BY
TO
HIS EXCELLENCY,
JEFFERSON DAVIS;
FIRST PRESIDENT
OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES:
SOLDIER, ORATOR, STATESMAN,
AND
CHOSEN
CHIEF OF UNITED SOUTHERN PATRIOTISM;
WHO, IN VIOLATION OF
NO
CONSTITUTIONAL OBLIGATION,
AND USURPING NO PRINCIPLE OF SPECIAL OR UNIVERSAL
LIBERTY,
STANDS FORTH
A TRUE REPRESENTATIVE OF PURE AMERICANISM;
A
GUARDIAN OF INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS;
AND
AN UPHOLDER OF
STATE SOVEREIGNTY:
THIS ESSAY
IS,
BY PERMISSION, RESPECTFULLY
DEDICATED.
Page 92--line 25--for "carnival feast," read cannibal feast.
Page 124--line 15--for "Fugitive Slaw Law," read Fugitive Slave Law.
Early in the month of June last, or late in May, an editorial article appeared in the Charleston Mercury, recommending the production and encouragement of Southern literature, with which I was so forcibly impressed, as to resolve upon the composition and publication of the following essay. I felt that, at this crisis in our history, a brief work, containing a comprehensive and popularly written exposition of Southern political philosophy, might be advantageously placed before the world; and although there were far abler pens than mine in the land, upon which might have devolved this duty, their silence impelled me to make the present attempt.
In my treatment of the subject, I have endeavored to be brief, lucid, and compendious--to make my little work as compact as possible, and spare the reader from useless or unnecessary reading. I have undertaken to prove historically, that slavery was originally a universal institution of all great governments and societies; but that the systems of the ancients were radically different from negro subordination in America. I have ventured to show that cannibalism and fetichism are, and ever have been, the normal and unalterable condition of the negro in his native home--that he is physiologically
and psychologically degraded, that he is of an inferior species of the human race, wholly dependent upon the Caucasian for progress, enlightenment, and well-being--and that, servitude and subjection being his natural state, the relation which he bears to superior mastership, in the Confederate States, is merciful to him and the cause of religion and civilization.
Relative to the cruel sectional war into which we have been plunged, I have, I think, established, that, so far as the South is concerned, it was unavoidable--that it was forced upon her against her will--in spite of her prayers and supplications. The North was the first and original secessionist; she rent asunder the old Union, and trampled under foot the Constitution, which was the bond of Union; and, as such, let her stand arraigned before the bar of posterity and universal justice.
I do not claim anything like pure originality for this Essay, Indeed, much of its matter may have been already familiar to the reader. But the style, arrangement, design, and mode of treatment, are wholly my own.
I should not omit to mention here, that it has been my good fortune to have recently become acquainted with a distinguished gentleman, who I am proud to call my friend-- Hon. ALEXANDER DIMITRY. Of him I can truly add, that he is an accomplished critic, a profound thinker, and a fine scholar--a man of Athenian acumen, and gifted with a plastic Greek mind. I am indebted to him for important suggestions, as well as for the reading and correcting of my proof-sheets. To Professor DE BOW, whose fruitful labors have
peculiarly associated him with the industrial growth and development of the South, I am also obliged for kind attentions, and for having been instrumental in materially adding to my knowledge of cotton culture.
I must not, and should not, conclude, without offering sincere and unaffected thanks to my publishers--Messrs. WEST & JOHNSTON. They have promptly responded to every wish of mine, in the face of difficulties and expense, during the publication of this work. Indeed, Mr. Johnston, particularly, --Mr. West being absent in the military service of his country--has been to me, not only a business, but a personal, friend--always cheerful, courteous, generous and obliging; and if my first book meets with popular favor, it is merely designed to form, a general introduction to a history of the present war--which shall bear the imprint of my first publishers.
"THE whole conduct of Cambyses," says Herodotus, the father of history, "towards the Egyptian gods, sanctuaries and priests, convinces me that this King was in the highest degree insane; for otherwise he would not have insulted the worship and holy things of a people." The coincidence between the conduct of Cambyses, one of the earliest rulers of men, and that of Mr. Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, one of the latest rulers in Time, is singularly striking and remarkable. This King, Lincoln, has been, and now is, endeavoring to overthrow the institutions and ruin the prosperity of fifteen sovereign and independent Southern States: first, by insult, vilification, and contumelious abuse of their social system; then, by direct assault, or gradual encroachment upon their constitutional rights; and lastly, by seeking to slaughter their liberties beneath the iron heel of armed mercenary invaders. Instead of ruling in accordance with the eternal principles of rectitude and benevolence, he has chosen to inaugurate discord, hatred, and civil war, between thirty millions of brothers, and to convert a country smiling with loveliness and beauty, and teeming with wealth and prosperity, into a great Golgotha. He has violated that Constitution which he has sworn to observe and protect; he has made war without right or authority; he
has converted free institutions into instruments of despotism; he has prepared armed men for the sack and carnage of great commercial cities, and the waste and desolation of harvest fields--peaceful and happy homes; and the Ocean, which should be the natural bond of love and amity between the Nations, he has changed into a high road of terror for the merchant, and a barracks for his ships of war.
THE historians of future ages, in philosophising upon the unaccountable events of the past, will have to record how the greatest and most favored country upon earth, with the most liberal code of laws that the world had yet witnessed, growing out of the rational theory of individual self-government, was destroyed by the perverse fanaticism of a certain political organization, the chosen chief of which is Abraham Lincoln. The ethics, or doctrines rather, of this party are founded upon the allegation, that negro subordination is contrary to Divine law and revolting to the moral sense of mankind, and that slavery is the creature of local or municipal codes and at war with Nature. Such assumptions are untenable, fictitious, and iniquitous. And before passing over to a review of that cruel question, which more immediately destroys the peace and happiness of the American people, we will proceed with a refutation of these fundamental errors: establishing that slavery is coeval with the dawn of history and civilization, and existed antecedent to all written codes; showing that the subordination of the negro to the Caucasian is not slavery, but, that being of physical and intellectual inferiority of organism,
this is his normal condition; and, finally, proving beyond cavil, that such a relation, in social economy, is wise, providential, and beneficient--having elevated the negro to a standard of civilization which he never attained before, and having furnished with labor millions of the superior race, and clothed more than one-half of civilized mankind.
SLAVERY, at the commencement and formation of social and political societies, was universal as civilization; permanent as the free autonomy of nationalities; and constituted an integral element in the progress and greatness of the most remarkable governments that ever existed. It was an Egyptian institution before the Pyramids were built or hieroglyphics invented; so in Syria and Assyria, before Babylon or Nineveh arose in splendor and beauty; and in Palestine long before Abraham first went into Egypt. It was an institution of the Indians and the Chinese--of the the Medes and Persians --of the Greeks and the Phoenicians--of the Romans and the several European Nations; certainly as universal as law or order, and continuing down to the application, or substitution, of the mechanic arts for the performance of that brute labor formerly exacted of man. And this economical and political element of order and civilization in society, was SLAVERY per se--the subjection or constrained obedience of white men, made dependent upon rulers of the same caste and race with themselves: but RADICALLY AND TOTALLY IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO THE SUBORDINATE RELATIONS OF THE NEGRO IN THE SOUTHERN STATES OF AMERICA.
It is not, however, our intention either to justify or condemn the systems of labor in other Nations, no matter whether remote or immediate in Time. To justify them would be to pronounce opinion from imperfect and superficial data; and to condemn, would be to set our dicta above the authority of the wisest and best men that ever lived--above the Divine Saviour--above Moses and the Patriarchs--Solon and Thrasybulus-- Pythagoras and Socrates--Plato and Aristotle--Seneca and Cicero--Athanasius and Augustine. If ancient slavery, however, as is now alleged, was barbarism, it was inevitable; for it resulted from political and social exigencies, and the necessity of progressive life in public economy. The slaves who pastured flocks, herded cattle, and cultivated the soil, were, in return, protected from injury or invasion by their lords, standing ready with arms in their hands. The benefits and hardships of master and servant were then mutual. And now even, it would not be an uninteresting investigation to contrast this constrained labor of the ancients, with the "voluntary" system of the moderns; clearly defining in what essential, other than mere form, they differ. Certain it is, that the boasted "freedom" of the modern operative is as much nominal as it is real; since the poor dependent of the present, by an instinct of self-preservation and family affection, is compelled to labor. He is free not to work, it is true; but not being a self-sustaining machine, he must do so or starve. Being a creature of Nature, he is subject to her laws and despotism. She teaches the birds of the air and the beasts of the forest, respectively, to nurture their young; and by a higher development of emotional affections, she rules man in the same direction. He is her predestined slave,
in proportion to the delicacy of his organism, and the refinement of his intellectual culture. Often poor and without means, he hires his services for a fixed remuneration, with which to his purchase nourishment either for his parents or his offspring, or both; considerations which devolved as imperative duty upon the masters of antiquity. And thus the toiler of to-day is in reality a slave; differing only in appearance and degree from his brother-slave of other systems and ages past.
At this remote period of Time, and more especially in a brief and cursory view of the facts, it will be found impossible to present either a full or minute account of the relations which existed between master and slave, in ancient Nations. What we can derive from her hieroglyphic characters, and the paintings upon her tombs and monuments, is the principal means through which we can glance at Egypt's early domestic economy. The preponderance of Egyptian slaves was either purchased from barbarous nations or conquered in war. We behold in one place the king putting them to flight. In another, we see an officer registering, and arranging them into separate classes--adults, women, and minors. That they were generally foreigners we know, from the fact that it was the boast of the Pharaohs, that in the erection of the Pyramids and public monuments no Egyptian hands were employed. And GESCHE (the Goshen of the Bible), of which Heliopolis was the capital, and Moses one of the priests, was the district allotted to the Israelitish bondsmen and their families. The slaves of Egypt were employed in all occupations,
agrestic and domestic; nor do they seem to have been cruelly treated; although the master, mistress, and overseer are generally represented as wielding the lash while superintending them. This instrument, however, should be regarded in the unexpressive language of pictorial history, merely as the insignia of authority. For, on the contrary, upon a monument of Thebes, there is a picture copied by Sir Gardner Wilkinson, representing a lady enjoying the luxury of the bath and attended by four female slaves; where kindness on the part of the former, and respectful affection on that of the latter, are clearly delineated. And when the Jews planned their escape from the land of bondage to the land of promise, did they not succeed by false representations, in borrowing from their Egyptian masters, precious vessels, jewelry and gold? That system, if unjust, could not have been very cruel, under which the master lent valuables toward the gratification of his cunning slave.
