Part 3

But a cargo of slaves, on being landed in French St. Domingo, found there, towards the last days of the colony, nearly twenty of their own to one of the white race. They were at once herded with the former. As their immediate overseers were mostly creole Blacks, many of them rarely, except at a distance, saw white people, of whom there were barely enough to conduct the business of the colony. The number of doctors was insufficient. The planters depended on importation rather than personal care to keep up their stock of slaves. This stock was often changed, in consequence of its being worked up. There was a constant renewal of the savage element by slave ships. The new slaves always found in St. Domingo the customs and superstitions they had left in Africa. They added freshness to them, and then all went on together, as nearly as possible, in the old African way. In fact, it might almost have seemed, had it been possible, as if parts of French St. Domingo had been covered with African sod, bearing with it its native life and growth, little disturbed by the transfer. Hence _vaudouxism_, or serpent-worship went on, in full vigor, in spite of law and the police, and, to some extent, cannibalism, up to the very moment when the colony was suddenly blown to atoms by the over-generation of its own wickedness,--the Whites, who worked it, being thereby destroyed, or scattered to distant lands, with all their means and appliances of civilization. And as the Blacks, who remained in possession, shut the door against the return of the Whites, from fear of returning slavery, and yet keep it shut, in consequence of a still remaining vague jealousy, thus barring out foreign improvements, it is not surprising that the superstitious and barbarous usages of St. Domingo at this day prevail, to no small degree, in Hayti. The towns around the coast, where a few white merchants and the educated mulattoes reside, may be considered as tufts of civilization, and the savage traits inseparable from dense slavery have been a good deal softened down among the country people. But we might as reasonably expect to find an advanced state of civilization in the neighborhood of the Portuguese trading settlements on the west coast of Africa as in the interior of Hayti. For want of a proper knowledge of these facts, the non-civilization of Hayti has always been a thorn in the side of abolitionists, and from the same cause, the North generally, during the first half of the late war, was constantly looking for a second edition of the "Horrors of St. Domingo" in the South. But the freedmen of the South have no more in common with the insurrectionary slaves of 1791, in St. Domingo, than any other humanized people have with savages. It is fair to admit that this superior moral and physical condition of our southern Blacks over those of St. Domingo is due, in some degree, to difference of race in the masters. The descendants of French Protestants, English Wesleyans and Baptists, and Austrian Salzburgers, and even those resulting from a cross between Cavaliers and convict-servants, were doubtless less inhuman slave-masters than the progeny of buccaneers and _flibustiers_. Still the main difference arose from different degrees of density in slavery. Our southern slaves had the best opportunities to learn by looking on. And the most valuable trait in the negro, and that which will most avail to his salvation as a race, is that, whenever he is within reach of civilization, he silently puts forth a tendril and clasps it.

On the Whites, the most curious effect of dense slavery is that of destroying, or greatly impairing the power of moral vision in all matters relating to Blacks. In this respect, the trial for murder of the Hon. Arthur Hodge, planter and member of His Majesty's Council in the island of Tortola, and there hanged, in 1811, is a psychological study. Along through the years including 1805 and 1808, this gentleman, by cart-whipping at "short quarters," by pouring boiling water down the throat, by burning with hot irons and by dipping in coppers of scalding water, murdered eight of his slaves and one freeman. Tortola is twelve miles long by four broad and at the time in question contained about 6000 inhabitants. These murders were well known to the slave population, when committed, and as testimony afterwards proved, to many of the Whites. But Hodge was not brought to trial till 1811, and then formal complaint against him only reached his brother magistrates through a family quarrel about property. John M'Donough declined to serve on the jury because "the case would make the negroes saucy." Stephen M'Keough, a planter and an important witness, who saw some of these cases of flogging which ended in death, described Mr. Hodge as "a good man, but comical, because he had bad slaves." Both the Attorney General and the presiding Judge, apparently functionaries from England, thought it necessary to go into a set argument to show that killing negro slaves was really murder, and the jury, under the charge, brought Hodge in guilty, but recommended him to mercy. Here was moral blindness produced by an atmosphere of slavery which can only find its physical counterpart in the eyeless fishes bred in the dark waters of the Kentucky cave. Probably no case could be found in our Southern States equal to this in enormity of crime and corresponding absence of moral vision in respect to it, though that of Mrs. Abrahams, of Virginia, with her four murders, and the alacrity with which "all the Richmond lawyers" volunteered in her defence may approach it.

