FIG. I.—Page 135. FIG. II.—Page 136. FIG. III.—Page 136. FIG. IV.—Page 136. The Project Gutenberg EBook of Negroes and Negro "Slavery:" the first an inferior race: the latter its normal cond, by J. H. Van Evrie This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: Negroes and Negro "Slavery:" the first an inferior race: the latter its normal condition. Author: J. H. Van Evrie Release Date: December 31, 2019 [EBook #61063] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEGROES AND NEGRO "SLAVERY:" *** Produced by Richard Tonsing, deaurider, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) NEGROES AND NEGRO “SLAVERY:” THE FIRST AN INFERIOR RACE: THE LATTER ITS NORMAL CONDITION. BY J. H. VAN EVRIE, M.D. “To our reproach it must be said, that, though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it, therefore, as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a different race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of mind and body.”—THOMAS JEFFERSON in his “Notes on Virginia.” NEW YORK: VAN EVRIE, HORTON & CO., 162 NASSAU STREET. 1861. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by JOHN H. VAN EVRIE, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. STEREOTYPED BY Smith & McDougal, 82 & 84 Beekman-st. PREFACE. Since the first edition of this work was issued, startling and deplorable events have occurred. The great “Anti-Slavery” delusion, that originated with European monarchists more than fifty years ago, has culminated in disunion and civil war, as its authors always predicted it would. A party strongly imbued with the false theories and absurd assumptions of British writers and abolition societies, is in possession of the Federal Government, which it stands pledged to use to reduce its assumptions to practice. It holds that the negro, except in color, is a man like themselves, and naturally entitled to the same liberty—that to deny him this liberty, is to enslave him—that, therefore, Southern society is wrong, and should be revolutionized, and it avows it to be its mission to accomplish this—to institute a policy that shall finally abolish or destroy the supremacy of the white man, and secure “impartial freedom” for negroes! To this the South replies, that this government was created for white men alone, and their posterity, as declared in the preamble to the Constitution—that the Supreme Court has recently declared the same great truth —that, seizing the government by a mere sectional vote, and placing it in distinct conflict with the social order of the South, with the avowed purpose of penning up its negro population, in order to bring about some day the extinction or overthrow of the existing condition, is, therefore, an overthrow of the Constitution—that the object avowed necessarily involves their future destruction, and to save themselves from the wild delusion and malignant fanaticism of the North, they are forced, in self- defense, to withdraw from the Union, hitherto, or until this hostile and dangerous party entered the field, so beneficial to all sections of the country. So stands the case between the sections. If the “anti-slavery” party was based on truth—if the negro, except in color, was a man like ourselves—if social subordination of this negro was wrong, and the four millions of these people at the South entitled to the same liberty as ourselves—and if the men who made this government designed it to include the inferior races of this continent, and it were really beneficial to equalize and fraternize with these negroes, then, though it may be doubted, if using the common government to bring it about were proper, the end in view would be so beneficent, and such a transcendent act of justice to these assumed slaves, that all honest, earnest, and patriotic citizens should promptly sustain the party now striving to accomplish it. But, on the contrary, if this party is based on a stupendous falsehood—if the negro is a different and inferior being, and in his normal condition at the South—and if the men who made this government, designed it for white men alone—then the length and breadth and width and depth of the “anti-slavery” delusion, and the crime of the “anti-slavery” party, which has broken up the Union in a blind crusade after negro freedom, will be fully comprehended by the American people. The whole mighty question, therefore, with all its vast and boundless consequences, hinges on the apparently simple question of fact—is the negro, except in color, a man like ourselves, and therefore naturally entitled to the same liberty? It is absolutely certain that neither the liberty, the rights, nor the interests of one single northern citizen is involved; nothing whatever but a blind and foolish theory of “negro slavery” which is attempted to be forced on the South. If the people of the two great sections of the country could change places, the vast “anti-slavery” delusion would be exploded in sixty days. But as this is impossible, the next best thing is to explain the actual condition of things in the South to the northern mind. This great work the author has undertaken, not to defend an imaginary slavery, for it needs no defense, but to explain the social order—to demonstrate to the senses, as well as the reason, that the negro is a different and subordinate being, and in his normal condition at the South; and thus to show the enormous and fathomless folly, crime, and impiety wrapped up in the great “anti-slavery” delusion of the day. The former edition of this work was put to press so hurriedly, that it contained many errors, but the present one has been carefully revised; and, moreover, the introductory chapter has been rewritten, in order to present a more distinct history of the origin and progress of the great British “anti-slavery” imposture which is now working out its legitimate and designed purpose in the destruction of the American Union. In conclusion, the