But these very Jews, at the time that they were transferred from their home into Egypt, and indeed long before this term of their captivity, were slaveholders themselves. And when they returned from bondage under Nehemiah, one-sixth of the people were at once slaves and captives. Abraham had his male slaves and female slaves; and Sarah was the tyrannical and cruel mistress of Hagar. When Rebecca married Isaac she carried to his home her slave-damsels; as did Leah, the wife of Laban, and Rachel, the spouse of Jacob. The Jews reduced the Gibeonites to "hewers of wood and drawers of water;" and whilst the Hebrew slave (unless he selected the contrary) was entitled to release at the year of Jubilee, and to be treated during his bondage as "a servant and sojourner," the heathen and the stranger,
on the other hand, became not only "a bond-man forever," but the "possession" and "the money" of his master and owner. Even Solomon, reputed to have been the wisest of men, a son of David (who was a man according to God's heart) and a direct ancestor of Christ --according to Matthew, the Evangelist--was, if judged by our modern international law, a common pirate; for his ships on the sea of Tarsus, exported all sorts of merchandise to exchange for "ivory, apes, and Ethiopians." And, when the Saviour of Mankind was upon earth, inculcating lessons of wisdom in the alleys and dark ways, on the mountains and highways, he not only acquiesced in, but approved of, such institutions, and healed the Centurion's slave; even as the apostle Paul returned to his Christian master the fugitive, Onesimus.
But we feel that it is
unnecessary to dwell farther upon this subject. The question of Hebrew slavery
has recently been fully and thoroughly examined by the Rev. Dr. Van Dyke, of
Brooklyn, N. Y., and by the Rabbi Raphall* *The influence exercised by
abolitionism upon the best minds of the North, is peculiarly mournful. The
"Bible View of Slavery," a sermon preached by Dr. Raphall, on the day of
National fast, Jan. 4, 1861, is certainly the most scholarly and conclusive
discourse, written by any divine of his section. Yet, after invoking "the Father
of Truth and Mercy to enlighten his mind," in his terror of the anti-slavery
Moloch, he utters strange blasphemy. "My friends," says the sapient Rabbi, "I
find, and I am sorry to find, that I am delivering a pro-slavery
discourse. I am no friend to slavery in the abstract, and still less friendly to
the practical workings of slavery. But I stand here as a teacher in
Israel; not to place before you my own feelings and opinions, but to
propound to you THE WORD of GOD, the Bible View of Slavery." A Tammany
politician would scorn to stultify himself thus. The Doctor absolutely sets his
own wisdom above that of God. Like an obedient, but hypocritical servant, he
preaches abroad the word and will of his Master; but he "is sorry" for doing it!
Is not this Abolition blasphemy?
of New York city; each of them,
in an eloquent
sermon, clearly maintaining that the Jews did not regard slavery as contrary to the laws of Nature or of Nature's God. And, indeed, their task was easy and incontrovertible, since, in addition to the old Jewish common law, the laws given by Moses to the Jews were drawn from the Egyptian system of polity, but purified by the Hebrew Theogony.
SLAVERY assumed in India a religious as well as a political character. The labors of the slave were lightened and alleviated by a spiritual resignation of Faith. He believed that at the creation, although sprung from the Deity, his condition of life was immutably fixed. All men, according to Menu, are divided into four classes; the first of which sprang from the mouth of God and are gifted to rule and to sacrifice. The second, born of His arm, are endued with the strength to fight in defence of the other classes. The third, or the children of His abdomen, are allotted to agriculture, traffic and trade. The fourth were the offspring of His feet and naturally doomed to servitude. But this predestination of the latter does not seem to have been regretted; for to serve a Brahmin was esteemed both laudable and honorable. Aside from this classification, however, there was a Hindoo code under which slaves were made by voluntary sale; by sale of children; by servile birth; by marriage to a slave; by sale for debt; and by captivity in war.
So, also, were persons committing crimes against nature or society, (entailing forfeiture of life in other Nations) reduced to slavery. This continued until Mohammedanism predominated, and, as usual with that power, introduced its own innovations; recognizing but two sources of slavery--captive infidels and their descendants. Such slaves were subject to all the laws of sale and inheritance. They could not marry without permission from their masters; nor be parties to a suit; nor bear testimony in Courts of Justice; nor inherit or acquire property; nor be eligible to any office of trust or emolument. But in 1793, British power, through the agency of the East India Company, modified all this, declaring that "Mohammedan law, with reference to Mohammedans, and Hindoo law with reference to Hindoos," were henceforward to be regarded as the general rules of Indian jurisprudence; thus recognizing by one enactment two systems of slavery in the same country.
IT would be difficult to name a people, no matter of what ethnic origin or affinity, who were not slave-owners; and with whom slavery was not one of the earliest institutions. It seems to have been the natural relation of the weak to the powerful--of the captive to the conqueror--of the dependent to the opulent. It is doubtful whether it was ever founded upon any statutory enactments, but existed rather by prescription; since its origin was antecedent to history or tradition. Thus: It is almost certain, and if not quite certain, decidedly probable, that the primitive inhabitants of Susiana--Elamites, doubtless--were conquered by Hamites and reduced to a condition
of servitude. This Hamite race wrested Babylonia from the Median Scyths--a mixture of Japhetic and Turaunian races--twenty-three centuries before Christ. According to Berosus, after a reign of 258 years, these Hamite conquerors were in turn superseded in power by emigrants from Susiana--the founders of the great Chaldean Empire. The captives, as usual, became the servants of the conquerors. It was at this period that the Exodus of Abraham took place--when the Hebrew patriarch, with his household, marched from Chaldea to Palestine--and when the Phoenicians emigrated from the Persian Gulf to the shores of the Mediterranean; each carrying with them the precious institution of slavery. It was at this period that Semitic tribes displaced the Cushite inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula; that Assyria was becoming occupied by the Semitic settlers of Babylonia; and that the eastern frontier of Syria was in course of occupation by Aramæans-- all and each of whom had slaves and slavery. And when Arabian supremacy was established in the Chaldean Empire, no less than when the seat of empire, in the 13th century B. C., was again transferred to Assyria--amid all vicissitudes of time, and war, and change, slavery continued the same; no matter what people or race might rule.
The autonomy of the latter, and the greater Assyrian Empire, continued at least during six centuries; and the palaces and temples of Sardanapalus--the palace at Nineveh of Shalmanubar; he of the Black Obelisk--the palace of Sargon, at Khorsabad--the many and magnificent palaces of Esar-haddon; the wonderful hunting palace of his successor--would be, (if we had not the testimony of the Bible even to guide us,) no silent witnesses to the wisdom, extent, importance, utility, skill
and intelligence, of that system of labor which mainly contributed toward their execution. The slaves and captives whom it was unnecessary to employ upon the public works were colonized abroad. Thus the Chaldeans were sent into Armenia; the Jews and Israelites into Assyria and Media; and the Babylonians and Susianians, into Palestine. And yet these Assyrian slave-dealers and slave-owners--it will seem incredible to the unenlightened --were in all the elements of civilization and advancement, if we except a barbarous religion and savage passions, very nearly, if not completely, upon a par with our own boasted progress.
Out of the ruin of the Assyrian Empire, it was, that the later Babylonish Empire arose, in brilliant but brief splendor. When Saracus was betrayed by Nabopolassar, his General and the father of Nebuchadnezzar, Josiah, King of Judea, was tributary to the Assyrian; and in the division of the empire between Cyaxares, the Mede, and Nabopolassar, Judea, Syria, Phoenicia, &c., fell to the lot or choice of the latter. Nineveh, of course, was taken and destroyed; the bulk of the people became captives, and were equally divided. With these captives, remarkably advanced in a knowledge of the fine arts, and especially of architecture, it was, that Nabopolassar commenced the magnificent works which Nebuchadnezzar completed. When, however, the Egyptian king, Necho, made war upon the former, defeated Josiah and put his elder brother Jehoiakim upon the throne, Nebuchadnezzar went out against him and drove him back into Egypt. During his absence Nabopolassar died, and Nebuchadnezzar, followed by captive Jews, Phoenicians, Syrians and Egyptians, returned to assume the government. These captives he distributed over
various parts of Babylon; the great number of which, however, when added to the prisoners of his father, gave him command of that power which enabled him to consummate those great works that were then among the wonders of the world, and the ruins of which excite the mingled awe and admiration of the present generation. With this slave labor he built the great outer wall which fortified his capital: it was 130 square miles, 80 feet wide, and from three to four hundred feet high--embracing altogether about two hundred millions yards of solid masonry! Inside of this, there was another wall of nearly equal importance. He had built in seventeen days time a splendid palace, the ruins of which are still extant. He had built or rebuilt all the cities of upper Babylonia, and Babylon itself. He had dug immense canals; formed aqueducts; raised pyramidal temples and other sacred shrines; made immense reservoirs; built quays and breakwaters; and constructed the wonderful hanging gardens of Babylon. But during the construction of these works, the Jews revolted three times; and in the reign of one of their kings, Zedekiah, Jerusalem was invested--destroyed--and the bulk of its inhabitants made to swell the captives of Nebuchadnezzar. With this immense additional servile population, he continued to embellish his capital, and to prosecute the construction of works for public utility. After a reign of forty-three years, Nebuchadnezzar died, leaving the crown to his son, Evil-Merodach. The successor of this prince witnessed, doubtless, the opening of that Revolution, which, by the overthrow of Astyages, established the great Persian Empire under Cyrus. At any rate one of his successors, Nabonadius, entered into alliance with Cræsus, the Lydian, which finally resulted in the capture
of Babylon, then in charge of Belshazzar; for Nabonadius was at Borsippa. This latter city soon shared the fate of the capital, and with it the old Chaldean Empire fell under the dominion of the victorious Persian; and master and slave alike became the captive property of the victor.
Lydia first arose to importance under the reign of Gyges. It was, however, once previously invaded and overrun by the Cimmerians, who reduced a portion of the inhabitants to a condition of servitude. These Cimmerians were themselves fugitives that fled from before the more victorious Scyths, leaving many of their brethren behind in captivity. But during the reign of Sadyattes, the Cimmerian power in Lydia began to decline; and by Alyattes, his successor, they were either extirpated or reduced to slavery. A war of greater importance soon ensued: Alyattes became engaged with Cyaxares, the Mede, by whom Lydia was invaded. The war continued six years with doubtful issue; but always resulting in slavery to the respective captives. At length an eclipse--supposed to have been that of Thales--put an end to the war; and Alyattes spent the remainder of his reign in peace, or in the erection of his mammoth sepulchre--equal in grandeur to the best Egyptian pyramid--by the hands of his captives and "the tradesmen, handicraftsmen, and courtezans of Sardis."
The conclusion of this war between the contending powers, was also the commencement of a strict alliance between the Lydians and the Medes. The latter was a branch of the great Arian family, and closely allied in language and lineage to the Persians. Their manners and customs, and still more their institutions, were not radically dissimilar. The Medes under Cyaxares, it is
plausibly conjectured, commenced their migration by issuing from Khorasan; passing along the mountain chain south of the Caspian Sea; entering Media; conquering the Scyths; blending with a portion of them, reducing others to servitude, and precipitating the intractable upon the Assyrians; which, finally, resulted in the overthrow and destruction of the empire of the latter. Within eight or nine years of the establishment of his power in Media, Cyaxares was master of Nineveh. In this enterprise he was assisted, as we have seen, by the traitorous General of Saracus, Nabopolassar. Babylon became not only sovereign and independent, but aggressive and conquering--always in alliance with Media; and, by the peace of the latter with Lydia, a triple alliance followed, embracing the Babylonish power. This alliance was cemented by royal intermarriages, and lasted about fifty years. The allied kingdoms, however, continued respectively to absorb some lesser surrounding powers, and to reduce their inhabitants to servitude. At length the Persian irruption under Cyrus came. Babylon was leveled with the dust, and the pride of her allies subdued. Again the proud masters of Babylonia, Media and Lydia, in the uncertainty and vicissitudes of the times, became the captives of the Persian--the slaves, in fact, of the conquering Pasargadæ, Maraphii, and Achæmenidæ; for with them, as with all other dominant races, slavery was a civil and religious institution.