In Pennsylvania the slaves were never more than a sprinkling compared to the free population, slavery never appeared in these dark colors, and it was early declared to be prospectively abolished. And yet this old, unmistakable characteristic of the slaveholder--defect of moral vision where the black man is concerned, is to this day a distinct feature of our society. We are still unable to see clearly the wickedness of denying him the vote and expelling him from the cars; and the same spirit of outrage and murder, which now shocks us by the terrible energy with which it moves the late slaveholders against the freedmen, is at this moment acting in a small, feeble, mean way within ourselves against our own colored population. The difference is one of degree, not of kind. Thus, eighty-six years after the passage of the act for the gradual emancipation of the slaves of Pennsylvania, life enough remains in the old institution, long since supposed extinct, still to disturb the peace of society.

Our fathers made two great mistakes in this matter. First, the process of extinction was to be gradual, which was as if one, instead of a bullet, should give a dose of slow poison to a mad dog and then let him run; and next, it was not only gradual but incomplete. The chain of the slave was broken but not taken off; and any degree of civil disability under which an emancipated slave is left, is just so much slavery left. It not only restrains his movements both of progress and self-defence, but it keeps alive the spirit of oppression in the "master race" as air keeps alive flame. By a natural law, whatever of the slave is left in one race will, while it lasts, always tempt into exercise and encounter a corresponding amount of the slave master in the other. So long as the law degrades a man, his neighbor will degrade him. Whoever can call to mind a celebration of our day of Independence in Philadelphia five and thirty years ago, may remember that the part of the day's exercises which the boys took upon themselves was to stone and club colored people out of Independence Square, because "niggers had nothing to do with the Fourth of July." The fathers of these boys looked on with placid satisfaction, cheerfully and hopefully remarking to each other, how well their sons were learning to perform the duties of free American citizens. Twenty years later and a change might be seen. Colored people--place and occasion the same--were allowed to carry water about among the crowd, without meeting other insult from the thirsty than words of good-natured contempt. This was an improvement. Those whom we formerly drove forth with blows and curses, we had now learned to utilize. Twelve more years go by, and on the Fourth of July we were enlisting our able bodied colored men to fight for us. But we still were mindful of what was due to ourselves, as belonging to the superior race, and when they came back to us, wounded in our defence, we carefully restricted their wives and sisters to the front platform of the cars, when they visited their husbands and brothers at the hospitals. And now to-day, out of sixteen Philadelphia generals and colonels, most of whom are believed to have seen some service in the field, three vote in favor of permitting these returned colored veterans actually to join in the celebration of our great National Anniversary. This is progress, but it is slow, and the causes of the obstruction to it must be sought in the incomplete emancipation of 1780.

But another cause which gives Philadelphia a bad eminence in respect to the treatment of colored people, is the comparatively large numbers of them which she possesses over other northern cities, with the one exception above noted; and this cause seems simply to connect with and form part of another--the fear of amalgamation. This fear greatly disturbs a large portion of our white population. In discussing the car question, an opponent of admission at once urges that it will be a stepping stone to amalgamation. The suggestion that seven disabled colored soldiers might safely be allowed equal privileges in a military hospital with 160 white soldiers, is put aside with the remark that such a rule would countenance amalgamation. The matron, with downcast eyes and timid horror, intimates this objection to the reception, into the same Orphan Home, of little white and colored children, mostly between the ages of four and ten. All this sounds very illogical. Hitherto, there has been little amalgamation of the two races at the North, and as the colored people never make advances to the Whites, that little cannot be increased until the Whites make advances to them. When is this to begin? Let each one answer this question individually. This matter, in its negative aspect, rests entirely within the control of the white population.

The broad distinction, so often pointed out, between political and social equality, is still by many of our people persistently confounded, and perhaps it may be necessary to state it once more. Political equality everybody has the present or prospective right to demand--social equality nobody; for the barrier which separates the two is made up of private door-steps. Each of these, its owner has absolutely at his own command, and no man has a right to prescribe, even by implication, whom he shall permit, or forbid, to pass it. It is not an open question.

But supposing the relations, so long sustained at the North, between the two races, and which the Blacks do not complain of, when unaccompanied with wrongs, were suddenly to cease; and everywhere, North and South, on both sides, impelled by an irrepressible orgasm, they should rush together. There are, in round numbers, 26,000,000 of white and 4,000,000 of colored people in the United States; and after every Black had found a White, there would remain 22,000,000 of Whites still unmated. These, by necessity, would carry on the pure white population, and they might safely be left, without help, to sustain themselves in the struggle of race, against the 8,000,000 of amalgamationists. But here it is asserted, they will receive aid from a distinct source. According to the theory of Doctors Nott and Cartwright, the mixed race rapidly decays, and after three generations dies out. This theory is accepted by those who fear amalgamation, and is often quoted by them, as an argument against the theory of equal rights. They also hate negroes and would be glad to see their numbers less. But pure-blooded negroes, it is generally conceded, possess great vitality of race and are killed off with difficulty. This difficulty, it seems, can be overcome by amalgamation. By this process, in one generation, all these negroes become mulattoes, and this once accomplished, the whole African race is in a fair way to disappear from the land. These advocates for pure white blood have been defeating their own purpose. Let them reverse their policy and encourage, for a time, the amalgamation they have hitherto opposed, and, with patience, they can have a white man's government yet.

