpose to render our institutions
unstable by means of a suborned and venal press, and a band of
mercenary, hireling, political and religious monarchical conspirators,
parasites and traitors. These her gold can furnish. Her arms having
repeatedly failed to subjugate the American democracy, she now has
recourse to her diplomacy, her intrigues, and her gold. Twenty
millions of money expended in this way in the last twenty years, has
had its effect, and to her emissaries, and hireling presses and
scribblers, we are indebted for a dastardly generation of traitors,
who would barter the liberties of their country for the applause of
faction, and the complacency of kings.
ENGLAND'S SELF-IMPOSED ODIUM.
It is a monstrous absurdity, nay it is an act of egregious hypocrisy,
for England now to _assume_ for herself an _hypothetical
guilt_,--after bringing the African to her American Colonies for
purposes of _gain_, and after exercising an intolerable tyranny over
the white race in those colonies, and even invoking the aid of the
tomahawk and scalping knife of the American savage in their attempted
subjugation,--for the purpose now, when her arms and diplomacy have
repeatedly failed, of seeking to overthrow the freedom of a Republic,
which has risen, in despite of her, to such colossal proportions, as,
in its very existence, to menace the combined monarchies of the world.
But we hold these 4,000,000 of barbarians subject to the laws of
civilization; and let England remember that we, even now, have the
magnanimity to relieve her from the self-imposed odium of doing right!
We now tell her monarchists, degenerate sons of illustrious sires,
that in their maritime decadence they have also morally retrograded,
for they now seek to restore these Africans to barbarism!
SLAVERY IS AN INCIDENT OF CIVILIZATION.
Let it not be claimed, even as a sophistical subterfuge, that the
_motive_ which brought the African here was mercenary, and that,
therefore, his coming here was not justifiable. Commerce is the
handmaid of civilization, and if his coming was only incidentally
right, yet that incident belongs to civilization, which is amenable to
the moral code, and is also to be commended, with all its incidental,
as well as more matured blessings. The institutions of civilization
rescued these 4,000,000 of barbarians from the dangers, degradation,
and miseries of barbarism, and by causing them to subserve
civilization, compelled them to do right. The English and American
false philanthropists, monarchical emissaries, ecclesiastical
parasites, and pseudo-republican traitors now demand that these
Africans shall be restored to barbarism, not because it is practicable
or possible, or right, but because the proposition involves the
equality of these States, and consequently the existence of the
American Union. The success of these conspirators depends upon an
adequate numerical proportion of knaves and monomaniacs, the
well-adjusted mechanism of monarchy for the overthrow of this
Republic. Their success would forever settle the long mooted question
of the capacity of Anglo-Saxon race for self government. Hence the
lavish employment of British gold to suborn the American press, and
seduce the American mind from the safe precepts of Washington, whose
name is, and ever has been, a terror to the British oligarchy.
SOLUTION OF THE SUBJECT.
The only tribunal at which to try human actions, is the tribunal of
justice. That which is right can stand the test of this tribunal; that
which is wrong will shrink in terror from it. At this tribunal
American Negro slavery has nothing to fear, because it is founded in
moral right. Its advocacy is the advocacy of right, and right alone;
unless, forsooth, we are to confound right with wrong, and declare
barbarism equal with civilization. Of course, our argument is based
upon the hypothesis that civilization is one thing, and barbarism
another. To the mind which is so mentally and morally obtuse as not to
discover the difference between these two conditions, this appeal must
be in vain. But to the right-minded man, who is open to conviction of
truth, who has the mental freedom to act and think independent of his
prepossessions and prejudices, who is guided by his intellect, and
reason, and not by passion nor prejudice, this solution of the slavery
question, though new, must and will be satisfactory, because it is the
logical result of a trial of the question at the tribunal of justice
and of rights, because slavery rescues the African from wrong, and
subjects him to the rule of right; because it rescues him from the
wrongs and miseries of barbarism, and raises him to the _primary_
elevation of a progressive and ennobling civilization.
EQUALITY OF THE STATES AND CITIZENS.