author begs to say, that mere literary display or fine writing is with him quite a subordinate consideration. He only desires to be understood, and, that the grand and momentous truths described in this book shall be clearly comprehended by the masses, with the confident assurance that when they come to understand that their own liberty, welfare, and prosperity are all hazarded in a blind crusade after that which, could it be accomplished, would be the greatest calamity ever inflicted on a civilized people, the causeless and senseless, but frightful sectional conflict now raging will be speedily terminated by the universal uprising of the northern masses in favor of a government of WHITE MEN, and UNION with the South. v vi vii CONTENTS. PART I. CHAPTER I. CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. Page European Misconception of the Negro—Monarchical Hostility to American Institutions—Imposture or Delusion of Wilberforce—False Issue of a Single Human Race—Dictation of European Writers— Subserviency of the American Mind 17 CHAPTER II. LAWS OF ORGANIZATION. Divisions of the Organic World—Each Form of Being an Independent Creation—Harmony in the Economy of Animal Life—The Races specifically different from each other—A Single Species Impossible—Fallacies of Linnæus and other European Naturalists—Ignorance of Educated Men on this Subject 34 CHAPTER III. THE HUMAN CREATION. Subdivisions of Mankind—The Different Races of Men—Characteristics of each—The Caucasian—The Mongolian—The Malay—The Aboriginal American—Caucasian Remains in Mexico—The Esquimaux—The Negro Race; its Origin; Observations of Livingston, Garth, and others—Hybrids confounded with the Typical Negro—The Dogma of a Single Race—Mankind Created in Groups—The Bible Aspect of the Question—Inconsistency of the Advocates of the Single Race Theory 44 CHAPTER IV. HISTORICAL OUTLINE. Origin of the Caucasian Race—Bible Accounts—Invasion of Egypt by the Master Race—The Caucasians in Assyria, Persia, and Babylon—Origin of the Mongolians—The Use of the Term “Barbarian”—The History of the Greeks—Not the Authors of Political Liberty—Athens not a Democracy—The Roman Republic and Empire—Citizenship a Privilege, not a Right—The Advent of Christianity the Advent of Democracy—The Dark Ages—The Races that Figured in that Era—The Crusades—The Asiatic Invasion—The Carthaginians— The Arabs—The Downfall of the Roman Empire—The Reformation—All the Numerous Varieties of the White Race Subsiding into Three Well-known Families, the Celtic, the Teutonic and Sclavonic—General Review—The Intellectual Powers of the White Race the same in all Ages—Knowledge only Progressive— The Inferior Races Incapable of Acquiring and Transmitting Knowledge—The Chinese no Exception 63 CHAPTER V. COLOR. The Cause of Color Unknown—The Caucasian Color the Index of the Character; the Contrary the Case with the Negro Race—The Black Complexion a Sign of Inferiority—Misuse of the term “Colored Man” 88 CHAPTER VI. FIGURE. Differences in Form—The Negro Incapable of Standing Upright—Other Marks of Inferiority—The Relative Approximation of the Ourang-Outang to the Negro and the Caucasian 92 ix x CHAPTER VII. THE HAIR. The Hair of the Caucasian and Negro Contrasted—The Beard of the Caucasian indicative of Superiority—The Negro and other Races have not the Flowing Beard of the Caucasian 98 CHAPTER VIII. THE FEATURES. The Features the True Reflex of the Inner Nature—Variations of Size, Outlines, Complexion, etc., of the Caucasian Race—Resemblance of Negroes to each other in Size and Appearance—Inability of the Negro Features to express the Emotional Feelings peculiar to the Caucasian, etc., etc. 105 CHAPTER IX. LANGUAGE. Divided into two Portions—First Capacity of Expression—Second Arrangement into Parts of Speech—All Beings have a Language, each Specific and in Accordance with its Organism—The Vocal Organs of the Negro—No Negro can Speak the Language of the White Man Correctly—Negroes can be Distinguished by their Voices—A Negro Musical Artist Unknown—Musical Genius Requires a Brain of Corresponding Complexity—The Negro’s Love of Music merely Sensuous, and Manifested by the Feet as much as by the Brain 109 CHAPTER X. THE SENSES. Organism of the Senses—Their Strength and Acuteness in Inferior Races—The Cause of Negro Indolence Explained—The Necessity of Governing the Negro—Incapacity of the “Free Negro” to Produce Sufficient for his own Support—His Ultimate Extinction Simply a Question of Time—Incapacity of the Negro for the Higher Branches of Mechanism—Effect of Flogging on the Negro Senses, etc., etc. 115 CHAPTER XI. THE BRAIN. Erroneous Impressions Relative to the Brain—What Constitutes the Brain—Its Size the True Test of Intelligence—General Uniformity of the Negro Brain—Its Correspondence with the Body—Its Size, when Compared with that of the White Man—The Folly and Impiety of Attempting to Equalize those whom God has made Unequal, etc. 123 CHAPTER XII. GENERAL SUMMARY. Recapitulation and Review of the Outward Characteristics of the Negro—Color, etc., seen to be only a Single Fact out of the Millions of Facts separating Races—Inner Qualities necessarily Correspondent with the Outward ones—Conclusion 132 PART II. CHAPTER XIII. xi xii HYBRIDISM. The Laws of Interunion fully Explained—A fixed and well-defined Limit to Mulattoism—Prostitution in the North, and Mulattoism in the South—Amalgamation and its Consequences—The Physiological Laws governing Mulattoism and Mongrelism—Condition of the Negro in Jamaica, Hayti, etc.