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26 chapters
NEGROES AND NEGRO “SLAVERY:” THE FIRST AN INFERIOR RACE: THE LATTER ITS NORMAL CONDITION.
NEGROES AND NEGRO “SLAVERY:” THE FIRST AN INFERIOR RACE: THE LATTER ITS NORMAL CONDITION.
“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.”...
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PREFACE.
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
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CHAPTER I. CAUSES OF POPULAR DELUSION.
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
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CHAPTER II. GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION.
CHAPTER II. GENERAL LAWS OF ORGANIZATION.
The organic world is separated into two great divisions, animal and vegetable, or into animate and inanimate beings. In regard to the vegetable kingdom, as it is termed, it is not necessary to say a word; those desirous of obtaining a thorough knowledge of animal life, however, had better begin their studies with the more elementary and simple forms of vegetable being. Many persons suppose that the whole animate existence is linked together by connecting or continuous gradations. In a certain se
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CHAPTER III. THE HUMAN CREATION.
CHAPTER III. THE HUMAN CREATION.
The human creation, like all other families or forms of being, is composed of a genus, which includes some half dozen or more species. It has been the fashion to call these permanent varieties, and almost every writer on ethnology has made his own classification, or rather has created what number he pleased of these “imaginary varieties.” Agassiz, unquestionably the greatest of American naturalists, but unfortunately not much of a physiologist, and therefore unprepared to deal with the higher tr
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CHAPTER IV. HISTORICAL SUMMARY.
CHAPTER IV. HISTORICAL SUMMARY.
The white or Caucasian is the only historic race—the race which is alone capable of those mental manifestations which, written or unwritten, leave a permanent impression behind. What was its first or earliest condition upon the earth? This, except the meagre account given by Moses, is unknown, nor is it of much importance that it should be known, for though it never was nor could be savage or barbarous, as these terms are understood in modern times, still its intellectual acquisitions were doubt
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CHAPTER V. COLOR.
CHAPTER V. COLOR.
Anatomists and physiologists have labored very earnestly to account for or to show the “cause” of color, not of the Negro alone, but in the case of our own race. They have generally supposed that the pigmentum nigrum , a substance lying immediately beneath the outward skin, or cuticle, constituted that cause, and therefore the complexion was fair or dark, blonde or brunette, just as the “coloring” matter might happen to be dark or otherwise. This, in a sense, is doubtless true, but to speak of i
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CHAPTER VI. FIGURE.
CHAPTER VI. FIGURE.
To consider and properly contrast the attitude or the general outline of the negro form with that of the Caucasian, needs a large space to do the subject justice. But a few brief points are sufficient to grasp its essential features and enable every one to add or to fill up the details from his own experience. Cuvier, the great French zoologist, it is said might pick up a bone of any kind, however minute, in the deserts of Arabia, and from this alone determine the species, genus, and class to wh
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CHAPTER VII. THE HAIR.
CHAPTER VII. THE HAIR.
Next to color, there is nothing so palpable to the sense as the hair, or nothing that reveals the specific difference of race so unmistakably as the natural covering of the head. The hair of the Caucasian is a graceful and imposing feature or quality, of course in perfect harmony with everything else, but sometimes, and especially in the case of females, it is an attribute of physical beauty more striking and attractive than any other. Its color, golden or sunny brown, and the dazzling hues of b
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CHAPTER VIII. THE FEATURES.
CHAPTER VIII. THE FEATURES.
The features reflect the inner nature, the faculties or specific qualities, and they are distinct or indistinct, developed or undeveloped, as we ascend or descend in the scale of being. In the simpler forms of animal existence, there is close resemblance to vegetable life in this respect; but ascending to the vertebrata, and especially the mammalia, there is a broad distinction between the head and body, and instead of an undefined uniformity pervading the whole exterior surface, the face become
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CHAPTER IX. LANGUAGE.
CHAPTER IX. LANGUAGE.
A few years since, an eminent historian, in a public lecture, discussed the probabilities of a universal language as an instrument of universal history, and as means for the universal civilization of mankind! Another public lecturer discussing this subject, and on a professedly scientific basis, held that language had a miraculous origin, though the period when this supernatural gift was conferred on man was left wholly to the imagination of his audience. Others, and among them Buffon, Pritchard
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CHAPTER X. THE SENSES.
CHAPTER X. THE SENSES.
The senses are those special organisms that connect us with the outer world through which external impressions are received and transmitted to the brain—the great sensorium or centre of the nervous system. They are popularly designated as sight, hearing, smelling, touch, and taste, each having its own peculiar organism; some, as sight, exceedingly elaborate, and others, like taste, quite simple, being little more than a delicate expansion of nervous matter spread upon the tongue and lining the i
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CHAPTER XI. THE BRAIN.
CHAPTER XI. THE BRAIN.
The brain is the seat or the centre of the intellect, in short, the mental organism. The “school men” believed that mind, intellect, the reasoning faculty, whatever we may term it, had no locality or organism, but, on the contrary, was some impalpable, shadowy, unfixed principle that existed as much in the feet or hands as in any other portion of the body. And even Locke and Bacon, while they promulgated the great truths of inductive philosophy, were not sufficiently grounded in its elementary p
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CHAPTER XII. GENERAL SUMMARY.
CHAPTER XII. GENERAL SUMMARY.
In the several preceding chapters, those outward characteristics that specifically distinguish the negro have been briefly considered. It has been shown that color, the hair, the figure, the brain, etc., are simply facts out of many millions of facts that separate the races; that each and all of them are original, invariable, and everlasting, and the exception, or the absence of any of them, or of any of the associated facts not enumerated, at any time, in the case of a single individual or any
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CHAPTER XIII. MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM.