The equality of the sovereign States which compose the American
Republic, and the equality of the citizens, both in the States and the
Territories, constitute the true and only bond of union for the
American people. This equality is the foundation stone upon which our
whole social and political superstructure rests. To call this in
question is to menace the very existence of the Union which is founded
upon it. The sovereignty of the Union, extending over the Territories,
where no other sovereignty exists, is the panoply of protection to all
the inhabitants of the Territories. There they are all equal in person
and property. There they are not sovereign, but subjects under the
sovereignty of the united confederacy of States, which have no
individual superiority and right in the Territories, neither for
themselves, nor their citizens. For the inhabitants of such
Territories to _assume_ a sovereignty therein, not in accordance with
the Constitution of the United States, not in conformity to law, and
in violation of the equality of the people of the States there
congregated, is USURPATION. Nor can the democracy of numbers, nor the
will of the majority of inhabitants congregated in such Territories be
invoked to decide the rights of the people of the several States
congregated in such Territories, either as to persons or property;
because the sovereignty of the Union holds, until superseded by the
sovereignty of a State constitutionally organized, deriving its
sovereignty from the supreme authority of the confederated States, by
whose assent alone the primordial sovereignty of the Union is so far
abandoned as to admit the exercise of State sovereignty in such
Territories. There would be no propriety nor justice in allowing an
_hypothetical sovereignty_ to a few thousands of individuals
congregated in a large Territory, not one fiftieth part of which they
occupied; allowing them to establish a rule of exclusion of the
persons or property of the people of a portion of the States coming to
settle in the Territories. Such persons have neither the right to
decide for the present, nor the future; because at present they are
not sovereign, and certainly they should not be allowed to exercise a
_usurped_ authority over the millions who shall occupy those
Territories in the future. It is a morbid desire to forestall the
future, in its judgment of barbarism, and of its fitness to subserve
civilization, that creates the present animosity between the citizens
of the different sections of the Union, going into the Territories.
This is all wrong. The sovereignty of the Union is the present, and
the sovereignty of States the future arbiter of the rights of the
people in the Territories; all other power is assumed, arbitrary,
gratuitous, and in violation of legitimate, delegated constitutional
power.
The wisdom of the sages who founded the American Union left nothing
for experiment to their successors, so far as the absolute equality of
American citizens is concerned; and there is no safety but in the
recognition of that perfect equality which the spirit of our race
demands, and which the power of the civilized world will be invoked to
maintain.
THE NECESSITY OF OUR ONWARD PROGRESS AS A NATION.
The intimate commercial relations existing between this Republic and
the principal maritime and warlike nations of the globe, mainly by
means of the products of slave labor, constitute a necessity for our
onward, uninterrupted progress, as the great agricultural and
commercial almoner of civilization, and cannot be disturbed, except at
the peril of that civilization which they have been so instrumental
and conspicuous to promote. The proposed annihilation of the hand of
labor whose products amount to $250,000,000 per annum, and those
products constituting the articles of prime necessity to civilization,
is a matter which involves other interests than our own; and however
willing monarchists and their minions may be to disrupt our political
system, and destroy this temple of freedom, they will find the genius
of commerce and the genius of liberty will continue to go hand in hand
to uphold the principles of right and justice, which demand that
barbarism shall subserve civilization.
AMERICAN COTTON.
American cotton, the product of slave labor, clothes, to a large
extent, one-fourth part of the human race; without it the glory of
civilization would vanish. It embellishes the denizen of the city, and
hides the nakedness of barbarism. It is the tablet on which is
inscribed the history of the present, and rescues from oblivion the
mouldering records of the past. It is the talisman of thought, and the
vehicle of those electric currents that blaze athwart the sky of mind,
with which intellect binds together, with silver thread, the mind's
great empire, where kings do homage at the shrine of genius, and bow
in awe, and humble reverence before the majesty of mind. It is the
medium through which the internal and external domains of thought are
blended, and truth made universal, and obvious to the apprehension of
a world!
WASHINGTON NOT OPPOSED TO SLAVERY AS WRONG.
It has been urged, that because Washington regretted the impossibility
of devising some feasible means of emancipation, that, therefore, he
was opposed to slavery, as wrong. The precise opposite was the case.