—The Negro, when Isolated, certain to Relapse into his Original Barbarism—Intellectual Difference between Negroes and Mulattoes—The Viciousness and Cowardice of the Mongrel—His Low Grade of Vitality, etc., etc. 143 CHAPTER XIV. THE “SLAVE TRADE,” OR THE IMPORTATION OF NEGROES. General Review of the Subject—The Absurdity of Attempting to Civilize Africa—The Adaptability of the Negro to Tropical Labor—Las Casas and the Negroes and Indians—How the Spanish Government conducted “the Slave Trade”—Its Inhumanity, as practiced by the Dutch and English—The Benefits of the Original “Slave Trade”—The Reason why England is so Anxious to Abolish “Slavery,” etc., etc. 168 CHAPTER XV. NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO. The Law of Adaptation—The Natural Relation of Men to Animals, of Parents to Offspring, of Men of the Same Species to Each Other—American Institutions based on the Natural Relations, or the Natural Equality of the Race—Political Equality the Normal Order of the White Man—Disregard of the Natural Relations in Europe—Repression of the Natural Order—Result of the Employment of Force to Preserve the Existing Condition—Popular Ignorance of the Relations of Races—Juxtaposition of White Men and Negroes— Natural Inferiority and Social Subordination of the latter—The Natural, or Uneducated Negro of Africa, compared with the Civilized Negro of America—Free Negroism a Social Disease—Social Subordination, with the Protection of the White Man, the Normal Condition of the Negro 179 CHAPTER XVI. CHATTELISM. Historic Slavery—Its Origin—Its Character—All White People—Often Highly Educated Men—Their Abject Dependence on the Will or Caprice of the Owner—Their Incapacity to Propagate Themselves—Their Restoration to Citizenship, etc.—Nothing whatever in Common with the Social Subordination of Negroes in our Time—The Industrial Capacity of the Negro all that the Master owns—Care and Kindness of the Master —Rapid Increase of the Negro Population when in their Normal Condition, etc. 204 CHAPTER XVII. EDUCATION OF NEGROES. The Education of the Negro should be in Harmony with his Wants and Mental Capacity—The Folly of Attempting to Educate the Negro as we do the Caucasian—The Negro always a Child in Intellect—The Duty of the Master to set his “Slave” a Good Example—The Imitative Faculty of the Negro mistaken for Intelligence, etc. 215 CHAPTER XVIII. THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS. Love of the Caucasian Mother for her Offspring—Relative Capacity of White and Black Children—The Negress, after a certain period, loses all Love for, or Interest in, her Offspring—Affection for his Master the Strongest Feeling of which the Negro is capable, etc., etc. 223 CHAPTER XIX. MARRIAGE. xiii xiv The Idea that Marriage does not Exist among “Slaves” Repugnant to the Northern Mind—Its Effect on Increasing the Anti-Slavery Delusion—New England Women—Their Domestic Education Admirable— Their Mistake as to the Facts of Marriage at the South—Their Southern Sisters—What is Marriage?—Not Simply a Civil Contract—A Natural Relation—The Love of Negroes Impulsive and Capricious 233 CHAPTER XX. CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION. How the Earth is Divided—Its Fauna and Flora—All Organized Beings have their Centres of Existence peculiar to Themselves—No such thing as the Creation of the same Species in Different Centres of Life—The more elevated the Organism, the less subject to External Circumstances—Incapacity of the Negro to Live in Northern Latitudes—Their Miserable Condition and Rapid Extinction in Canada—Industrial Adaptation of the Caucasian to Intemperate Latitudes—Why white Labor is worth more than that of the Negro at the North—Industrial Adaptation of the Negro to Tropical and Tropicoid Products—Absurdity of the Ordinance of 1787—The Acquisition of Southern Territory always saves the North from so-called Negro Slavery—“Extension of Slavery” vital to both White and Black—Absolute Necessity of Negro Labor in the Tropics—Production, and therefore Civilization, otherwise Impossible 245 CHAPTER XXI. NORTH AND SOUTH—THE ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF GOVERNMENT. The Progenitors of our so-called Slaves, though mainly Imported at the North, ultimately found their way South—Difference between the Early Colonists of both Sections of the Country—Virginia Mainly Settled by the Cavaliers—The Southern Leaders the Originators and Upholders of our Present System of Government —The Presence of the Negro, in his Natural Condition, conducive to the Equality of White Men—The Harmony of Southern Society—The Interests of “Slaveholder” and “Non-Slaveholder,” and of Master and “Slave” are Indivisible—The Presence of the Negro in his Normal Condition the Happiest Event in Human Affairs, etc. 270 CHAPTER XXII. THE ALLIANCE OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS. The Antagonism of Ideas after the Constitution was formed—The Two Opposing Leaders, Hamilton and Jefferson, in Washington’s Cabinet—Hamilton’s Financial Policy Wrong—The British System—The Alien and Sedition Laws—British “Liberty”—Conflict of Labor and Capital—The Producing Classes at the North without Leaders—The Wealth and Power in the hands of the Federalists—At the South the Slaveholders were Producers—Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration that they were the Allies of the Northern Laborers True—The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 the True Exposition of our Federal System—Civil Revolution of 1800 293 CHAPTER XXIII. THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO. The Number of Negroes on this Continent—The “Free” Negro—Impossibility of his Living out the Life of the White Man—The “Free” Negroes of Virginia and Maryland—The Drawback of the “Free” Negro Population —Its Dangerous Elements—Its Immoral Character—Its Tax on the Laboring Classes—Its Ultimate Extinction—Slavery in Brazil and Cuba—The White Man Degraded there—Social Danger—Tropical Civilization—Intellect of the White Man, and the Labor of the Negro Essential to it—The Condition of Jamaica—White Blood being Extinguished—The Tendency of the British System to Force Negroes to a Forbidden Level with White Men—Negro Officials—Knighting a Negro—The Effect of Legal and Social Equality—The Extinction of the White