Thus we see, that during the greatest period of the world's history, so long dim and obscure to human knowledge, and only partially and imperfectly revealed to us now, by the light of modern research and criticism, Slavery was the invariable and universal superstructure of all social and political systems.
THE ground over which we have hitherto trodden, has been, until recently, deemed pre-historic; but now we are to enter that plastic region, where the light of history first begins to grandly shine--where man reached his highest development--
"Where grew the arts of war and
peace,
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung;"--
the renowned and lovely classic soil
of Greece. Yet is the morning of her history but dimly revealed to us by her
poetry and myths. Her noble songs and unrivalled epics and dramas are her
earliest histories. Her poets--inspired men, who stood forth to reveal the past,
to explain the present, and to make known the future--were her original
historians. And their theme was usually divinely exalted--their gaze attracted
by the heroic legend and the splendid action, rather than by the petty
transactions of slaves; excepting when it became necessary to illustrate noble
deeds by little ones. Hence it is difficult to always arrive at a correct idea
of the early economy of her little States.
In Greece lots of arable land were parcelled out to certain individuals, with carefully marked and jealously watched boundaries; but the greater portion of the country was devoted to pasturage. Cattle formed the main item of wealth. These were tended by bought slaves or poor hired freemen, called in Attica Thêtes. The slaves upon whom this trust devolved were generally high in the confidence of their masters; Eumæus, the swine-herd of Ulysses, and himself the son of a king,
being doubtless a fair type of his class. Indeed, these slaves had often under their control, as auxiliaries, subordinate slaves, who were treated in a manner neither harsh nor cruel. Their condition was little, if at all, worse than that of the Thêtes; who, nominally free, but owning no land, wandered about from one temporary job to another; generally contented if during the harvest or other busy seasons they could give their labor in exchange for food and clothing; and not unfrequently bartering away their freedom for the more permanent and secure protection of a master.
The Constitution of Sparta--and especially the Code of Lycurgus--rendered slavery an absolute necessity to the State. By this Code all distinction of rank as between Spartan citizens was abolished. The design of the great law-giver was to elevate rather than depress his fellow-countrymen. Lacedæmonians, politically considered, were to be regarded upon a footing of perfect and complete equality; they were to be as members of one family--as children of the same roof. The exercise of mechanism, or even of agriculture, was imperatively prohibited to the free. Every Lacedæmonian was required to live up strictly to the standard of a modern nobleman or aristocrat, and to cultivate the spirit of chivalry and patriotism. Hence, slaves and slavery became necessary, general, and numerous. The Helotism of Sparta, however, seems to have been the severest system of ancient involuntary labor. It was peculiarly marked out for censure by many able Athenians , and its evils not only grossly exaggerated, but shamefully misrepresented. It would be difficult, indeed, to name another rustic population which enjoyed greater immunities than the Spartan Helots. Their hearths were
inviolate. Their social intercourse was free. They had a fixed and moderate rent-scale. They might acquire property by industrious exertions. And, were it not for the institution of the Krypteia--the existence of which is uncertain and doubtful--their condition was much superior to that enjoyed at the present day by the downtrodden peasantry of Europe.
Wherever the Ionians or Dorians--the two great branches of the Greek family--colonized, they carried along with them the parent institution of slavery. Thus, the Argives had slaves whom they denominated Gymnesii, and resembling in their condition the helots of Sparta. The Konipodes, or dusty feet, of the Epidaurians, were a similar class. Regular slavery, upon the basis of the Athenian constitution, prevailed at Corinth; and the Corynephori were the bondsmen of Sycion. In Crete--Crete of the "hundred cities "--there were two kinds of slaves--slaves that were the property of the State, and slaves that belonged to private individuals. In Syracuse their number was proverbial, and their labor caused the estates of the nobles to yield the richest harvests and to blossom like the rose. Megara had her slaves and slave constitution; and the Megarian colony of Byzantium placed the Bithynians in a condition of Helotism. The Mariandynians were similarly held by the Heracleans; and Thera, with her colony of Cyrene, clung to the old Doric usage. Tarentum, the city of Archytes, a virtuous Pythagorean, had her slaves and slave laws; and Crotona, the home of Pythagoras--the great political work of his brain being her constitution--was precisely in the same relation. All of these constituted the colonial glory of the Doric, and partially of the Ionic races. They, like the parent States, were great in
war, great in peace, great in commerce, great in literature and the fine arts, great in architecture; matchless in every intellectual development which advances prosperity, civilization, and the glory of a people. They flourished and progressed through their own virtue and excellent institutions, including that of slavery; which was among the primal elements of their happiness and security.
Yet it has been confidently asserted upon the floor of the United States Senate, and upon the authority of one Gurowski, an itinerant Russian, that "slavery was the putrescent mass which ruined Greece." The early vocation, and limited advantages of the Senator who retailed this bold error, constitute the best apology for his ignorance. "The Grecian States," says K. O. Muller--an author to whose profound erudition, great labors, and critical perspicacity, universal scholarship is infinitely indebted--"either contained a class of bondsmen, which can be traced in nearly all the Doric States, or they had slaves, who had been brought either by captivity or commerce from barbarous countries; or a class of slaves was altogether wanting, as was the case with the Phocians and Locrians. But these nations, scanty in resources, never attained to such grandeur and power as Sparta and Athens. SLAVERY WAS THE BASIS OF THE PROSPERITY OF ALL COMMERCIAL STATES, AND WAS INTIMATELY CONNECTED WITH FOREIGN TRADE." When Athens was at the zenith of her glory and power, she had only a population of 30,000 freemen, while her slave population was over 400,000. Her fall resulted from political demagogueism, perfidy, and treachery. And, indeed, the decline and ruin of all Greek States are traced to similar causes--the factious contentions of heartless
politicians, who divided and distracted the people by means of dangerous and glittering abstractions. With the virtue and greatness of Greece, the institution of slavery was fostered and prospered; but when the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle--advocates of slavery--was forgotten; when the moral political examples of Solon, Aristides, and Pericles, were superseded, by the political expediencies of professional time-servers, tricksters, and place-hunters, Greece sank from liberty, splendor, and glory, into decrepitude, chains, and ruin.
As with early Greece, so with early Rome;--her social and economical history is shrouded from our penetration in the thick haze of myths, poetry, and tradition. But this much is clear: that from the very foundation of her society--coeval with the regulation of family relations--and long before the birth of her poets and historians, slavery was one of Rome's most valued institutions; and continued so, not only until the Cross was erected upon the ruins of Paganism, but long after the sceptre of Rome had passed beneath the triumphant banner of the stranger and barbarian. Indeed, the immutable principles of justice were so clearly discerned by the inflexible rectitude of the Roman mind, and so sagaciously applied by the wisdom of Roman lawyers, that Christianity, when supreme even in the Empire, approvingly adopted the old Roman statutes. That sacred religion, whose sanctity was sealed by the death of the noblest martyrs, and whose triumph sprang from their blood, naturalized as its own civil ethics, the provisions of the Roman slave code; founded as they were upon the experience and accumulated
wisdom of ages. Throughout the "Code" of Justinian there is a full
recognition of slavery--a broad and unquestionable distinction made between the
free and the servile--and by the acknowledged disqualification for freedom of
those who were captured in war; of those who sold themselves or were legally
sold into slavery; and of those who were of servile descent--a virtual denial of
natural equality.*
*Professor Tayler Lewis, in
his "reply" to a sermon of Dr. Van Dyke, noticed already in the text, rises to
the sublime of ignorance. "The Roman servitude was bitter enough," says he, "but
still with hope [false cant! the Roman slave had no right to 'hope;' in
this respect he was not upon a level with the negro slave] remaining at the
bottom. Emancipation might speedily restore the doulos, [This, Professor,
was a Greek and not a Roman slave, and 'emancipation' is as much
the privilege of the negro as it was of either the Roman servus or Greek
doulos,] or his children, to the level of society. It was, therefore, a better
thing (sic) than this Calhoun, (!) Hamitic [This is a mere theological fancy,
and not scholarship or erudition, Professor,] bondage, 'normal,' endless,
hopeless, to which no year of jubilee [Surely, Professor, you ought to
know that you now tread upon Hebrew and not upon Roman ground,] shall ever
come." Now, this is one of the
oracles of Northern ignorance. He passes for a great man in New York. We have
quoted from him but three sentences; and behold the confusion of facts and
ideas! When the blind lead the blind, both will fall into the
pit.
Antoninus placed the life of the slave within the protection
of the law: the Christian emperor did no more, but candidly ascribed this boon
even to his pagan predecessor. He ratified the law of Constantine, which made it
homicide to maliciously kill a slave; and he confirmed the law of Claudius
against the abandonment of sick and useless slaves. And whatever amelioration
was effected in the condition of the slave under the laws of Justinian, resulted
from a spirit of policy in public economy--as they
expressly set forth--rather than from any promptings of what is now termed evangelical humanity. The life of the slave was protected, but his political inferiority sternly fixed and asserted. A free person could not wed a slave; and this distinction was fully recognized, nay, but sanctified, by Christianity--the Church steadfastly and persistently refusing its blessings to such unions. But the Church went still further. A fugitive slave, desirous of becoming a monk, could be reclaimed by his master at any time during his three years of probation. Leo the Great opposed the promotion of slaves to the dignity of the sacerdotal office; because that the Church might thereby become a refuge for contumacious slaves, and invade the rights of property; and because such accessions brought discredit upon the Clergy. In all cases the consent of the master was an imperative necessity. But a measure of general enfranchisement was never contemplated by the greatest and wisest of Christian writers, philosophers, law-givers, and saints. The trade in slaves was a principal and recognized branch of commerce. Man was marketable; and he so continued, until the decay and decrepitude of the Roman power, failed to supply the markets with hordes of conquered barbarians--until Roman glory was crushed beneath the savage heel of Vandal, Goth, Lombard, Gaul, and Hun. Long after this, as we shall soon see, the laws in relation to slavery continued to be the same in effect as in the previous past. Basil, the Macedonian, was among the first to interpose on behalf of the bond--claiming that the union of a slave with a free person ought to be sealed by the Christian sacrament of matrimony; but more than four centuries elapsed, before the Christian Church universally conceded what Basil advocated: for
in the thirteenth century, we find Nicetus, Bishop of Thessalonica, excommunicating masters who refused their slaves the privilege of being married in the Church.