He was too wise to oppose that which he could not overcome. His whole
career was success in overcoming opposition. He might, with us, regret
the barbarism of the African and the impracticability of his release
from servitude, on account of his unfitness for freedom; but he never
could logically or reasonably oppose, as wrong, that which made the
African better and happier, and which protects him from the dangers
and miseries of barbarism, though it placed him in the position to
learn only the rudiments of civilization. To assert that Washington
deemed slavery a wrong to the slave, is to accuse him of knowingly
doing wrong, for he held slaves to the day of his death; and if he
emancipated them then, it was more with the hope than the reasonable
expectation, that even HIS slaves, with all the force of his example
during his whole life, had become fitted for freedom, or that they
would be benefited by the experiment of their own attempted
self-control. Washington could not, therefore, consistently oppose
slavery as a wrong to the slave, nor conscientiously believe it to be
wrong; because he would not oppose that which he could not overcome,
and because his whole life was occupied in doing right. It is against
the prophetic character of Washington's mission, ever crowned with
success; against his wisdom, which was most profound; and against his
judgment, which was unerring,--to presume his hostility to slavery as
wrong, or his opposition to it in a moral point of view, when he knew,
as we know, the emancipation of the slaves to be wrong in itself, and
impossible, even if right or desirable. It is plain, then, that if
Washington had any real aversion to Negro slavery, it was not because
it was wrong so far as any natural right of the slave was involved,
but because of his ability to do without slaves; and notwithstanding
his fortune was ample, he _held_ his slaves during the whole course of
his life; whereas, if he had deemed slavery a wrong to the slaves, he
would undoubtedly have granted them their liberty. What right would he
have had, as a just man, to bestow his generosity upon the public, by
refusing the emoluments of office, justly due him, and unjustly
appropriating the proceeds or avails of the labor of his slaves, if he
knew, or believed they were justly entitled to their freedom. If our
moral view of slavery is clear, he was _just_, as well as _generous_,
and wise as well as successful.
WASHINGTON REPROACHES THE EMANCIPATIONISTS.
It is well known how powerful the secret influence of the British and
Tory abolitionists was in this country immediately after the American
Revolution, as well as before and since that time; and that at about
that time, or soon after, the question was seriously entertained of
abolishing slavery in Virginia by legislation, as was done in other
States of the Union; and it was on account of the annoying
importunities of these _disinterested philanthropists_ (_?_), and the
apparent inclination of the people of the State of Virginia to
experiment in their theories, that Washington expressed his
willingness to see slavery abolished by legislative enactment. But in
what characteristic terms of manly reproach did he address the
Emancipation Society on the subject when he found their principles and
practices to be that "_the end justifies the means_." He says:
"_But when slaves, who are happy and contented with their present
masters, are tampered with and seduced to leave them; when masters are
taken unawares by these practices; when a conduct of this kind begets
discontent on one side, and resentment on the other; and when it
happens to fall on a man whose purse will not measure with that of the
Society, and he loses his property for want of means to defend it,--it
is oppression in such a case, *AND NOT HUMANITY IN ANY*, because it
introduces more evils than it can cure._"[6]
OUR FATHERS ON THE RIGHT OF SLAVERY.
It is not to be concealed, however, that some of the sages who framed
this Republic, in their zeal for freedom, overlooked the fact of
African barbarism, or failed to be explicit in their unpremeditated
enunciations of human freedom. Perhaps, however, they had more
astuteness than has been supposed by some. Perchance they considered
barbarity not humanity, but its opposite, and would have deemed it a
work of supererogation to explain that which natural history, the
history of the African ram for four thousand years, and common sense,
and common observation, had established as a self-evident
proposition; to wit, that equality was a _political_, and not a
social, nor moral, nor even physical condition; and that, especially,
neither equality nor freedom were to be construed to be the
prerogatives nor the right of barbarism. And the Constitution of the
United States, the work of their own hands, sanctions this
supposition, by recognizing the existence, and providing for the right
of Negro slavery, and rescues the Fathers of the Republic from the
absurd and opprobrious imputation of advocating Negro equality.