Race in the West Indies only a Question of Time—The Negro Returning to Savagism—Hayti—Terrible Results of the British Anti-Slavery Policy—An African Heathenism in America 309 CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION. xv xvi Review of the Subject—Juxtaposition with the Subordinate Race has Originated New Ideas in the Master Race, and Rendered Republican Liberty Practicable—Beneficent Union of Capital and Labor in the South— A Southern Majority and Northern Minority have Acquired all the Territory, Fought all the Battles, and Conducted the Nation in every Step of its Growth, since its Foundation to the Present Time—The Acquisition of the Gulf States has Secured Equal Rights to the Masses at the North—Final Acquisition of Cuba, Central America, etc., Essential to the National Development—Extension of so-called Slavery a Vital Law of National Existence, and Absolutely Essential to American Civilization 336 CHAPTER I. CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION. “American slavery,” though having no existence in fact, is a phrase which, for the last forty years, has been oftener heard than American democracy; yet the latter is one of the great powers of the earth, and destined, in the course of time, to revolutionize the world. But in this prominence of an abstraction, and indifference, or apparent indifference, to the grandest fact of modern times, is witnessed the wide- spread and almost despotic influence of the European over the American mind. What is here termed “American slavery,” is the status of the negro in American society—the social relation of the negro to the white man—which, being in accord with the natural relations of the races, springs spontaneously from the necessities of human society. The white citizen is superior, the negro inferior; and, therefore, whenever or wherever they happen to be in juxtaposition, the human law should accord, as it does accord in the South, with these relations thus inherent in their organizations, and thus fixed forever by the hand of God. And were America isolated from Europe—did that sea of fire, which Mr. Jefferson once wished for, really divide the Old World and the New, and thus separate us from the mental obliquities and moral perversities of the former—then any other relation than that now common to the South, would be an impossible conception to the American mind. The words “slave” and “slavery” were scarcely heard a hundred years ago, as indeed they will be unheard a hundred years hence; and prior to the Revolution of 1776, the people of America were quite unconscious of that mighty “evil,” now so oppressive to many otherwise sensible minds, though this imaginary slavery then spread over the whole continent. All new communities are distinguished by a certain advance in civilization over the elder ones, however rude the former may appear in some respects, or whatever may be the over-refinement, or seeming refinement, of the latter. Truth lives forever—“the eternal years of God are hers;” and all real knowledge, all true progress made by the race, is treasured up, and carried with it in all its wanderings, whether from the Nile to the Tiber, or from the Thames to the Hudson; while the errors, the foolish traditions and vicious habits, mental and moral, that gather about it, and weaken, and sometimes so overlie and conceal the truth as to render it useless, are left behind. We see this even in our own energetic and progressive society. The younger States are the most enlightened States; and the West, whatever may be its wants, or supposed wants among a certain class, is really more civilized than the East. That community which is the most prosperous—where there is the greatest amount of happiness—where there is relatively the greatest number of independent citizens—is per se and of necessity the most civilized; for the end of existence, the object of the All-wise and beneficent Creator—happiness for His creatures—is here most fully accomplished. And when we contemplate the history of this continent, and compare the character of the early colonists, their history, and their influence over the present condition of things, it will be found that they remained stationary in exact proportion as they clung to the ideas and habitudes of the Old World; or advanced towards a better and higher condition just as they cast off these influences, and lived in natural accord with the circumstances that surrounded them. The Spanish conquerors were often the pets and favorites of the court, and always the faithful sons of the Church, and brought with them the pomps and vanities of the former, and the rigid ecclesiastical observances of the latter. When Cortez and Pizzaro took possession of a province, they pompously paraded the titles and dignities of the emperor before the wondering savages, and added vast multitudes of “Christian converts” to “Holy Church” with a zeal and fervor that the Beechers and Cheevers of our times might envy, but surely could not equal. The English colonists, on the contrary, were almost all disaffected, or at all events, were charged with disaffection to the mother country. This, it is true, was masked under religious beliefs and scruples of conscience, but was none the less hostile to the political order under which they had been persecuted and suffered so long. As soon, therefore, as they found themselves in a New World, and relieved from the tyranny of the Old, they abandoned, to a great extent, the forms, as they already had abandoned many of the ideas, of the latter. They recognized the nominal sovereignty of the mother country, or rather of the Crown; but from the landing at Jamestown, as well as at Plymouth, all the British colonists really governed themselves, made their own laws, provided for their own safety, and, except the governor, and occasionally some subordinate officials, elected their own rulers. The result was a