UPON the ruin of the Roman Empire the power and dominion of the Barbarian arose. That Empire once comprehended the largest and fairest portion of the earth. But when Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, was crowned King of Italy, the glory of the Empire may be said to have passed away. Roman dominion, indeed, still prevailed; but only in a religious sense. The Western World was rapidly becoming Christian and Catholic. The bishops and missionaries of the Church were all, or nearly all, of the Latin race, and spoke the Latin tongue. They stood between the rude barbarian and an angry and exacting Deity, as mediators and intercessors--they were regarded as the commissioned advocates of the sinner and the transgressor--men of delegated holiness, whose prayers ascended daily before Seraphim and Cherubim. It was natural that these cultivated men, the sole depositaries of the learning of the times, and the only advance guard of Civilization and Christian humanitarianism, should become the teachers of barbarians and the moulders of their actions. And the spirit of Christianity rendered them bold, fearless and generous. As Agapetus confronted the Emperor Justinian and his courtezan queen--as Silverius defied the frowns, threats and persecutions of Belisarius and his lewd wife, Antonina--and as Pelagius I. stood undismayed before Totila--so did many of these soldiers of the Christian cross peril their lives in the cause of humanity and
civilization,--precipitating themselves between savage men and their victims, until by sacred lesson and example they changed or modified the passions of the barbarians. They became the reconcilers of hostile races and the harmonizers of different laws and customs. For the Barbaric codes, like the Roman law, recognized slavery as the ordinary, if not the normal, condition of a portion of mankind. With them, as with the Romans, man was merchandise. But, happily for mankind, the captive in war did not forfeit his life, but his liberty, by defeat; otherwise the wars of the whole world must have been wars of massacre and extermination. The clergy interposed their benign religious influence on behalf of the unfortunate, and soothed or ameliorated their condition by overawing the cruel. But the system of slavery, in all its legal essentials, remained the same. It was too permanently and too universally rooted--too firmly founded upon principles of justice, social, religious and philanthropic necessity--to admit of radical change or perceptible disturbance. The capture and sale of men was a principal branch of commerce along all the shores of Europe. Clovis encouraged the sale of the Alemanni; Charlemagne that of the Saxons, and Henry the Fowler that of the sclaves--captives from whose ethnic name we derive the term slave. Even when the slave was a Christian, if his domestic or family relations were secured or respected by law or usage, the boon was due to religion rather than to any theory of personal rights or humanity. The Lombards acknowledged the sanctity of the marriage contract between slaves; but marriage between those belonging to different owners was strictly prohibited; and by the Salic law, the slave who married without consent of his master was punished
by an hundred stripes and a specified mulct. Nearly all the Barbarian codes, like the Roman, prohibited the debasing alliance of free persons with slaves. By the Salic and Ripuarian laws, the freeman who married a slave, forfeited his freedom; and where a free woman married a slave, both were, by the Lombard and Burgundian statutes, condemned to death. The Visigothic code consigned to death the freewoman who married, or even had intercourse, with her slave. The Saxon laws declared the like penalty not only against free persons marrying slaves, but even against those who married persons of inferior rank. Unlike the Roman, the Barbaric codes protected the person of the slave because he was property. All injury done to him was an injury to property rather than to person; and the master, not the sufferer, received the compensation. The edict of Theodoric provided that the murderer of another's slave should furnish the injured master with two slaves instead. Indeed, the power of life and death was in the master's hands; since, according to the codes, he had a perfect right to do away with his own property. The Latin Church zealously labored to reform this savage abuse, by endeavoring to have the Hebrew code, or the more humane edicts of Antoninus, Claudius and Justinian, engrafted upon the barbaric laws. And hence (although the right of life and death over a slave was the unquestioned usage of all German tribes from times immemorial) we find the provisions of the Mosaic law embodied in the Capitularies of Charlemagne; while, under Lothaire, the murderer of a slave was punished by penance and excommunication. The fugitive from labor and servitude became an Ishmael on the face of the earth. It was criminal to conceal him. As by our own common law the owner of
property may recover it wherever he finds it, so the master might seize his slave anywhere, and punish him according to pleasure. The churches and the monasteries were large slaveholders; and to harbor or conceal the runaway slave of an ecclesiastic was doubly criminal. Yet fortunate was the fugitive that succeeded in seeking refuge at the altar. Before he was restored, a promise was exacted from the master to remit all punishment. When we add that the Anglo-Saxon Abbott, Alcuin, owned ten thousand slaves, some correct idea may be formed of the extent of ecclesiastical property in slaves. The countrymen of Alcuin furnished the slave market with many of the most precious specimens of that kind of merchandise. The beauty of some Anglo-Saxons, exhibited in the Roman slave mart, excited the compassion of Gregory the Great, and led to their conversion by the great missionary, Saint Augustine. The Irish bought Anglo-Saxon slaves extensively, but manumitted them by a decree of a National Council in 1172--a principle of generous humanity, which England long afterward rewarded, by conquering and enslaving Ireland. The people of Northumberland sold their nearest relatives, often--according to the venerable Bede and William of Malmesbury--their very children. But with the sway of William the Conqueror came Norman vassalage--when the native master and slave were alike compelled to do homage to new lords. At length, but slowly and gradually, the influence of the Latin Church--the amalgamation of races--the relations of different races to each other, growing out of conquest, intercourse, and change of dynasties--the final establishment of the European political system--the attachment of the slave to the soil in the character of serf--and the change in
the laws which rendered slaves taxable property, and, therefore a source of oppression and expense; all these influences, together with the advances made in the discovery and application of the mechanic arts, modified the relations of master and servant. Slavery became villeinage. Yet their condition was not much improved by this change. In some cases, villeins might still be sold like cattle. In other instances, they could only be sold with the freehold. They could not always purchase their own liberty. The child followed the condition of the father. Like all other species of property, they were inheritable. They could not be admitted as witnesses in courts of justice. The runaway could be recovered by his master in the same manner as he would recover his horse or his ass. But the lord had not the power of life or limb over his vassal or serf. And when Henry VIII. and his characteristic daughter, Queen Elizabeth, commenced the work of manumission or emancipation, they did so through no philanthropic or religious motive, but simply to replenish their empty treasuries, by selling freedom to their enslaved vassals. Another reason was, that towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the utility of the negro was discovered; and it is to this discovery that England is largely indebted for her present commercial wealth and ascendancy, as well as for the abolition of villeinage. Upon the negro question we shall soon enter; but whether--if we accept the securities conceded to his rights of person--the condition of the Caucasian vassal has been improved by his enfranchisement may well admit of some doubt.
One country--one people rather--remain to be spoken of--the Moslems. Long before Mohammed was born, slavery was in full force in distracted and divided Arabia
--under all of her petty kings and chiefs. But united by Islamism--when the prophet of Allah gave to her the laws of Divine revelation--slavery became firmly fixed, perpetual and sanctified. It was one of the ordinary conditions of society, and it so continues to the present day. The Koran is, when regarded in its religious authoritativeness amongst a people, an eternal edict of servitude. At the time, however, that Mohammed lived, wrote and fought, slavery was an universal institution; founded upon the principles of universal laws; and hence, in the wars of Christian against Moor, many centuries afterward, which were inspired by dogmatic zeal, the system became not only increased, but debased. France and Italy were filled with Saracen slaves. In turn, the Saracen markets were overflowing with Christian captives, offered for sale by Jewish traders. And this example was copied during the German and Slavonic wars. So, Venetian ships were the carriers of slaves; slavery existed in Poland while Poland had life; and when nationally dead, Russia--where serfdom existed from the foundation of the Muscovite Empire-- revived the system upon her corpse.
IT was not a sentiment of doctrinal or moral humanity which impelled the masters and owners of men to emancipate the slaves of their own race and lineage. For while villeinage prevailed in England--while feudalism, the maxims of the old Saxon Constitution, and Danish and Norman customs, were yet the law of the land, the Church, her holy fathers, monks and friars--according to the secretary of Edward VI., Sir Thomas Smith--
interposed at the confessional, and in the ministry of extreme unction, for the amelioration of the condition of the servile. But on behalf of whom did these holy men so interpose? Was it for a heterogeneous race? Was it in the cause of savages or unreclaimed heathens? Was it on behalf of a people morally and physically repulsive, and intellectually degraded and inferior, whose normal and characteristic condition was that of servitude and subordination? No. It was on behalf of Englishmen who were of the same caste and race with their masters --descendants of Britons, Danes, Saxons, Angles, Picts and Normans--men who were of the same complexion and anatomical structure as their lords, and in whose veins coursed the kindred blood of a kindred lineage--men whose only inferiority was artificial and accidental, resulting from inherited poverty--and men whose progeny were destined in time to develop the most brilliant intellectual faculties in every department that sheds glory, or fame, or immortality, around intellectual life. Yet when emancipation gradually, but systematically commenced, it was founded upon principles of political economy purely. As we have seen, the monarchs sold freedom to their vassals. In the possession of the lord they were taxable property, and, consequently, a source of enormous expense. Philosophy and mechanism were advancing; the policy and necessity of exacting brute labor from man was receding. Each new discovery in science and the mechanic arts gave a fresh impetus to the progress and elevation of the serf, until at length the ethics of public economy found the ingenious susceptibilities, refined mental organism, and inventive genius of the Caucasian, more profitable in guiding the helm of the ship and directing the steam
engine through the tunnel and down the rapid grade, than in rudely squandering away his power in a patriarchal manner, whereby the fruit of his labor would sink into comparative infinitesimal insignificance. The Sun of Civilization was rapidly reaching its meridian orbit. The progress made in useful inventions was considerable. The Spanish armada was destroyed. The Dutch broom was soon to be swept from the English channel. Bacon was writing his Novum Organum. Shakespeare was producing his noblest tragedies. Soon the Principia of Newton would produce a revolution in mathematics and astronomy. The Spirit of the Age was marching forward--onward rolled the wheels of progress. A few more years, and the Caucasian will remove the burden from off the shoulders of his brother--the steam engine will perform the labor of a million of toilers--the reaping machine will substitute the harvest hand in the harvest field--the cotton-gin and cotton jenny will daily do the work of hundreds--the sewing machine will strip of half its tragic pathos the "Song of the Shirt"--and international codes will loose their former stern aspect, and appear more gentle and benign. No more shall the captive in war remain the captor's slave; because equality of intellect and race among the peoples of Europe must become a recognized fact of international law; and because the improvement made in war engines and instruments of destruction render the chances of war alike equal and uncertain. It will no more appear wise or rational to retain and support a captured enemy upon an already over-populated soil. Public and political economy alike forbid it.
Nevertheless, the physical condition of the European hirelings and servants of the present day, is but little,
if anything, in advance of that of the ancient Villein. Many of them, ragged or barefoot, toil daily for a pittance, not sufficient to provide their half-starved and half-famished families with the scantiest and coarsest food. Circumstances have altered, indeed, the relation of master and servant; but the nature and characteristics of the task-master is still the same. The distance of sympathy, mutual dependence and kindliness, which separates the cotton-spinners of New England and the iron masters of Pennsylvania, from their operatives, is as great as that which separates the lord from his vassal--INFINITELY greater than that which separates the Southern planter from his negro slave. And it is quite natural that this should be so. Property is precious. It is better and cheaper for the employer to hire for a pittance the daily laborer, than risk the life of his valuable slave in the performance of menial or dangerous service. Hence we find the Roman freemen; the Athenian Thêtes, the Spartan Perioïkoi, frequently exchanging their liberties for the protection and security of a master. And, indeed, fortunate would it be for the wretched operatives of the manufacturing towns of England; the coal-miners of Cornwall; and the stone-breaking, ditch-digging, dung-carrying, half-starved, semi-nude, bare-headed, and bare-footed peasantry of Ireland, if such a source of refuge were still left open to them. But no: the condition of the modern laborer differs only in degree, not in effect, from that of the vassal or the slave. He is still a craven dependent. And whatever little advantages he may possess, are the fruits of science and philosophy, rather than of religion or philanthropy in the heart of his master. This will, and indeed must, continue so, until labor is placed, if it
ever can be, upon a level with capital. Perhaps, by the observation of particular facts in the general law of physics, some future evangel of science may discover some principle of mechanism, that will place the toiler, socially and politically, upon an equality with the capitalist; but until that day arrives, surely the Caucasian has room enough to exorcise his philanthropy on behalf of his crushed and down-trodden brother, without Quixotically spending his power and his pity on the side of that marked and debased slave of nature and circumstances--the negro.