Whatever opinions they may have expressed under the varying aspects of
our Revolutionary epoch, the Constitution of these United States was
the finality of their arduous toils, heroic achievements, and sublime
wisdom; and that Constitution, the very sublimation and quintessence
of a hundred civilizations, exhibiting the onward progress of the
human race, recognizes the Right of Slavery, founded upon the
immutable principles of justice.
MONARCHICAL SCHEMES TO DESTROY THIS REPUBLIC.
Is it strange, however, that since this Republic is the mighty
antagonism of monarchy, and since it is invincible in arms, is it
strange, that civil dissension, and the appropriate means to produce
it, should be employed by despotism to subvert this government? What
else should they do; What is the interest of monarchy in relation to
the existence and onward progress of this Empire of Freedom? What, but
its subversion, its disseverment, by its own internal antagonism? And
what other means could monarchy and its parasites employ to accomplish
this, but precisely the means and agency which have been employed, at
vast expense, especially for the last twenty-five years, first to
divide, and finally to destroy that which no external force, nor
combination of external forces could subdue? Is it not already the
boast of the minions of despotism that they have rendered our
government insecure? With what jubilation did they catch the tidings
of our recent rebellion, as the harbinger of their own redemption
from the fate of political decadence and downfall, which our
all-absorbing greatness was beginning to make so manifest to the
willing apprehension of mankind? Their ears were charmed, even at the
supposed triumphant voice of barbarism over a civilization as stable
as the sun, which is immortal in its every individual microcosm, and
to which they are conscious their own unequal systems of government
never can attain.
OUR VINDICATION.
Need we inquire further what is the interest of monarchy? Can we any
longer be blind to our own interest? Are we not arraigned at the
tribunal of civilization, by the helots of despotism? Are we not
accused of wrong? Are not we, and our sainted and godlike ancestors,
held as amenable to moral law for a violation of Right? And shall we
submit in silence to all this clamor: this false and slanderous
accusation, when all history, all knowledge, all experience, all
reason, and all nature, are voluble in our defense, and pronounce our
just and triumphant vindication!
Let us, then, henceforth cultivate and encourage friendship and
cordial co-operation between the different sections of the Union, and
a patriotic emulation for its continuance; not upon any such visionary
and deceptive hypothesis as the superiority and predominance of
sectional partiality, but upon the equable and fundamental principles
of justice, and of the absolute equality of these sovereign States,
and the equality of the citizens of a well-compacted and glorious
confederacy.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL POSTULATES OF AMERICAN SLAVERY.
1. Right holds a just and heaven-derived supremacy over wrong.
2. Barbarism is wrong. It conduces to the misery and degradation of
mankind. Africa is barbarous. The African race is a race of
barbarians.
3. Civilization is right. It conduces to the elevation and happiness
of mankind.
4. Civilization carries with it the right of supremacy over barbarism.
5. It is right to summon the barbarian to the lessons of civilization,
and to teach him its _primary_ lessons; to elevate him to the dignity
of labor.
6. It is right to HOLD the barbarian subject to the rules of
civilization; to protect him by its laws, and rescue him from the
wrongs and miseries of barbarism. In this way, only, he can be made
happier and better. He falls, if unsupported by external power.
7. American Slavery promotes civilization by the production of
materials wherewith to clothe the nakedness of mankind, and the useful
medium or knowledge and intelligence, through books, and literature,
printed upon materials which are the product of slave labor.
8. It is just that barbarism should subserve civilization; that Wrong
should subserve Right.
9. The African is not equal to the white man, but is a barbarian, and
as such has no political rights.
10. American Slavery is Right.
CONCLUSION.
If, then, it is not right, nor practicable, nor possible, to restore
these 4,000,000 of Africans to barbarism, why any longer agitate the
subject? Why keep the negro in perpetual dread of change, and the
owner dubious of the future? Why, by this negro agitation, create
apprehension in the minds of our own people for the stability and
permanence of this government, and hope in the minds of all the
monarchists of the world that this agitation will divide and destroy
this last great bulwark of human freedom?