CHAPTER XIII. MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM.
All the generic and specific forms of life are governed by their own peculiar laws of interunion, and hybridism or hybridity is therefore a phenomenon of varying character, having, it is true, certain resemblances in those instances which approach each other, but absolutely different in all cases. Naturalists have sometimes made great blunders in this respect, for they have assumed that hybridism was governed by the same laws in all cases, and therefore sought its application or inferred its pre
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CHAPTER XIV. THE “SLAVE TRADE,” OR THE IMPORTATION OF NEGROES.
CHAPTER XIV. THE “SLAVE TRADE,” OR THE IMPORTATION OF NEGROES.
In the preceding chapters of this work it has been shown that the human family, like all other forms of being, is composed of a certain number of species, all having a general resemblance, but each specifically different from the other—that the Caucasian and Negro are placed by the will of the Almighty Creator at the two extremes of humanity—the former being the most superior and the latter the most inferior of all the known human races; that the physical structure or organization is always and
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CHAPTER XV. NATURAL RELATIONS AND NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO.
CHAPTER XV. NATURAL RELATIONS AND NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO.
There are now between four and five millions of negroes in the United States. They or their descendants must remain forever—for good or evil—an element of our population. What are their natural relations to the whites?—what their normal condition? The Almighty has obviously designed all His creatures—animal as well as human—for wise, beneficent, and useful purposes. In our ignorance of the animal world, we have only domesticated or applied to useful purposes a very small number, the horse, the o
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CHAPTER XVI. CHATTELISM.
CHAPTER XVI. CHATTELISM.
The common European notion (and the American, borrowed from it), regards the American “slave” as a chattel—a thing sold like a horse or dog, and equally the absolute property of his master. Lord Brougham and others have denounced this barbarism, as they have called it, with great bitterness, and the former has declared that it is immoral, abhorrent, and even illegal “for man to hold property in man”—a declaration that might be true enough, perhaps, if negroes were black-white men, as supposed, b
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CHAPTER XVII. EDUCATION OF NEGROES.
CHAPTER XVII. EDUCATION OF NEGROES.
The fact that the negro is a negro, carries with it the inference or the necessity that his education—the cultivation of his faculties, or the development of his intelligence—must be in harmony with itself, and therefore must be an entirely different thing from the education of the Caucasian. The term education, in regard to our own race, has widely different significations. It may be the mere development of the mind, or it may mean, with the cultivation of the intellect, the formation of the ch
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CHAPTER XVIII. THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS.
CHAPTER XVIII. THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS.
The instinct of paternity—the love and care of offspring—is common to all creatures, animal and human, and is indeed necessary to the preservation of their existence. The animal frequently exhibits it more decidedly than the human creature, and however unseemly it may be, we, even our own supremely endowed race, may take a lesson from it. The animal instinct, however, is limited to the mere preservation of the life of its offspring, and the latter, when a certain development is reached, no longe
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CHAPTER XIX. MARRIAGE.
CHAPTER XIX. MARRIAGE.
Nothing, perhaps, is so repugnant to the northern mind as the notion that marriage does not exist among the “slaves” of the South, and the Abolition lecturers have given this subject the most prominent place in their terrible bill of indictment against their southern brethren. The spectacle, or the seeming spectacle, of four millions of human beings living without marriage, without family, without children, with nothing but offspring, shut out, like the brutes that perish, from all the household
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CHAPTER XX. CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION.
CHAPTER XX. CLIMATIC AND INDUSTRIAL ADAPTATION.
The surface of the earth is naturally divided into zones or centres of existence. These great centres of creation have each their Fauna and Flora , their animal and vegetable life peculiar to themselves alone. Geographical writers use these terms, and speak of the temperate, frigid, and torrid zones, etc., as mere designations of certain portions of the earth where the climate is widely varied; but this is very subordinate to the real differences that separate the great centres of organic life.
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CHAPTER XXI. NORTH AND SOUTH.—ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF GOVERNMENT.
CHAPTER XXI. NORTH AND SOUTH.—ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF GOVERNMENT.
Although the progenitors of our so-called slaves were mainly imported at Northern ports, and all of the Northern and Middle States have had, at times, considerable negro populations, the process of transition southward has been so rapid that the Northern communities, or the people of the Northern States, have been but little impressed by them or influenced in their ideas and mental habits by the presence of this widely different and subordinate element of our general population. But when they be
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CHAPTER XXII. THE ALLIANCE OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS.
CHAPTER XXII. THE ALLIANCE OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN PRODUCERS.
In the foregoing chapter it has been shown how “slavery,” or the presence of the negro element in our midst, has given origin to the American idea of democracy—to more expanded and truthful conceptions of our true relations to each other—to mental habits which led Mr. Jefferson to promulgate the grand idea of equality in 1776—to make that great movement a revolution of ideas as well as a war of independence—to render the latter a mere preliminary for ushering in a new political system based on t
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CHAPTER XXIII. THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.
CHAPTER XXIII. THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.
There are something like twelve millions of negroes in America, on the mainland and the adjacent islands—as large a proportion, perhaps, in view of their industrial adaptation, as there are of the Caucasian or dominant race; and, therefore, whatever may be the contingencies or the wants of the future, there would seem to be no necessity now for any further importation of these people. Of the twelve millions, there are between four and five millions in their normal condition at the South. There a
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CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION.
CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION.
It has been shown in the foregoing pages of this work how that providential arrangement of human affairs, in which the negro is placed in natural juxtaposition with the white man, has resulted in the freedom of the latter and the general well-being of both. It has been seen how a subordinate and widely different social element in Virginia and other States, naturally gave origin to new ideas and new modes of thought, which, thrusting aside the mental habits and political notions brought from the
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