Yet this is one of the crying
errors of the present generation of would-be liberators and philanthropists.
They build their arguments upon the false thesis, that all species of
mankind had a common origin; and, indeed, were or are the children and lineal
descendants of a single pair.* * "But all this," the
superficial thinker will exclaim, "is contrary to the Mosaic account." He must
really pardon us for differing from him: we are no less Christian than he. Moses
never intended to have the negro regarded as a child of Adam and Eve. The Mosaic
view of our first parents, their aspect and characteristics, is our view; and is
fully and sublimely expressed by the inspired Christian poet-- Milton: Now let the reader imagine,
if he can conceive, this as a picture of a negro Adam and Eve; or let him show
how a negro race could possibly spring from such parentage. But the reason and
philosophy of this question will be hereafter made apparent in the
text.
"Two of far nobler shape, erect and
tall,
Godlike erect, in native honor
clad
In naked majesty, seemed lords of
all,
And worthy seemed: for in their looks
divine
The image of their glorious Maker
shone,
Truth, wisdom, sanctitude divine and
pure,
Severe, but in true filial freedom
placed;
Whence true authority in man; though
both
Not equal, as their sex not equal,
seemed;
For contemplation he and valor
formed,
For softness she and sweet attractive
grace;
He for God only, and she for God in
him.
His fair large front and eye sublime
declared
Absolute rule; and hyacinthine
locks
Round from his parted forelock manly
hung
Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders
broad:
She, as a veil, down to the slender
waist
Her unadorned golden tresses
wore
Dishevelled, but in wanton ringlets
waved
As the vine curls her tendrils."
Because the Roman patriot who assassinated
Caesar for his royal aspirations, could sacrifice a legion of gladiators for dreaming of freedom--because the Saxon conqueror who boasted of Hampden, Sidney, and Locke, could ruthlessly and unscrupulously trample under foot the liberties of an Irish Celt--it has, by arguments which were hoped to appear analogous, been held equally wrong, oppressive, and tyrannical, in the Virginia planter, whose chief pride it is that he lives under a free constitution, to hold his African servant in subjection. But Lord Macaulay--who so reasoned--should not have forgotten that the Gladiator and the Celt, were equally with their masters children of Caucasian parents--that in their veins flowed the pure blood of a superior race--that it was by the laws of captivity or conquest, rather than of conceded degradation and inferiority, that they were held in subordination--and that they respectively belonged to as brilliant and creative branches of the great Arian family as any that migrated westward from the uplands of India. It is to the families of this Arian race--Scyths, Gauls, Franks and Germans--from which the Gladiators of the Roman amphitheatre were drawn, (and of which the Capuan, Spartacus, was a fair type,) that we are largely indebted
for much of all that is sublime and beautiful in poetry and the plastic arts--in our Gothic architecture and Gothic civilization. The contributions of the Irish branch of the Celtic family to history, are no less famous. The Senate of no other nation could boast of more illustrious statesmen than Burke, Grattan, Canning, Sheridan, and Palmerston; while Curran, Plunkett, O'Connell, and Shiel, were among the brightest ornaments of legal eloquence in modern times. The writings of Swift, Berkeley, Goldsmith, and Moore, can perish but with the use of the English tongue; and in the great drama of military skill and undoubted heroism, surely the Irish Celt has had his share.
What analogy, then, can there
be between the Celt and Gladiator, and the African negroes of Virginia? None.
The latter are destitute of genius, without glory, non-aesthetic, unprogressive,
sensual, stolid, indifferent; not creative, not plastic, not homogeneous. The
Caucasian, from the humblest beginning, and with circumstances and opportunity
in his favor, will mount to the topmost step in the ladder of fame. Deprived of
the tutelage of the white man, every future act of the most civilized negro will
be an act of retrogression. The Athenian slaves brought up the rear under
Miltiades at the battle of Marathon; and they bore a no less distinguished part
in the victory of Platæa.* * "Ten thousand Lacedæmonian
troops held the right wing, five thousand of whom were Spartans; and
these five thousand were attended by a body of thirty-five thousand
helots, who were only light armed--seven to each
Spartan."--HERODOTUS.
The Roman slaves, under Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus, beat a Carthagenian army, commanded by Hanno, at
Beneventum, near Cumæ, during the Campanian war. But the battle of Liberty or Civilization has never yet been fought by the negro race, or by any portion of it. Under the most favorable circumstances, the negro rarely rises in distinction above being the keeper of a second rate saloon or livery stable; nor does be often rank so high even as this. He is ever the servant, but never the ruler of men. One great man, a negro, the world has yet to see. Whatever may have been his advantages, he has never been able to lift himself up to commonplace, but respectable, mediocrity. Not so the Caucasian, even when contending against the greatest obstacles. Many of the noblest men that ever lived sprang from the humblest grades of life. Demosthenes was the son of a cutler; Epaminondas was born in poverty; the father of Halley was an humble soap boiler; Caius Marius was the child of poor parents; Bunyan was the son of an itinerant tinker; D'Alembert, when an infant, was abandoned by his mother upon the steps of a Catholic church; Columbus was son to a wool-comber; the sire of De Foe, was a butcher; Erasmus was a bastard; and Luther was son to a poor miner. The birth of Shakspeare was humble, indeed; and his advantages of early education extremely limited. Even when he commenced to write his unrivalled plays, he had recourse to the crude Chronicles and Romances of other and indifferent authors, for their superstructure. But whenever the Angel of Creative Genius passed through the grand halls and corridors of his mind, those old books became subject to a new birth--there was then born unto man a rich world of majestic and universal ideas, magically expressed in the purity and harmony of poetic grace--Minerva-like, springing beautiful
and immortal from that mind, where the bees of knowledge, love, and wisdom, seemed to have deposited their honeyed stores. And the distinction which Shakspeare won in the Dramatic Art, was equally achieved in various departments of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, by other noble and no less distinguished Caucasians. The same spirit of heavenly interposition which pervades Hamlet, is manifest in the supernal paintings of Raphael also; in the sculpture and architecture of Michel Angelo; in the poetry of Dante; in the Masses of Mozart, and in the Symphonies of Beethoven; in the accumulated wisdom and graceful writings of Göethe; in the deep meditations of Pascal, and the copious eloquence of Bossuet; in the exalted statesmanship of Edmund Burke; in the ineffable grandeur and beauties of Homer; and in the self-sacrificing magnanimity and generous patriotism of Washington.
Now, the loss of any of these Divine men would leave a vacant niche in the philosophy of mind and civilization; while, so far as intellect and its results are concerned, if the whole negro race were obliterated,--if, indeed, the acts of every one of that species of mankind, from the days of Cheops down to the dark reign of Lincoln, were erased or forgotten, Universal History--only in so far as they constitute a link in the perfect order of Nature--would remain the same. Let, then, no Caucasian debase himself by regarding the African negro as his equal. To do so is as great an iniquity, as if he were to seek the exaltation of an equality with angels. His natural place is that in which the Ruler of the heavenly and earthly dominions has placed him from the beginning--at the head of all other branches of our species. Any other affinity than this, would, on
his part, be strangely arbitrary and unnatural. For it would be a most difficult effort of the mind, even in an abandoned and confirmed white abolitionist, to imagine a sable Holy Mary or St. Cecilia.
Again, if equal to us in organism and intellectual endowments, it is no less singular than remarkable, that God should have withheld the prophets of His Word from being of their race; since no negro Saviour of Mankind--no Socrates, Isaiah, Brahma, or Mohammed, has yet condescended to enlighten the world with any civilized system of Theogony. Even in the favorite painting of Anti-Slaverydom--Ary Schaefer's "Christus Consolator"--the negro is represented as stretching forth his chained hands for deliverance to that Caucasian Christ, who taught "slaves to obey their masters;" the splendid fiction, of course, belonging to the French poet-painter rather than to the non-aesthetic African. And, until that day when some future negro Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, or Alfred, may impart to his race a code of laws that will reclaim them, and give to them a moral, social, and political status, among the nations of the earth--until that race becomes actuated by an exalted principle of self-preservation and advancement, rendering its members plastic and homogeneous--we must certainly be excused for declining a participation of equality and amalgamation with them. Whatever may have been the sins and defects of our own race, its march has been ever forward, and its ambition directed heavenward. Our systems of slavery, even if unjust in the abstract, were often founded upon principles of humanity--always upon the exigencies of nationalities, social, political, and economical necessity--and finally resulted in the partial unification
of the various branches of the Caucasian family. And as a combination of the several parts in the machinery of a watch, is necessary to the perfect movement of the whole; so it is that from the commingling of these elements of a common origin and a common destiny, alone, could spring that fine system of international polity, which, in the pride of our vocabulary, we term THE CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION OF CHRISTENDOM.
THE great sandy desert, called "Sahara,"--joyless, soundless, lifeless--is not more barren of objects to instruct the naturalist, than is the negro race of incidents interesting to the historian or the philosopher. Having "never invented a reasoned theological system, discovered an alphabet, framed a grammatical language, nor made the least step in science or art"--as Hamilton Smith expresses it--we have to depend upon observation, and the writings of travellers, naturalists, and men of science, for information relative to it. This much, however, is clear, that in ancient Egypt, two thousand years before the birth of Christ, the negro was there as he is here--as he is and has been every where--the servant of a Caucasian master. "Black people"--writes the eminent English Egyptologist, Sir G. Wilkinson--"designated as natives of the foreign land of Cush, are generally represented on the monuments as captives or bearers of tribute to the Pharaohs." This distinguished scholar and antiquary, describes also a painting in a catacomb of Thebes, in which Amunoph III. is represented seated on his throne, receiving the homage and tribute of various nations; among them, the
black chiefs of Cush or Ethiopia, with presents of rings of gold, bags of precious stones, "cameleopards, panthers, skins, and long horned cattle, whose heads are strangely ornamented with the hands and heads of negroes." This savage custom, of immolating innumerable victims to turn away the wrath of Deity, or propitiate the anger of a barbarous monarch, as we shall soon see, still prevails in negro-land. As was natural, the contempt of the Egyptians for them was supreme and ineffable. Horus, a King of the nineteenth dynasty, is delineated standing on a platform supported by prostrate negroes; and in a Nubian temple, they are represented as flying in the most abject consternation from the vengeance of Rameses II. But the Egyptian artists were not contented with such displays as these; they chose other symbols to express their contempt for, and the degradation of, the negro. In another Theban painting, he is portrayed in an attitude of servitude, with a salver in his hands; his dress, a scanty apron of the coarsest hide; and the ridiculousness of his tout ensemble heightened by the addition of a bob-tail. Nor was it his good fortune to be more highly esteemed by the Arabs. We know from that incomparably enchanting book, "The Thousand-and-one Nights," how the negro was regarded by the Moslems, and that he was their slave. "May Allah disgrace the blacks for their malice and villainy," exclaims Ghânim, the son of Eyoub, upon overhearing Bakheet tell his fellow negroes, that they would "roast and eat" any of the whites who might accidentally fall into their hands. To his inimitable translation, and in particular illustration of this incident, Mr. Lane appended this note: "I am not sure that this is to be understood as a jest; for I have been assured by a slave-dealer
and other persons in Cairo, that sometimes slaves brought to that city, are found to be cannibals; and that a proof lately occurred there--an infant having been eaten by its black nurse. I was also told that these cannibals are generally distinguished by an elongation of the os coccygis; or, in other words, that they have tails."