Why shall we put to hazard that freedom which is already secure? Why
involve in experiments those tangible acquisitions which we have made
to this priceless inheritance of freedom? Washington is gone, but he
has left us his bright example, and his solemn admonitions. Let those
who are greater, and wiser, and purer than Washington, impeach him.
Let those whose precepts or examples excel his, question the
superiority of his virtue and valor. Let those who have done more for
human freedom, denounce him as the enemy of mankind, and erect for
themselves a standard of moral action, which shall rise to the
stupendous height of their own boundless egotism!
But if it is found to be inexpedient and wrong to agitate the subject
of slavery, when it is known to be impracticable, impossible, and
unjust to emancipate the slaves, then let us go on in our career of
greatness, with success and tranquility. Let us watch with jealous
care the honor of our country, and scorn the aspersions of its
vilifiers. Let us honor and vindicate our country in its attitude of
justice, and in its mission of civilization, and mark with the
imputation of opprobrium every recreant defamer of our government and
its institutions. Let the emissaries of despotism find some other
means of subduing us than to "divide and conquer." Let the name of
Washington be revered; let his admonitions be heeded: let his commands
be obeyed, and his example followed. Let barbarism still be blessed
with the light of civilization; let the glory and dominion of freedom
be established, and the citizens of this Republic rest in security and
peace within their patriarchal bowers!
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Leo Africanus says, Book vii., "The King of Borno sent for the
merchants of Barbary, and willed them to bring the great store of
horses; for in this country they used to exchange horses for slaves,
and to give fifteen and sometimes twenty slaves for one horse; and by
this means there were abundance of horses brought; howbeit, the
merchants were constrained to stay for their slaves till the king
returned home with a great number of captives and satisfied his
creditors for their horses." "The king maketh invasions but every year
once, and that at one set and appointed time of the year."--_Geogr.
Hist. of Africa, trans. by Pory, pp. 293, 294, Lon., 1600._
[2] "From Abyssinia, the caravans carry yearly to Cairo nearly two
thousand Negroes, those poor creatures having unfortunately been
captured in war. Most of the chiefs and sovereigns in the interior of
Africa sell or put to death all their prisoners."--_Narrative of a Ten
Years' Residence at Tripoli, p. 185, London, 1816._
[3] Hegel, the distinguished German philosopher, in his Philosophy of
History, says, pp. 102, 103:
An English traveler states that when a war is determined on in
Ashantee, solemn ceremonies precede it. Among other things, the bones
of the king's mother are laved with human blood. As a prelude to the
war, the king ordains an onslaught upon his own metropolis, as if to
excite the due degree of frenzy.
In Dahomey, when the king dies, the bonds of society are loosed; in
his palace begins indiscriminate havoc and disorganization. All the
wives of the king (in Dahomey their number is exactly 3,333) are
massacred, and through the whole town plunder and carnage run riot.
The wives of the king regard their deaths as a necessity; they go
richly attired to meet it. The authorities have to hasten to proclaim
the new governor, simply to put a stop to massacre.
The only essential connection that has existed and continued between
the Negroes and Europeans is that of slavery. In this the Negroes see
nothing unbecoming them; and the English, who have done most for
abolishing the slave trade and slavery, are treated by the Negroes
themselves as enemies. For it is a point of first importance with the
kings to sell their captured enemies, or even their own subjects; and
viewed in the light of such facts, we may conclude _slavery_ to have
been the occasion of the increase of human feeling among Negroes.
Tyranny is regarded as no wrong, and _cannibalism is looked upon as
quite customary and proper_. Among us, instinct deters from it, if we
can speak of instinct at all as appertaining to man. But with the
Negro this is not the case, and the _devouring of human flesh is
altogether consistent with the general principles of the African
race_; to the sensual Negro, human flesh is but an object of
sense,--mere flesh. At the death of a king, hundreds are killed and
eaten; prisoners are butchered, and _their flesh is sold in the
markets_. The victor is accustomed to eat the heart of his slain foe.
When magical rites are performed, it frequently happens that the
sorcerer kills the first that comes in his way, _and divides his body
among the bystanders_.