corresponding prosperity; for not only did the discipline of self-reliance strengthen the character, and call out a higher phase of citizenship among the English colonists, but in casting off the habitudes of the old societies, and adopting those that were suited to the circumstances surrounding them, they soon exhibited a striking contrast to those of Spain and of other European powers, who clung to the ideas and habits of Europe. But this drawback on American progress—this clinging to the habitudes of the Old World, which kept the Spanish and French colonies in abject submission to the mother country, and which England, at a later period, sought to force on her colonies—was not the sole embarrassment in the progress of the colonists. They were confronted by wild and ferocious savages, who disputed every step of the white European; and though, previous to the independence of the colonies, the mother country united with the latter against the former, from the breaking out of hostilities in 1776 to the close of the War of 1812 the interests of monarchy and savagism may be said to have been inseparable, and to have formed a common barrier against the march of republicanism. Indeed, it is a truth, attested by the whole history of the past, and equally so by the circumstances of the present, that the subordinate races of this continent—the Indian, Negro, Mongrel, etc.—constitute the material, the very stock in trade, of European monarchists, to embarrass the progress of American institutions; and in every instance where we have been engaged in Indian wars, that portion of our people who, in their ignorance and blindness, have condemned the course of their own government, have been the unconscious instruments of the enemies of their country, and in their sickly sentimentality and folly, they have sought to obstruct the 17 18 19 20 progress of American civilization. Monarchy consists in artificial distinctions of kings, nobles, peasants, etc., or it may be defined as the rule of classes of the same race, and, from the inherent necessities of its organization, it is forced to make war on the natural distinction of races. Prior to the breaking out of the American Revolution, there was no necessity for calling in the aid of the Negro or the Indian to crush out the liberty of the white man. The colonists, as has been observed, were practical republicans, and substantially governed themselves; but they had not questioned the European system or theory of monarchism. When they did this, however, in that grand Declaration of Mr. Jefferson, that all men (meaning, of course, his own race) were created free and equal, the British monarchists instinctively and, indeed necessarily, resorted to the means at hand—to the subordinate races of America—to demoralize and break down this immortal truth. An English judge, anticipating the coming rebellion of the Americans, had already ruled that “slavery,” or social subordination of the negro to the white man, was a result of municipal law—a creature of the lex loci; and though this was in language that led vast numbers of people into error, its technical as well as absolute falsehood is apparent, when we remember that no such “law” has ever existed, either now or at any other time, in American history, from the Canadian Lakes to Cape Horn. But it served as a foundation and stand-point for that wide-spread imposture and world-wide delusion which has since so overshadowed the land, and, with the best intentions on their part, so deluded Americans themselves into a blind warfare against the progress, prosperity, and indeed the civilization, of their country and continent. In the seven years’ war waged to crush out the rebellion of the Colonies, England subsidized the savage Indian tribes wherever it was possible to do so; and in the subsequent War of 1812, her agents partially succeeded in combining all the savages on our western border, under Tecumseh, with the design of shutting us out forever from the country west of the Mississippi. The result of this monstrous alliance of European monarchists and American savages to beat back the advancing civilization of the New World, to hold in check, and, if possible, to defeat and overthrow republicanism, has ended in the destruction and almost utter annihilation of the North American Indians. General Jackson’s campaigns in Florida, as well as those of Harrison in the West, and, to a certain extent, even the later Seminole War, all had their origin in the same causes, the open or secret intrigues of British agents, stimulating the savages to resist the onward march of American civilization. Nor was it anything like the former contests of the agents of England and France to enlist the aid of the savages against each other; for, repulsive and iniquitous as it may be for men of the same race to employ subordinate races against their own blood, they were struggling for possession of a continent, and all means, doubtless, seemed legitimate that should give them victory. But in this case it was a war against Americanism—against a new order of political society—against a system based on a principle of utter antagonism to monarchism, and which if permitted to develop its legitimate results, to grow into a new and grander order of civilized society than the world had ever yet witnessed, the rotten and worn- out systems of Europe were doomed to certain and perhaps early overthrow. It is true, the agents employed did not know this—indeed, their European masters were ignorant, perhaps, of the principles involved; but the instinct of self-preservation, the instinct inherent in hostile systems impelled them forward, while the ends to be reached, or the consequences of success, were always too apparent to be mistaken. But their savage instruments were destroyed in the conflict, in the uses to which they were applied by their European allies; and whatever may be the future fate of