Thus we see that the negro was equally repulsive to the ancient Egyptian and to the modern Arab--that his animality was sternly asserted by each--and that what the Theban painter pictorially represented, is matter of general belief in Cairo. In fact, the opinion that a certain branch of the negro family was adorned by an elongation and outward curvature of the os coccygis has been seriously entertained by some eminent savans, and denied by many others, among whom we may name the distinguished Soemmerring. But be this as it may--and passing the anatomical conformation of the negro over to the consideration of the subject in the succeeding section--the inferior light in which he was regarded by Arab and Egyptian, will be matter neither of wonder nor surprise, to the observer of the African in the Confederate States. Although his social status is here in advance of any that he has ever before occupied in the history of the world, yet his moral and intellectual degradation, dependence, and subordination, are too patent and persistent to admit of doubt. It is not here, however,--where he is comparatively an advanced and civilized being--that we are to search for the genuine characteristics of the typical negro. To properly understand him, he must be regarded as described by enlightened travellers and naturalists; and the opinions of such, we will extract from quotations made by the great English
champion of negro equality--Dr. James Cowles Prichard. The negroes of the Gold Coast around the district of Acra, according to this learned author, "are ever on the watch to sieze the wives and children of the neighboring clans, and to sell them to strangers: many sell their own. Every recess, and every retired corner of the land, has been the scene of hateful rapine and slaughter, not be excused or palliated by the spirit of warfare, but perpetrated in cold blood and for the love of gain." Now, this is the unwilling testimony of a friend against friends, whose cause he had undertaken to plead and vindicate; whose descent from Adam and Eve he started out with the predetermined resolution of establishing. Not so the Abbate Bernardo de la Fuente. He was a zealous and pious missionary, wholly devoted to the conversion of the heathen and the preaching of the gospel; but, regardless of consequences, accustomed to speak the truth. Speaking of the Pelagian negroes of the Phillippine Islands, and particularly of the Nigta tribe, he exclaims: "This race of negroes seem to bear upon themselves the malediction of Heaven. They live in the woods and mountains like beasts, in separate families, and wander about supporting themselves by the fruits which the earth spontaneously offers. It has not come to my knowledge that a family of these negroes ever took up their abode in a village. If the Mohammedan inhabitants make slaves of them, they will submit to be beaten to death rather than undergo any bodily fatigue; and it is impossible either by force or persuasion to bring them to labor. Not far from my mission at Buyunan, in the Island de los Negros, there was a horde of negro families who had traffic with some barbarous Indian people, and were by these given
to understand that I counselled them to receive baptism, in order that the government might force them to pay tribute: in consequence of this I could never reclaim one of them, and I believe very few negroes have been converted; for I only found the name of one in a register containing the baptisms of two hundred years. "This simple and candid statement reflects honor upon the honest sincerity of its author. Had he been one of Exeter Hall's disciples, or still worse, a Yankee missionary, we would have heard annually of the dangers which he had encountered, and of the numerous miraculous conversions that he had wrought; at least the truth would have forever remained hidden from our view. The credulity of the great mass of the American people has long been disgracefully imposed upon in this direction, by the false reports of their religious emissaries abroad. A rational system of theology is intellectually impossible to the negro. Naturally and instinctively he kneels to a Fetiche. Even when, in civilized communities, he adopts a noble and elevated creed, he does so merely as a matter of imitation and formalism; for it is usually beyond the sphere of his reason or metaphysical capacity. But wherever they are placed outside the influence of the surrounding circumstances of civilization, the conversion of negroes is almost an impossibility, and their faith becomes savage and debased. In Western Africa, it is notorious that they worship tigers and other wild animals of prey--trees, beetles, and insects. The best fruit of missionary labor in their midst, according to Father Loyer, is to induce them thus to pray: "My God give me this day rice and yams." They indulge themselves in human sacrifices even at that. M. Seelgrave was an eyewitness, in Old Kalabar, of a child ten months old
having been hanged upon a tree with a living fowl, in order to propitiate the deity and cause a sick king to recover his health. And it may not have escaped the memory of the reader, that the King of Dahomeh sacrificed to his god, out of gratitude for one of his victories, four thousand Fidans, causing their heads to be cut off and piled up together in a pyramidal heap. When this miserable savage died, the same tragedy was reënacted, but upon a still more terrible and gigantic scale.
No less cruel or barbarous are the details of a Cannibal Festival, as detailed in a letter of Rev. Peter W. Bernaske, dated Whydah, (Abomey), November 29th, 1860. "On the eve of the day," says he, "when the custom was to commence, the whole town slept at King's gate, and got up at 5 o'clock in the morning to weep. And so they hypocritically did. The lamentations did not continue more than ten minutes; and before the king came out to fire guns to give notice to all, more than one hundred souls had been sacrificed, besides the same number of women killed in the inside of the palace. Ninety chief captains, one hundred and twenty princes and princesses--all these carried out separately, human beings, by four and two, to sacrifice for the late king." On the 1st of August--a few days after this event--the dusky monarch, with a funeral cortege, came out to bury the remains of his father, with the following living things--"Sixty men, fifty rams, fifty goats, forty cocks, drakes, cowries, &c. The men and women soldiers, well armed with muskets and blunderbusses for firing; and when he was gone round his palace, he came to the gate and fired plenty; and there he killed fifty of the poor creatures and saved
ten." Fifteen days after this, the missionary was summoned before his majesty, when he beheld upon the palace gate "ninety human heads cut off that morning, their blood flowing on the ground like a flood, and the heads carefully laid on swish beds for public view." Three days afterward, he saw "at the same gate, sixty heads laid upon the same place; and on three days again, thirty-six fresh heads in the same position." The king had four platforms erected in the market place, from which "he threw cowries and cloths to the people, and then sacrificed about sixty souls." "I dare say," continues the missionary, that "he killed more than two thousand; because he kills men outside to be seen by all, and women inside privately. Oh! he destroyed many souls during this wicked custom." Such being the normal religion of the negro, who will wonder that the rational theism of the Abbate Fuente and his predecessors, should have fallen as vainly upon his ears, as the harvest seed doth upon barren rocks?
The Hottentot or Bosjesman tribe--the negro "Bushmen" of South Africa--are described by M. Bory de St. Vincent as forming the transition between man and the genera of Orangs and Gibbons. "These people," he adds, "are so brutish, lazy, and stupid, that the idea of reducing them to slavery has been abandoned." To this, the most profound advocate of the "unity of race" theory is constrained to add his testimony. "Without houses or even huts," writes Dr. Prichard, "living in caves and holes in the earth, those naked and half-starved savages wander through forests, in small companies or separate families, hardly supporting their comfortless existence by collecting wild roots; by a toilsome search for the eggs of ants; and by devouring,
whenever they can catch them, lizards, snakes, and the most loathsome insects." Surely, if consistent and sincere, the self-abasement of this gentleman would border on the sublime; but when we remember that in the fullness of his English pride, he would hardly admit that the Irish Celt was a child of Eve, the fraternal humiliation with which he embraces the degraded Hottentot, and claims for him common origin with himself, is stripped of more than half its poetic fancy. Yet, in matters of veracity, the distance that divides Dr. Prichard from the recent, and somewhat celebrated traveller, Dr. David Livingstone, is painfully astonishing. Sydney Smith it was, we believe, who declared it would take a surgical operation to drive a joke into a Scotchman; and certainly it would require some similar experiment to force the truth out of this Scotch missionary. Does he know of aught debasing or hopeless in the negro character? Having, perhaps, the fear of Exeter Hall before his eyes, it is carefully concealed. If he cannot speak glowingly of his African friends, he will be sufficiently cautious not to speak evil of them. Relative to the manners, customs, and characteristics of the Hottentots, he simply informs us that their "hair" "springs from the scalp in tufts with bare spaces between;" while of the black natives of Basongo, he says, that he was impressed by the strong "resemblance they bore to certain notabilities at home"! There is one tribe, however, in speaking descriptively of which he never seems to weary--the Batoka. "They have," he says, "a curious taste for ornamenting their villages with the skulls of strangers." "They follow," he adds, "the curious custom of knocking out the front teeth at the age of puberty. This is done by both sexes; and though
the under teeth, being relieved from the attrition of the upper, grow long and somewhat bent out, and thereby cause the under lip to protrude in a most unsightly way, no young woman thinks herself accomplished until she has got rid of the upper incisors. This custom gives them an uncouth, old-like appearance. Their laugh is hideous." And again: "The women clothe themselves better than the Balonda, but the men go "in puris naturalibus. They walk about without the smallest sense of shame. They have even lost the tradition of the 'fig leaf.' I asked a fine, large-bodied old man if he did not think it would be better to adopt a little covering. He looked with a pitying leer, and laughed with surprise at my thinking him at all indecent; he evidently considered himself above such weak superstition. * * * It was considered a good joke when I told them that, if they had nothing else, they must put on a bunch of grass." In conclusion: "their mode of salutation is quite singular. They throw themselves on the ground, and, rolling from side to side, slap the outside of their thighs as expressions of thankfulness and welcome, uttering the words 'kina bomba.'" That we have so much of the truth from Dr. Livingstone, even in so mild and amiable a form, is doubtless due to the facts, that a portion of the Batoka rebelled against his authority, and that a war of extermination was waged against them by his pet negro chieftain, one Sebituane, whose personal narratives are absolutely compared by him to Cæsar's Commentaries!