This proposition is less extravagant than are these insane and wicked fears of impending amalgamation;--wicked, because they are made the excuse, by the race that has the entire preventive control of the matter, for maltreating colored people and denying them rights which are accorded, without dispute, to every other man and woman in the country.

But these people will never come to such an end as this; and if it is true that amalgamation, here, leads towards it, then here, to any considerable extent, it will never take place. They were never made the valuable element of our population, which they are, simply to die out. The greater part of the work which has yet been done on a large portion of this continent has been done by them, and apparently they ever will be, as they ever have been, absolutely essential to its full development.

This statement does not imply that the slave trade and slavery were right or necessary. The sin was not in the bringing of Africans to America, but in the manner of bringing them. God has established His own fixed laws to govern the movements of peoples, but He permits men to carry them out according to their will. Had men willed to be just and humane, they could have induced Africans to come to this continent as free emigrants; but they were selfish and wicked, and therefore forced them to come as slaves. Slavery has been, and is, destroying itself everywhere; and in this country, the great system of free labor and equal rights which prevails, without qualification, in some of the Northern States, is now being offered, and in spite of all opposition will soon be applied, to every State, north and south. It is not probable that it will stop there. It is believed that the same system is destined, in time, to be extended into our tropics. The so-called Anglo-Saxon race in England colonizes; in the United States it expands. Mr. Disraeli lately pronounced England more an Asiatic than a European power; and the day may come when we shall be as much a power of South America as we now are of North America. We have a means to facilitate future extension into the tropics in an element of our home population, suited to them, which England never possessed in hers; and after this has been received into our body politic, and is thus enabled to develop its powers, it is not easy to resist the conclusion that its destiny is to carry our civilization into these latitudes. The feeble and imperfect nationalities lying to the south of us are apparently but provisional. They are waiting a better system than their own, and higher powers than they possess, to apply it. The time is likely to come when their ability to furnish the products peculiar to their soil will fall short of the wants of the civilized world without; and should this be the case, it will stimulate us to carry thither our enterprise, and with it our laws and institutions. This has been the process by which they have been carried into California, by Whites alone--gold being the lure; but to places farther south our people of color, from their special climatic fitness for it, must assist in being their vehicle; and the two races must go towards the tropics, if at all, together. The African will never leave this country, but he may, in the legitimate pursuit of his own interests and happiness, assist in its expansion beyond its present limits; and, soon or late, should the practical assertion of our "Monroe Doctrine" make it necessary for us to carry our arms into tropical latitudes, the late war has shown us where to find soldiers. These are speculations, but it would be hard to show that they are without some groundwork of probable reality in the future. Meantime it is well to feel assured that these people are here for the good, and not the evil of both races, and that interest as well as justice demands that every right and privilege which we possess should be freely and at once extended to them. Let us trust God to do His own justice, not fearing that harm will come of it unless we interpose with our injustice; and let us no longer believe that if we do what is right and humane as a people to-day, we shall be punished for it to-morrow; for this is practical atheism.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] According to the census of 1860, the proportion of the colored to the white population in the cities named below, was as follows:

Boston, 1 colored to 77-2/3 white. New York, 1 " " 63½ " Philadelphia, 1 " " 24½ "

In New Bedford, at the same census, the proportion was found to be one colored to 13½ white. The comparatively large number of colored people in that city is said to be due to the special kindness with which runaway slaves were received there, and to the fact that it afforded them a somewhat safe place of refuge, because it was out of the main line of travel.

[2] Our Southern negro English, uncouth as it sounds, is pure compared to that of the British Islands; and in the French West Indies and Hayti, the divergence between the creole _patois_ and French is still wider. The negroes actually impressed the use of their dialect deeply upon the Whites, and to this day it is the colloquial language of all classes, whether educated or not, in these islands. The same negro ascendancy can be traced in their amusements. The _Bamboula_ and the _Calenda_ of the French islands and Hayti, and certain similar dances in Cuba, are, somewhat modified and restrained, still favorites with the white people. They are all African in their origin, and their type is lasciviousness. In the British islands these dances have in a great degree given way before the teachings of the Baptist, Methodist and Moravian missionaries.