the Aborigines in Spanish America, the North American Indian is virtually annihilated. A few wild tribes of the West and South- west, whose means for preserving existence are every day growing less, still remain, and some remnants of semi-civilized tribes, which are perishing even more rapidly than the former, are to be found on our Western frontier; but the time is not distant, perhaps, when they will be wholly and absolutely extinct. What might have been, it is useless to conjecture; but the notion of a certain class of sentimentalists among us, that we have done the Indian great wrong, and that, had we treated him with kindness and justice, he might have become civilized, and a part of our permanent population, of course, is absurd; for it is founded on that foolish dogma of a single race, which Europe has fastened on the American mind, and which supposes the Indian, as the Negro, etc., to have the same nature as themselves. Nor is the notion of others, that the Indian is incapable of civilization, and therefore destined to give way before the advance of the white man, worthy of any consideration; for this involves the paradox of being created without a purpose, a supposition not to be entertained a moment; for the most insignificant beings in the lowest forms of organic life have their uses, and the human creature, surely, was not created in vain. The simple truth is, that we need to know what the Indian is in fact, his true nature and true relations to our own race, and then, as we have done in the case of the Negro, adapt the social and governmental machinery to the wants of both races. But this employment and consequent destruction of the Indians of America by the monarchists of Europe, though often inflicting great temporary evil on our border settlements, did not retard our progress in the least, nor did England, to any appreciable extent, succeed in her objects. The theory or dogma of a single race, which her writers and publicists had set up about the time of the Revolution, produced, however, immense practical results both in Europe and America. The doctrines of the American Revolution, as was foreseen by British statesmen, soon became universally accepted in France, and threatened to overturn monarchy all over the Continent, and indeed in England itself. Dr. Johnson, Wilberforce, Pitt, and all the great writers and leaders of England, naturally enough adopted the notion that Indians, Negroes, etc., were men like themselves, except in color, cultivation, etc.; but they were impelled, by the necessities of their system and the preservation of monarchical institutions, to practicalize this theory to the utmost extent in their power, and thus divert the attention of their own oppressed white people from their wrongs, by holding up before them continually the imaginary wrongs of “American slaves.” They said, “It is true, you laborers of Yorkshire and operatives of Birmingham have a hard life, a life of constant toil and privation; but you are free-born Englishmen, and your own masters, and in all England there is not a single slave; while in America, in that so-called land of freedom, where there is no king, or noble, or law of primogeniture, and where, in theory, it is declared that all men are created free and equal, one sixth of the population are slaves, so 21 22 23 24 abject and miserable that they are sold in the public markets, like horses and oxen. What, then, are your oppressions or your wrongs in comparison with those of American slaves? or what are the evils or the injustice of monarchy when contrasted with those dark and damning crimes of American democracy, that thus, in these enlightened times, dooms one sixth of the population to open and undisguised slavery?” Such was the argument of the British writers, and it was unanswerable if it had rested on fact—if the foundation were true, then the inference, of course, was unavoidable. If the so-called American slave was created free and equal with his master, then all that the British writers charged would have been true enough, and American slavery, in comparison with British liberty—or what passed for such in Yorkshire and Birmingham—would have been a wrong, so deep, damning, and fathomless, that no words in our language would be able to express its enormity. How was the poor, ignorant, and helpless laborer, or even his defenders, Fox, Sheridan, and other liberal leaders of the day, to answer this argument? They did not attempt it. They admitted that “American slavery” was all that it was charged to be—that it was a wrong and evil immeasurably greater and more atrocious than any of those which the people of France had risen against, or that the masses in England suffered under; but they hoped that the great principle of the American Revolution was strong enough to overcome this wrong, and in the process of time, to “abolish slavery,” and that liberty would become universal among Americans. Indeed, some of those who had been the most devoted believers in the great American doctrine, both in England and France, were so painfully impressed by the seeming wrong done the negro, that they lost their interest, to a great extent, in the real wrongs of the white man, and devoted all their efforts to the former. Societies were formed in London and Paris, funds contributed, books published, tracts distributed, and extensive arrangements entered into, with the sole purpose of relieving the “American slave” from the fancied wrongs that were heaped on him; and their societies, these “Amis des Noirs,” patronized by Robespierre and other leaders of the people, which were formed in almost every town in France and England, popularized the movement, and so identified the imaginary cause of the negro with that of the European masses, that to this day they doubtless seem inseparable. And even in our own times, we have witnessed the sorry spectacle of English laborers contributing