But to turn to another far different and more reliable source.--M. Lesson, in speaking of the Alforas--a tribe of New Guinea negroes--states that "the custom prevalent among them of putting their prisoners
to death and erecting their spoils as trophies, accounts for the difficulty found in observing" their habits and customs even upon their own soil. "But," he continues, "the Papuas described them to us as of a ferocious character--cruel and gloomy; possessing no arts, and passing their whole lives in seeking subsistence in the forests. * * * An excessive stupidity was stamped upon their countenances. These savages, whose skin is of a very deep, swarthy, dirty brown or dark color, go naked. They make incisions upon their arms and breasts, and wear in their noses pieces of wood nearly six inches long. Their character is taciturn, and their physiognomy fierce; their motion is uncertain and slow." To the foregoing the enterprising and accomplished Dr. Leyden adds his testimony. It is to him that the world is indebted for the first elaborate and intelligent account of the Alforas. "They are," says he, "universally rude and unlettered; and where they have not been reduced to the state of slaves of the soil, their habits have a general resemblance. The most singular feature of their manners is the necessity imposed on each and all of them, at some period of life, to imbrue their hands in human blood; and in general, among all their tribes, as well as the Idan, no person is permitted to marry till he can show the skull of a man whom he has slaughtered. They eat the flesh of their enemies, like the Battas, and drink out of their skulls; and the ornaments of their houses are human skulls and teeth, which are consequently in great request among them." In describing the negroes of Maria and Van Dieman's Islands, Mr. Heron says of them, that "they are without laws or anything like regular government; without arts of any kind, with no idea of agriculture, of
the use of metals, or of the services to be derived from animals; without clothes or fixed abode, and with no other shelter than a mere shed of bark to keep off the cold south winds; and with no arms but a club and spear. Although these and the neighboring New Hollanders are placed in a fine climate and productive soil, they derive no other sustenance from the earth than a few fern roots and bulbs of orchises; and they are often driven by the failure of their principal resource, fish, to the most revolting food--frogs, lizards, serpents, spiders, the larvæ of insects, and particularly a kind of large caterpillar, found in groups on the branches of the eucalyptus resinifera. They are sometimes obliged to appease the cravings of hunger by the bark of trees and by a paste made by pounding together ants, their larvae, and fern roots. Their remorseless cruelty, their unfeeling barbarity to women and children, their immoderate revenge for the most trivial affronts, their want of natural affection, are hardly redeemed by the slightest traits of goodness. When we add that they are quite insensible to distinctions of right and wrong, destitute of religion, without any idea of a Supreme Being, and with the feeblest notion, if there be any at all, of a future state, the revolting picture is complete in all its features." It would be easy, if necessary, to swell this dreary record; but we have already gone over sufficient ground--we have seen the typical negro in at least one-half the latitudes and longitudes of his native home--everywhere we have found him hopelessly lazy, filthy, savage, and degraded unto beastliness. And thus have they lived and perished for untold centuries, Christless and Godless, starving in their huts and kraals, burrowing like rabbits into the earth for shelter, roaming
through forests and over mountain sides stark naked, living upon polluted things that even birds and beasts of prey would scorn to touch, and, finally, sinking into earth like decayed vegetable matter--without a name--without a history--without a monument to record that they had ever lived or died. And all their past but symbolizes what shall be their eternal future, unless brought under the complete and unconditional direction and control of the Caucasian race. In this condition of subordination and dependence, the whole negro family might in time become what the four or five millions of them now in the Confederate States of America are--useful, affectionate, well cared for, happy and contented, and semi-civilized servants. But to the distinction of being a self-ruling and self-sustaining people, they never have risen, and never can arise; for their own inherent organism prohibits it. Their normal state is that of servitude and subjection; and their characteristics even when so placed, we will leave the eminent scholar from whom we have already quoted, at the commencement of this section, to relate: "The negro mind [when domesticated] is confiding and single-hearted, naturally kind and hospitable. Both sexes are easily ruled, and appreciate what is good under the guidance of common justice and prudence. Yet where so much that honors human nature remains in apathy--the typical woolly-haired races have never invented a reasoned theological system, discovered an alphabet, framed a grammatical language, nor made the least step in science or art. They have never comprehended what they have learned, or retained a civilization taught them by contact with more refined nations, as soon as that contact ceased. They have at no time formed great political
States, nor commenced a self-evolving civilization. Conquest with them has been confined to kindred tribes, and produced only slaughter. Even Christianity of more than three centuries' duration in Congo has scarcely excited a progressive civilization." And thus are we fortified in our position, by the opinion of one of the most candid and learned of English naturalists--that it is from the so-called institution of "Slavery," and only from this, can spring the regeneration of the negro race.
How comes it, then, that the negro is, and ever has been, normally savage? He was, from the first, surrounded by the earliest civilization. He came in contact with the greatest people of antiquity. He witnessed the sun of enlightenment and progress irradiating the world around him, as early at least as four thousand years ago; yet he remained, throughout the long ages, stolid, immovable, indifferent, unchangeable, and revolting to the geniality of all superior races, as the burning mountains and sandy deserts of his native land. Memphis and Thebes, Babylon and Nineveh, arose in splendor and magnificence; the pyramids of Egypt and Ethiopia were built for immortality; the Phoenicians were spreading letters and commerce, the Greeks and Romans, liberty and civilization: but upon the remaining monuments of all, the negro is displayed in a condition of abject subjugation, degradation, and slavery; while in no part of all Africa has there been discovered an alphabet, a hieroglyphic, a picture, or a symbol as the remains of his intelligence or ingenuity. We shall
endeavor to account for all this. We will undertake to prove that the negro
family constitute a distinct and entirely different group of the human species
from the Caucasian--that their physical and intellectual organization is
radically dissimilar and inferior to that of the white man--and consequently
that servitude and subordination, under the supervision of the wiser and
governing races, is their natural and unalterable relation in life. In seeking
to establish this, we shall hardly hazard an opinion of our own, not
substantiated by the experimental demonstrations of the most illustrious
anatomists and savants that have ever lived. We do not believe, with M.
de St. Vincent, that the negro constitutes the connecting link between man and
the Simiæ. That position in natural history more properly belongs to the
Gorilla. Of this creature, in a work recently published by him, M. Duchaillu
concludes that there is a dissimilarity between the bony frame of man and that
of the gorilla, but that there is also "an awful likeness, which in the
gorilla resembles an exaggerated caricature of a human being." The first
specimen of this genus seen by him, he describes as "some hellish dream
creature--a being of that hideous order, half-man, half-beast, which is found
pictured by old artists in representations of the infernal regions." Upon being
shot, he adds, the gorilla uttered "a groan which had something terribly human
in it, and yet was full of brutishness." The negro proper is certainly not so
low in the scale of physical* * In another portion of his
work, Du Chaillu gives a frightful account of the cannibalism prevailing among
certain negro tribes; particularly the Fans, from which we make a few brief
extracts "On going out one morning, I
saw a pile of ribs, leg, and arm-bones and skulls (human) piled up at the back
of my house, which looked horrid enough to me. In fact, symptoms of cannibalism
stare me in the face wherever I go. Eating the bodies of persons who have
died of sickness, is a form of cannibalism of which I had never heard among any
people, so that I determined to inquire if it were indeed a general custom among
the Fans, or merely an exceptional freak. They spoke without embarrassment about
the whole matter, and I was informed that they constantly buy the dead of the
Osheba tribe, who, in return, buy theirs. They also buy the dead of other
families in their own tribes; and besides this, get the bodies of a great many
slaves from the Mbichos and Mbondemos, for which they readily give ivory, at the
rate of a small tusk for a body. * * * A party of Fans, who came down on the
seashore, once actually stole a freshly buried body from the cemetery, cooked it
and ate it; * * and even the missionaries heard of it, for it happened at a
village not far from the missionary grounds. * * * In fact, the Fans seem
regular ghouls, only they practice their horrid custom unblushingly, and in open
day, and have no shame about it. I have seen here knives covered with human
skin, which their owners valued very highly. To-day, the Queen brought me some
boiled plantain, which looked very nice; but the fear lest she should have
cooked it in some pot where a man had been cooked before--which was most likely
the case--made me unable to eat it. On these journeys, I have fortunately taken
with me sufficient pots to do my own cooking. They are the finest, bravest
looking set of negroes I have seen in the interior, and eating human flesh
seems to agree with them." Certainly the morals of the Fans cannot be far
in advance of those of the gorilla.
organism as the gorilla; yet
it is demonstrable that he (especially the Hottentot), most certainly approximates in the structure of his frame to the monkey kind and the troglodyte. Their women, particularly those of the Bosjesman, according to Soemmerring, Sonneret, and Barrow, are marked by an elongation of the nymphæ, which increases with age and maturity, and often reaches to the startling length of five or seven inches; but this, however, is not a characteristic
of the simiæ. They have also, generally after their first pregnancy, a most ridiculous and disgusting protuberance on their buttocks, which is exaggerated in aspect by the remarkable outward extension of the posterior, and inward curvature of the spine; and this latter, it may be observed here, is a distinctive peculiarity in the structure of the race. The projection in question, it is said, ordinarily reaches five or six inches in length from the apex of the spine, and imparts to the women when walking the most ludicrous appearance imaginable--"every step being accompanied with a quivering and tremulous motion, as if two masses of jelly were attached behind." This was one of the distinguishing features discovered by Baron Cuvier in the "Hottentot Venus," exhibited some years ago in Paris--a Venus which certainly must have been a very Hottentotish Venus. We can easily comprehend why extreme loveliness, was the cause of all Mary, Queen of Scots' misfortunes, and why those heavenly attributes, in spite of her faults and follies, and three centuries of time, still endear her memory to millions of men; but we are unable to conceive by what miracle, or divine interposition, a chivalrous sympathy could be aroused in a refined and generous mind, on behalf of a Hottentot venus or queen. Yet it is not because that the latter is wanting in charms of personal beauty that we would deem her an inferior being, but because that Nature has made her with a hopelessly degraded intellectual organization.
Dr. Soemmerring enumerates forty-six instances wherein the anatomy of the negro differs from that of the Caucasian. In his summary of the characteristics of the negro cranium, Mr. Lawrence describes the
whole front of the head as narrow, the forehead flattened and receding; the cavity of the brain comparatively small, both in its circumference and full length measurements; the hinder perforation and condyles placed farther back than in the European; the face large, jaws prominent, teeth slanting, chin receding, and cheek bone extraordinarily arched and projecting forward; the nasal cavity small, and the ossa nasa nearly consolidated--the whole structure, in these and many other particulars, he says, "unequivocally approximating to that of the monkey. Compared with the Caucasian, the intellectual qualities are reduced and the animal features enlarged. And this inferiority of organization is attended with the corresponding unfailing inferiority of faculties." A very clever writer on this subject, has ascertained that the brain of the white man averages ninety-two to ninety-five cubic inches, while that of the negro often falls as low as seventy-five inches, and rarely exceeds eighty; and, as we have seen above, its locality as greatly inclines to the posterior of the head, as it does to the anterior in that of the Caucasian. Hence, it must be self-evident to the most superficial thinker, that a negro of well regulated intellectual faculties, such as any ordinary white man possesses, is absolutely a natural impossibility. Even his vocal and lingual inferiority is sternly marked and decisive. No negro ever spoke a civilized tongue correctly, much less, perfectly. It is an indisputable fact, that the French language learned of French masters by the negroes in Hayti, is rapidly becoming corrupted or falling into disuse, and the mother African dialect instinctively taking its place--another patent illustration of their incapacity to retain
a borrowed civilization, without the controlling supervision of a superior race. The musical faculties of the negro are equally defective. No great composer--no great singer even--of this family, we believe, has ever existed. The famous "Black Swan," who was of a mixed type, and who was reputed by the friends and admirers of the African as a musical prodigy, constitutes no exception to this inevitable rule. In the fullness of England's philanthrophy, she was parentally placed under the care and tutorship of the British Queen's musician; but notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts on her behalf, the sacred charge had to be relinquished, and the "Swan" proved a miserable failure. The negro, it is true, fancies music; so he does the most gaudy and glaring colors. This fancy, however, is sensual, not intellectual. The solemn elephant and the gallant war-steed, are equally moved by the influence of harmony. But the emotions kindled in the bosoms of a Scottish regiment, by the air of "Annie Laurie," and which could drive their bayonets through the serried columns of a Russian army at Inkerman, are intellectual emotions--memories of mountain homes, childhood's scenes, absent friends, and therefore, stimulating to glory and immortality--but as impossible to the subjectiveness of the typical negro, as they would be to the elephant or the war-horse.
