Slavery in the United States <br> Chapter 9

It can scarcely have escaped the notice of those who have watched the course of argument adopted by the abolitionists in England, and echoed by their humble followers in this country, that it tends directly to confound the claims of the slaves of the South with the rights of the free citizens of the United States. The association is certainly highly complimentary, and we shall endeavour to vindicate the latter from the consequences of this happy analogy. These advocates of all sorts of freedom except that of their own countrymen distinctly insinuate, that the same arguments which sustain the rights of free white men are equally applicable to the African slave, and, consequently, that our people are guilty of gross hypocrisy in affecting to maintain the principles of universal liberty while they hold the blacks in bondage.

It has been our object in the preceding chapters to exhibit the insuperable difficulties, as well as deplorable consequences, of immediate, or even gradual emancipation, in the present state of African intelligence. We have also taken occasion, at different times, to indicate the radical difference between emancipating bondmen, and simply restoring subjects or citizens to a participation of civil rights. The distinction is of vital importance, inasmuch as it involves the honour of our country, and it will now be our endeavour to make it more clearly apparent to our readers. There may, at first sight, appear a striking analogy, but we think it can be demonstrated that there is a radical and irreconcilable difference in the two cases.

In the first place, the distinction between the different orders of white men in Europe is entirely artificial. They are identified in all the peculiar characteristics which mark them originally the same. Nothing, therefore, is wanting to constitute a homogeneous people, but an equal distribution of civil and political rights. Disparity in education, manners, and dress, constitutes the sole difference between the democracy and aristocracy of all countries. Remove this, and nothing remains to distinguish one from the other. Such, however, is not the case with the distinction of colour, which is palpable to our sense, and cannot be mistaken. It is a natural distinction, and nothing but unnatural desires, or absolute necessity on the part of the whites, has ever produced an amalgamation between the two colours. The contrast of colour, to say nothing of the hair, the odour, and other distinguishing peculiarities of the African, mark him out wheresoever he goes; he cannot become a white man by any acquisition of knowledge or refinement; nor can the white man become black, however he may descend to the level of blacks. The physical disparities, setting aside all others, between the two races, are equivalent to those which separate various species of animals, whose natural instincts are the same, for aught we can discover, yet which never incorporate by choice. The white and black races of men are probably the nearest to each other of all these varieties; but they are not homogeneous, any more than the orang-outang, the ape, the baboon, and the monkey, who possibly may, ere long, find a new sect of philanthropists to sustain their claim to amalgamation. By a series of condescensions of this kind, who shall say that the noble race of the white man may not in good time verify the theory of my Lord Monboddo, and strut about with tails?

The radical distinction produced by the contrast of colour between man and man is exemplified in the fact, that in no age or nation have they ever thoroughly amalgamated, even where the African was not degraded by bondage. Individual cases have occurred, it is true, but the result has always been the same, namely, the production of an inferior race. Wherever they have associated as equals, it has been as open or secret enemies ; and we hold it to be an axiom demonstrated by all past experience, that as equals, and in equal numbers, they can never live together in peace. One or other must be subjugated. If, then, the masters of the South were to liberate their slaves in a body, or even by slow degrees, without expelling them at the same time from the states in which they reside, the consequence would soon be, a struggle for power, and a civil war of the worst description.

In the second place, the distinction of a bondman in the United States, and the subject of a king, is strongly marked by another feature, which destroys their identity. So also, in a much greater degree, is that between the former and a free citizen of the United States. Our ancestors brought with them to the New World the rights of Englishmen, and sustained a seven years war to maintain them. They earned the lands they occupy by the fruits of their labour and their valour. The African slave, on the contrary, came hither without any rights derived from his own country, for he had forfeited them by capture in war, or by inheritance; and he has acquired none here. So far from assisting in the attainment of our independence, the slaves became the instruments of most serious mischief; and, to use the words of the Virginia declaration of 1776, "were prompted to rise in arms among us—those very negroes whom, by an inhuman use of his prerogative, he" (the British king) " has refused us permission to exclude by law." Neither by birth, by inheritance, by public services, nor by any natural or acquired claim, have the slaves of the United States any right to the privileges of free citizens of the United States, by whom alone liberty was achieved, and who alone are entitled to its blessings, on the ground of principles recognised by all civilized nations.

Every native of England is in like manner entitled, by a natural indefeisible right, to all the privileges belonging to that particular class to which he appertains, unless they are forfeited by crime. His ancestors won these privileges, and transmitted them to their posterity. So with every nation on earth. There must always be a distinction between those who have acquired or inherited political and civil rights, and the stranger who comes among them. He cannot be supposed to feel the same attachment to the soil, the people, and the government, with those who are familiarized to them from their birth; nor can he be relied on as their defender, until he has identified himself with the interests of his adopted country, by the acquisition of property. Even then he is scarcely to be trusted in a contest with his native land. By the law of England, as declared of late years, a slave becomes free the moment he lands in that country. If, however, two or three millions of slaves were suddenly to make their appearance in a body, it is, we think, somewhat more than doubtful whether my Lord Mansfield's decision would not be speedily reversed. What may be safely done with the few, is often either dangerous or impracticable with the many. It might answer for a boast, but would not do to practise too extensively on the flourish of Counsellor Curran, that the moment a man " touches the sacred soil of Britain," &c, " he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disinthralled," &c, &c, lest the operatives in the manufactories, the Irish peasantry, and other white-skinned slaves, might mistake, and think they were included in the general denomination of men. The maxim is only intended for the negroes.

In the third place, the lower orders of England and Europe can only acquire equal rights with the higher, by their own exertions, which presupposes a degree of intelligence that in a great measure fits them for the enjoyment of freedom. They are prepared for this by gradual advances in knowledge; whereas the plan of the abolitionists is to free the slaves of the South at once, without any preparatory steps to enable them to sustain their new duties, or enjoy their new acquisition.