of their wretched pittance to glorify some abolition hero or heroine of the “Uncle Tom” pattern, under the deplorable misconception, of course, that these blind tools of the enemies of liberty were faithful defenders of a common cause, when, in truth, they were vastly more dangerous to that cause than the open and avowed friends of despotism. But this very natural mistake of the friends of freedom in Europe, this ignorance and misconception of the negro nature and relations to the white man, which led Fox in England, and Robespierre in France, to confound the cause of the oppressed multitudes of their own race with the imaginary interests of negrodom, extended and unfortunate as it was and still is, was surpassed by a still more insidious and more extended influence. Wilberforce, who, more than any other man, gave form and direction to the great “anti-slavery” delusion of modern times, was eminently pious—as piety is accepted by a large portion of the religious world. He was an Episcopalian in form, but preeminently a Puritan in practice; and, while doubtless sincere in his belief, and perfectly correct in his religious habits, he was one of the most complete bigots, religious, political, and social, the world ever saw. Belonging to the ruling class, and possessed of a considerable fortune, he believed that his own status was the stand- point, and himself the model, for the government of society, and therefore was as doggedly and bitterly opposed to any change in England, or to any reform in English society, as he was earnest in his efforts to relieve the “sufferings of the slave” in America. In a public career of some forty years, as a member of Parliament, he never failed to record his vote against any increase of popular freedom, or any change that tended to ameliorate the condition of the white masses, and just as steadily and uniformly labored to “elevate” the negro to the status of the English laborer, or, at all events, to favor that final “abolition of slavery,” which he himself was not, however, destined to witness in the British American possessions. But throughout he regarded the question rather as a religious than a political one, and at an early period, in this respect, impressed his own character on it. Identified with the Church, all his notions those of the High Church party—substantially the notions that Archbishop Laud entertained two centuries before— by birth and association connected with the landed aristocracy, and yet distinguished for practical piety, for a zeal and devotion to his religious duties that the most zealous among the Dissenters and Evangelicals might imitate but could not surpass, this was just the man to impress a great movement with his own characteristics, and the “anti-slavery cause” became the cause of religion as well as of liberty with the religious world. Nor was it confined to the “American slave;” it embraced the whole world of heathendom; and a religious crusade sprang up, that finally became more extended, and, in some respects, more permanent, than the great political movement inaugurated by Jefferson a few years before. And if the Father of Lies, Lucifer himself, had plotted a plan or scheme for concealing a great truth, and embarrassing a great cause, he could have accomplished nothing more effective than the movement that Wilberforce inaugurated for the professed benefit of the negro and other subordinate races of mankind, which, masked under the form of religious duty, and appealing to the conscience, the love of proselytism, the enthusiasm, and even the bigotries of the religious world, has, for more than half a century, held in thrall the conscience as well as the reason of Christendom. Robespierre, and other patrons of the Amis des Noirs, could only present a common cause, that “universal liberty” which they declared to be the birthright of all men, and which it were better that every conceivable calamity should happen rather than this “great principle” should perish; but when it became the duty of every Christian man and woman, every follower of Christ and professor of religion, to work and pray for “the deliverance of the slave,” then a power was aroused that nothing could resist, for it became an immediate and sacred duty to labor in this cause. Missionary societies were organized, money contributed by millions both in Europe and America, enthusiastic men and women offered their services, even children were taught to give their pocket-money for a cause so holy as that of redeeming the “slave,” while all this time innumerable multitudes of their own race, their own blood, those whom God had created their equals, and endowed with like capacities, instincts, and wants, and therefore designed for the same happiness as 25 26 27 28 themselves, were left to grovel in midnight darkness and abject misery. It is not intended to sneer at or to indulge in unkind criticism on missionary efforts. On the contrary, it is frankly admitted that they sprang from the sincerest conviction, and were generally pursued with an utter disregard of selfish and mercenary considerations; but in not understanding the diversity of races, these efforts were more likely to do harm than good. A man’s first duties are to his own household; and no amount or extent of benefits conferred on strangers, can excuse him for neglecting the former; and even if the “heathen”—the Negro, Indian, and Sandwich Islander—had been benefited by the efforts of Wilberforce and his followers, the neglect of the ignorant, darkened, and miserable millions of their own race, was a wrong that scarcely has a parallel in history. But they did not benefit the subordinate races, but, on the contrary, assuming them to be beings like themselves, when they were widely different beings, they necessarily injured them; and when it is reflected that they not only neglected the ignorant and degraded multitudes of their own race, but