[4] Says Herder,--But the peculiar formation of the members of the
human body says more than all these; and this appears to me applicable
in the African organization. According to various physiological
observations, the lips, breasts, and private parts, are proportionate
to each other; and as nature, agreeably to the simple principle of her
plastic art, must have conferred on these people, to whom she was
obliged to deny nobler gifts, an ampler measure of sensual enjoyment,
this could not but have appeared to the physiologist. _According to
the rules of physiognomy, thick lips are held to indicate a sensual
disposition_; as thin lips, displaying a slender, rosy line, are
deemed symptoms of chaste and delicate taste; not to mention other
circumstances. _What wonder, then, that in a nation for whom the
sensual appetite is the height of happiness, external marks of it
should appear?_ A Negro child is born white; the skin round the nails,
the nipples, and private parts, first become colored; and the same
consent of parts in the disposition to color is observable in other
nations. _A hundred children are a trifle to a Negro; and an old man
who had not above seventy, lamented his fate with tears._
With this oleaginous organization to sensual pleasure, the profile and
whole frame of the body must alter. _The projection of the mouth would
render the nose short and small, the forehead would incline backwards,
and the face would have at a distance the resemblance of that of an
ape._ Conformably to this would be the position of the neck, the
transition to the occiput, and the elastic structure of the whole
body, which is formed, even to the nose and skin, for sensual, animal
enjoyment.--_Herder's Philosophy of the History of Man, pp. 150, 151.
Translated by Churchill, London, 1800._
[5] Witness the following extract from the Report of the Committee of
the Maryland Legislature in 1860, recommending the discontinuance of
the annual appropriation of $5,000 to the Colonization Society for the
purpose of sending free Negroes back to Africa. It will be seen by
this extract, that the expense of transporting Negroes to Africa is
much greater than I have stated, owing, perhaps, to an extravagant use
or waste of the money by the Colonization Society; for if it costs
$500,000 to transport 300 Negroes, it would certainly cost
$6,668,000,000 to send away the 4,000,000 of Negroes in the United
States. Add to this the value of the Negroes, to be paid in
remuneration to the owners for their property, $2,000,000,000, and the
total cost of purchase and transportation, based upon the experience
and the statistics of the State of Maryland, would be $8,668,000,000!
or more than forty times the amount of all the gold and silver in the
United States! It will be seen that my own is a low estimate compared
with this, and either of those estimates shows the utter futility of
the advocacy of emancipation. That Report says:--
"The passage of the act of 1831, ch. 281, was framed with the design
of removing our free Negroes beyond the limits of this State. But
experience has shown that they will not willingly leave us. That act
has been in operation for twenty-seven years, at an expense to the
State of about $280,000, raised by taxation upon our citizen
population. It is safe to say that $75,000 more has been cleared by
the profits in trade to the coast of Africa in that time; and that
$145,000 has probably been bestowed by voluntary contribution for the
same object--making in all the sum of $500,000. And yet, with all this
vast outlay of money, not over _three hundred free Negroes_ have been
removed. Slaves to a larger number have been set free and sent to
Africa. During the last year not one single free Negro was sent to
Africa from this State. When this law went into effect, we had 52,000
free Negroes in the State; and after a trial of twenty-seven years, we
now have 90,000 or 100,000. The inefficiency of this enterprise being
so obvious to every one of the least reflection, your committee
propose the repeal of all laws taxing the people for colonization
purposes."
[6] Scroeder's Max. of Washington, p. 256.
* * * * *
[Transcriber's Notes:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings and other
inconsistencies.
The transcriber noted the following issues and made changes as
indicated to the text to correct obvious errors:
1. p. 14, "sieze" changed to "seize"
2. p. 30, "Iagas" changed to "Jagas"
3. p. 30, "Iaga" changed to "Jaga"
4. p. 31, "Macoco" partially illegible, changed to "Macaco"
5. p. 41, "retrogaded" changed to "retrograded"
6. p. 42, "psuedo-" changed to "pseudo-"
7. p. 51, "opprobium" changed to "opprobrium"
8. various, The source document for this ebook contains several
handwritten changes. They have not been incorporated
into this ebook, except as noted above.
9. various, text in bold is marked as *BOLD*.
End of Transcriber's Notes]
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