Again; we acknowledge the situation of the peasantry and working classes of England, and the greater portion of Europe, to be bad enough, when compared with that of our own people of the same classes. Still, however, there are striking differences between them and our African bondmen, although, beyond doubt, on the whole, the state of the latter is preferable. The white men of Europe, whatever situation they may occupy, are not designated on their very faces as separate and distinct races by the great Creator of mankind. They may easily and naturally, without force or persuasion, and by gradual approaches, become one and the same, as in the United States, where there is no distinction of ranks. Their enfranchisement will lead to an equality in so far as is compatible with the system of Providence, without at once uprooting and destroying the whole frame of society, revolutionizing all the domestic relations, and producing two equal hostile parties, for ever separated by impassable barriers.

The people, more especially of England, are not only gradually becoming qualified for freedom by, the progress of intelligence, but are already conversant with those habits which enable men to direct their own conduct and that of their children. Although they may work like our slaves, and fare worse than they do, still they are accustomed to superintend their families; to purchase and sell; to provide for themselves; and to cope with that hydra-headed monster called the world, without which experience a freeman is little else than a prey to roguery, in all its numberless forms and disguises. They have also, many of them, if not all, at some time or other, held property, real or personal, and accustomed themselves to its management. They are likewise supported by the habitual feeling, that notwithstanding the usurpations of aristocracy, they are and always have been equal as men, though their rights are unequal. On the contrary, the bondman is in a great measure destitute of this preparatory experience, as well as habitual feeling of equality. He cannot divest himself of the sense of inferiority, unless by an effort which makes him insolent and ungovernable. Hence, in the States of Pennsylvania and New-York, where thousands of negroes, either runaways or voluntarily emancipated, are admitted to all the privileges of freemen, a melancholy course of experience has shown that scarcely one in a hundred is capable of rationally using the blessing. They have abused, not enjoyed it. A largo portion has died miserably; equal numbers have become the habitual inmates of bridewells, penitentiaries, hospitals, and state prisons; and of the remainder, few, very few, are either moral in their conduct, decent in their manners, or respectable in their situation. The great mass remain sad monuments of hopes which can never be realized; victims to the.grand experiment of severing the relations between master and slave, without investigating the capacity of the latter to provide for himself and family, acting the part of a good neighbour and useful citizen, or sustaining any one single duty thus cast upon him by the misguided zeal of hot-brained fanaticism, or assumed by his own temerity. In short, to set the slaves of the South at once, or at any time, free, must inevitably produce similar consequences to those which would result from suddenly withdrawing children from under the wing of the parent, and setting them adrift on the ocean of the world, without experience and without protection.

We might enumerate various other important points of difference, which would go to overthrow the position that there is a violent and glaring inconsistency in boasting of the freedom of our institutions, while holding the Africans in bondage, and asserting equal rights in the face of such glaring inequalities. The apprehension of extending this inquiry to a tedious length, prevents our enlarging further on this head. It is believed enough has been said to satisfy all impartial inquirers, that the good people of the United States are not "blasphemers and hypocrites," " two-legged wolves," " ruthless tigers," " man-stealers and murderers," because one portion will not consent to a measure equally unpracticable and mischievous, as fatal to the existence of that union which is the main pillar of our prosperity, happiness, and glory; and the other voluntarily and at once not only relinquish a large portion of their property, but, at the same time, render the remainder, as well as their own lives and those of their families, the sport of millions of manumitted paupers, destitute of property, and as ignorant of their rights and their duties as they are incapable of maintaining an independent existence. Almost the only argument those who oppose the emancipation of the lower orders in Europe now venture to urge against such a measure, is, that they are utterly unfit for the enjoyment of liberty. How much more forcibly does this apply to the slaves of the United States, who, in their present state, are still more disqualified, and whom the enjoyment of freedom, as well as the opportunities of gaining knowledge, serve only thus far at least, to demonstrate their incapacity to make a proper use of the one, or to acquire the other.

That we are not speaking at random, or under the influence of prejudice, when we maintain the natural and incurable inferiority of the woolly-headed race, will appear from the following extract of a letter from one of the " visiters," whose duty it is to attend the examination of the common schools of this city, where the black children, though not actually amalgamated with the white, receive precisely the same instruction. Nay, they are even more particularly attended to, from being the subjects of a philanthropic experiment.

"In answer to your inquiry what my observations have been in relation to the comparative intellect of white and coloured children, I will remark, that I have visited the Public and African schools in this city, and frequently examined the scholars, of both sexes and of different ages, and I have uniformly found them inferior to the whites, possessing the same advantages of instruction, in every branch of education which required mental effort. In writing and painting, they bear a tolerable comparison; but in reading, grammar, geography, and, more particularly, arithmetic, requiring the greatest mental effort, they are vastly below the level of a comparison.

"My candid opinion is, that the coloured or African population cannot, by any code of laws, by any system of education, or by any habits, customs, or manners, be raised to an equality with the whites, either in general knowledge, or those particular branches which are essential to the ordinary pursuits of life, and the prosperity of individuals.''

Not even Sir Robert Filmer, who maintains that the desire of liberty caused the fall of Adam, has ventured to insinuate such an incurable incapacity in any order of white men. All history and experience would have contradicted him, by citing a thousand illustrious examples to prove, that nothing is required but equal opportunities to level all the distinctions of rank and birth. But history will be searched in vain for similar triumphs of the woolly-headed race. They seem equally wanting in the powers of the mind, and in the energy to exert them; and not all the discouragements under which they labour can account for this contrast, without the aid of a radical inferiority. It is therefore not without ample reason, that anatomists and physiologists have classed the negro as the lowest in the scale of rational beings.