got up a false issue, in order to distract the attention and conceal the wrongs of their own people, then an unequalled crime was committed. The government of England, which is simply an embodiment of the class to which Wilberforce belonged, acted in concert with these religious efforts; and thus we see the leaders of the popular cause in the Old World, Fox and Robespierre, the Church and Aristocracy, all acting together in a common cause, and laboring, in fact, to retard the progress and the liberation of millions upon millions of their own race, under the pretence, and doubtless with many, in the belief, that they were laboring for the benefit of the negro and other subordinate races. The government expended about a thousand millions to crush out American liberty in 1776; but it is quite likely that an almost equal sum, expended for the professed benefit of the negro, has accomplished vastly more than all other things together to protract the liberation of her own masses. It has been estimated that six hundred millions have been expended nominally to put down the slave trade, but in reality to pervert the natural relations of races, and force the subordinate negro to the status of the British laborer. The interest on this enormous sum is annually drawn from the sweat and toil of the English masses; and every hut and cottage in the British Islands is forced to surrender a portion of its daily food, or of the daily earnings of its owner, to pay the interest on money squandered on the negro in America! The amount thus paid, properly expended, would be amply sufficient to give a good English education to the entire laboring class; but that would be an overwhelming calamity to the governing class, who could not retain their power for a single day after the masses were thus enlightened. A few years since, famine and pestilence swept over Ireland, carrying off some three millions of the Irish people, all of whom might have been saved if the annual amount wasted on negroes in America had been applied to this beneficent and legitimate purpose. Indeed, it is quite possible that if the money wrung from the sweat and toil of Irishmen alone, for the pretended benefit of the negro, had been appropriated to the relief of the suffering multitudes of that unhappy people, few would really have perished. The mortgage on the bodies and souls of future generations of British laborers, for the avowed purpose of “doing good” to the negro, enormous as the amount may be—and it has been estimated as high as one thousand million dollars—is only a portion of the vast waste and wholesale destruction of property involved in the British Free Negro policy, or so-called schemes of philanthropy. Farms and plantations in Jamaica and other islands, valued at fifty thousand pounds prior to the “emancipation,” were afterward sold with difficulty at ten and even five thousand pounds; and indeed extensive districts were abandoned by their unfortunate owners. An infamous system of fraud and inhumanity, practiced of late years on the ignorant and simple Chinese and other Asiatics, has enabled some planters to recover and restore their wasted and plundered estates; and the vile hypocrites who filled the world with their doleful lamentations over the sorrows of Africa, not only wink at this infinitely greater wrong practiced on Asiatics, but resort to the effects attending it, as a proof that emancipation has not ruined these beautiful islands! Could audacity and hypocrisy surpass, or did they ever surpass, this shameless fraud? But this new and vastly more atrocious system of “man-stealing,” is transitional and temporary. The Mongol or Asiatic is rapidly worked up and destroyed in the West Indies; and, as no females are introduced, they can never become an essential or permanent element of the population. The negro, forced from his normal condition, and into unnatural relation to the white man, must relapse into his African habits, just as fast as the white element disappears; and as the latter is relatively feeble, the time must soon come, unless we take possession and restore the natural order, when civilization itself will utterly perish, and the great heart of the continent be surrendered to African savagism! The eternal and immovable laws fixed forever in the heart and organism of things, can not be changed or modified by human folly, fraud, or power; and therefore the climate, the soil, the products, and the means that the Almighty has ordained shall be used to make them tributary to human welfare, have their fixed and everlasting relations since time began. The brain of the white man and the muscles of the negro, the mind of the superior and the body of the inferior race, in natural relation to each other, are the vital principles of tropical civilization, without which it is as impossible that civilization should exist in the great centre of the continent, as that vegetation should spring from granite, or animals exist without atmospheric air; and, therefore, thrusting the negro from his natural sphere into unnatural relations with the white man, necessarily destroys the latter, and drives the other into his inherent and original Africanism. The delusion, the folly, or the fraud of Wilberforce and his associates, in presenting a false issue to their own wronged and oppressed millions, and thus diverting their attention from their own oppressions to the imaginary sufferings of negroes and other subordinate races, is so transcendent, its magnitude so enormous, that we have no terms in our language that can express it; but great and indeed awful as may be this wrong on the white man, it is in some respects really surpassed by the evils, if not the wrongs, inflicted on the negro. More than one million of negroes are believed to have perished, through the means resorted to to suppress the slave trade; and now it is admitted that those attempts have not 29 30 31