It is not in the locality of mind alone that the negro is an inferior being; debasement characterizes, in indelible particulars, his whole skeleton. His head, even superficially considered, will convey to the ordinary observer this conviction. It is prognathous, and, therefore, of a type with simiæ. Soemmerring found that the position of the foramen magnum, in the skull of
the negro, approximated to its situation in that of the Chimpanzee and Ourang-Outang. This famous anatomist also discovered, among many other similar peculiarities--and his conclusions in this particular are acquiesced in by the no less distinguished Daubenton,--that the head of the negro is placed farther back upon the column (vertebral) of the spine, than is the case with any of the superior races; which is another distinguishing feature of animal construction.. The bones of his leg are bent outward. The outer and smaller bone (fibula), and the larger of the bones (tibia) forming the segment of the leg, are in the negro, convex. The calves of his legs are so high as to encroach upon his hams. His feet and hands, instead of being arched as with the Caucasian, are flat. The os calcis with him is almost in a direct straight line. As is the case with the ape and troglodyte, his forearm is proportionally much longer than that of the European. But the distinction does not stop here. Dr. Vrolik, in making a comparative examination of the conformation of the pelvis in various races, was enabled to arrive at some discoveries and conclusions at once important and interesting to us. "The pelvis of the male negro," he avers, "in the strength and density of its substance, and of the bones which compose it, resembles the pelvis of a wild beast." The pelvis of the negress, however, be found to be of lighter substance and greater delicacy both of form and structure, but still so gross as to render it impossible to separate it from the idea of degradation in type, if not immediate approximation to the form of that in the lower animals. The pelvis of the Hottentot, especially, forcibly resembled the structure of that in simiæ.
We will now direct our attention to the apparent
characteristics which distinguish this genus of man, and adopt the definition which the most illustrious naturalist that ever lived, gives of the negro, proper. "The negro race," says Cuvier, "is marked by a black complexion, crisped or woolly hair, compressed cranium, and a flat nose. The projection of the lower parts of the face, and the thick lips, evidently approximate it to the monkey tribe. The hordes of which it consists have always remained in the most complete state of barbarism," &c. &c. Malpighi was the first anatomist who discovered a membrane, or layer, beneath the cuticle, which be asserted was the seat of the black color in the negro's skin. More recently, however, M. Flourens, a justly celebrated French anatomist, made a more thorough and minute examination of this phenomenon, which enabled him to arrive systematically at a most important discovery. Between the cutis (skin) and cuticle (scarf-skin) of the negro, he found four layers; the second of which, from the cutis, had the aspect of a mucous membrane, and upon the surface of which was spread a layer of black pigment. This membrane is entirely foreign to the organism of the white man. M. Flourens had this pigmentum nigrum denuded by maceration, when it appeared of a much blacker hue than it had previously presented. He had this experiment subsequently displayed before the Academy of Sciences, in Paris, by macerating the skins both of a typical negro and mulatto, each of whom were possessed of this phenomenon; but upon subjecting the white man to a similar process of examination, it was found that the pigment, and the membrane upon which it is deposited in the negro, were completely wanting in his structure. When the results of M. Flourens' discoveries were published,
Dr. Henle--a very clever German anatomist--received them with unfeigned scepticism, and, resolved upon testing their reliability, subjected the pigment to a microscopical examination. The results of his minute labor, however, only enabled him to arrive in effect at similar conclusions. But what M. Flourens regarded as a membrane, Dr. Henle maintains is composed of complicated cells or cytoblasts. But, in addition to those cells which characterize the organization of the Caucasian, he frankly confesses to having discovered other and different cells in the structure of the negro, which are the seat of the black pigment, and necessarily of his outward deformed aspect.
Here, then, is a phenomenon, distinct, and peculiar to the structure of the African race, and bearing the signal stamp of degradation and inferiority of type. If, as their white advocates claim for them, they are equally with the Caucasian, children of Adam and Eve, how have they become possessed of separate characteristics in their anatomical organization, and which are so entirely foreign to our structure? If we ever were possessed of them, when did our race lose them? If, in the beginning, they had them not, then when, where, and how, did they become the sole possessors of these exclusive traits? It will not do to argue that the moles, freckles, and similar phenomena of the white races, must also have some peculiar seat of color; for these are evanescent and abnormal, while the black pigment and the additional membrane in the negro, are normal, enduring, and unalterable, as the eternity of granite hills!
Relative to the color, crispness, and woolly aspect of the negro's hair, men of learning and science in the
Old World, where the opportunities of observation are comparatively limited, have long varied in opinion as to the cause. It is now, however, a fact well established in this country, that the several peculiar characterictics of this excrescence, are, in the same manner as the coloration in the negro's skin, influenced by organic and exclusive agencies. Peter A. Browne, Esq., of Philadelphia, in his complete refutation of the conclusion arrived at by Dr. Prichard--that the negro has hair, properly so called, and not wool--gives us the results of his very thorough and scientific investigations. He subjected the pile (hair) of three different types of mankind to a microscopical examination--Indian, Caucasian, and Negro. By this process, he distinctly discovered that the hair of the native American Indian was cylindrical; that of the Caucasian oval; and that of the Negro eccentrically elliptical. "In observing the course or path pursued by the point where it pierces the epidermis (bark of the skin) to its apex," he found that the pile of each had respectively its own specific and individual variety of type. That of the Indian was lank and straight--of the Caucasian, flowing, wavy, or curled--and of the Negro, crisped, frizzled, spiral, and woolly. The quality of each of these specific species of pile, is dependent for its particular form upon certain constitutional elementary causes. The necessary physiology of a cylindrical hair is lankness and straightness; that of the oval renders it imperative that it shall wave, or curl, or flow, in its course; but the eccentrically elliptical hair, in obedience to the law of its nature, is crisped, spiral, or woolly. In exposing these several forms of pile, to a chemical and mechanical experiment under the microscope, for the purpose of testing the relative properties of ductility
and elasticity in their fibres, it was found that these forces in the cylindrical hair were equal on all sides, and, therefore, naturally straight and lank; whereas, in the oval hair, the shrinking and stretching powers proved unequal--the fibres on the two flattened sides of the filament being more powerful than those on the ellipsoid, and, consequently, of a curving tendency in its path. But when thus tested, the pile of the negro still retained, in the same manner, its spiral and woolly characteristic.
The inclination of pile is entirely due "to the angle which the root of the hair bears to the skin of the animal in which it is imbedded. The roots both of cylindrical and oval pile have an oblique angle of inclination, for which reason those hairs do not grow out of the epidermis at a right angle thereto, but incline in a determinate manner; while the roots of wool, which is eccentrically elliptical or flat, on the contrary, lie in the dermis perpendicularly, and hence the filaments pierce the epidermis at right angles thereto." Now, this latter prominent and specific difference is, among all mankind, the peculiarly exclusive characteristic of the negro race. Some tribes of Papuas, inhabiting the north coast of Guinea, called "Mopheads," are said by Dr. Prichard to have "a bushy mass of half-woolly hair," but it is now notorious that these are a bastard genus, begotten of an amalgamation of Malays and negroes.
All pile is furnished by nature with a particular seat of color. We have seen above that the characteristic of the Caucasian's skin is discoloration, whereas the negro is furnished with an additional membrane, or cellular substances, totally foreign to the organism of the former, but which is the instrument of coloration in the
latter. The same diversity, but in another aspect, presents itself in the physiology of pile. In addition to its cortex (cover) and intermediate fibres, the hair of the white man has a complicated and delicately constructed canal, through which this coloring matter flows; and where color even fails, the canal remains, but void of the coloring substance. The wool of the negro, however, has no such canal. The coloring matter here, when present, permeates the cortex and its intermediate fibres--forming part and parcel of the filament. Thus, in the skin of the Caucasian we find no organ of coloration, but in that of the negro we find a specific membrane for that purpose. On the contrary, the hair of the white man is furnished with a canal, which is the medium of its coloring qualities; of this machinery, however, the wool of the negro is altogether devoid. Consequently, "the hair of the white man is perfect, having not only the apparatus found in other pile, but one exclusively belonging to itself--a central canal for the conveyance of coloring matter;" it is oval in shape, in its direction curling or flowing, and acutely angled out of the epidermis, from which it springs. The wool of the negro is the direct opposite, being an imperfect pile, having no central canal, flat in shape, and issuing out of the dermis, through the surface of the epidermis, in right angle. When this pile is subjected to a microscopical examination, its surface, or angles, present serrations such as are found upon the wool of sheep. These scales in the Caucasian are rudimentary, but on the hair of the negro, they are perfect. On the pile of the former, they are comparatively few in number and of smooth surface, rounded points, and closely embracing the shaft. On the hair of the negro, they are prominent,
numerous, and transparent; and this species of pile will felt, while that of the white man will not. Hence, the conclusions arrived at are: that hair and wool are not the same integuments; that hair, properly so called, is cylindrical or oval in shape, and wool eccentrically elliptical or flat; that the direction of the former is straight, flowing, or curling, but that of the latter crisped, or spirally frizzled; that hair issues out of the epidermis at an acute angle, while wool emerges out of the dermis at a right angle; that the coloring matter of hair is provided with a central canal, and that of wool disseminated throughout the cortex and its intermediate fibres; that the scales on hair are comparatively few in number, smooth, less pointed, and more closely embracing the shaft, while in wool they are numerous, rough, pointed, and do not intimately embrace the shaft; that hair will not felt, but wool will; finally, that the covering of the negro's head will felt and is wool; and, therefore, that he is of a different type of mankind from the latter, and by no means children of one common progenitor.
We have now demonstrated that
the negro is an inferior being--that he is not of the same origin, organism,
moral or intellectual faculties as the white man--and that to insist, in
defiance of historic and scientific evidences, that he is descended from the
same parents that we are, is the most false and insulting blasphemy against
Nature and truth. Neither can the matter be mended by amalgamation.* * All animated nature scorns
amalgamation. The beasts of the forest--the birds of the air--the fishes of the
sea--all keep, as a general rule, their own tribes, or species, free from this
sin against the great kosmos of a superintending Providence, unless
thwarted by the ingenious and artificial contrivances and experiments of
man.
Nature ever indignantly rejects, or
revenges, all artificial interferences with the wisdom, unity, and harmony of her immutable laws. The Spaniards, who settled in Mexico and Central America, were noble Caucasians--were the descendants of the Cid, Ponce de Leon, and Bernardo del Carpio--descendants of the conquerors of Granada and the victors of Lepanto--children of those daring or chivalrous adventurers, who wrested from Montezuma his fair dominions and golden palaces, and sought to explore the Mississippi and Missouri to their sources--yet where, and what, are their Mexican progeny of to-day? They married and intermarried with the natives; amalgamation was gradually followed by decay and emasculation; and for the noble Pe