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Frontispiece

Title Page

Verso

A
TRIBUTE FOR THE NEGRO:
BEING
A VINDICATION
OF THE
MORAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND RELIGIOUS CAPABILITIES
OF
The Coloured portion of Mankind;
WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE AFRICAN RACE.

ILLUSTRATED BY
NUMEROUS BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES,
FACTS, ANECDOTES, ETC.
AND MANY
SUPERIOR PORTRAITS AND ENGRAVINGS.

BY

WILSON ARMISTEAD.

Manchester:
WILLIAM IRWIN, 39, OLDHAM STREET
LONDON:
CHARLES GILPIN, BISHOPSGATE STREET.
AMERICAN AGENT:
WM. HARNED, ANTI-SLAVERY OFFICE,
61, JOHN STREET, NEW YORK;
AND MAY BE HAD OF
H. LONGSTRETH AND G. W. TAYLOR,
PHILADELPHIA.
1848.

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MANCHESTER:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM IRWIN,
39, OLDHAM STREET.

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TO
JAMES W. C. PENNINGTON, FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
ALEXANDER CRUMMELL,
AND
MANY OTHER NOBLE EXAMPLES OF ELEVATED HUMANITY
IN THE NEGRO;
WHOM FULLER BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNATES
"THE IMAGE OF GOD CUT IN EBONY:"
THIS VOLUME,
DEMONSTRATING, FROM FACTS AND TESTIMONIES,
THAT THE
WHITE AND DARK COLOURED RACES OF MAN
ARE ALIKE THE CHILDREN OF ONE HEAVENLY FATHER,
AND
IN ALL RESPECTS EQUALLY ENDOWED BY HIM;
IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED.

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PREFACE.

        In reviewing the history of mankind, we may observe, that very soon after the creation of our first parents in innocence and happiness, sin and misery entered into the world. The evils of life commenced in the earliest ages, and subsequent history and experience testify, that in all their variety of form and character they have continued to exist in every successive generation to the present time.

        To combat these evils, by endeavouring to effect their removal or correction, is the most pleasing and useful occupation in which we can engage ourselves. Providence has wisely instituted, in every age and in every country, a counteracting energy to diminish the crimes and miseries of mankind, which the influences of Christianity have increased, by unfolding to it the widest possible domain. "At her command, wherever she has been fully acknowledged, many of the evils of life have already fled. The prisoner of war is no longer led into the amphitheatre to become a gladiator, and to imbrue his hands in the blood of his fellow-captive, for the sport of a thoughtless multitude. The stern priest, cruel through fanaticism and custom, no longer leads his fellow-creature to the altar, to sacrifice him to fictitious gods. The venerable martyr, courageous through faith and the sanctity of his life, is no longer hurried to the flames. The haggard witch, poring over her incantations by moonlight, no longer scatters her superstitious poison amongst her miserable neighbors, nor suffers for her crime."

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        So long as any of the evils of life shall remain, accompanied, as they must inevitably be, with misery and guilt, the Christian will find himself impelled by an impulse of duty to oppose them; and his energies will be roused into active resistance, in proportion to the magnitude of the evil to be overcome.

        The most extensive and extraordinary system of crime the world ever witnessed, which has now been in operation for several centuries, and which continues to exist in unabated activity, is NEGRO SLAVERY. This hateful system, involving a most incalculable amount of evil, and entailing a measure of misery on the one hand, and guilt on the other, beyond the powers of language to describe, entitles its victims to the strongest claims on our sympathy.

        "If, among the various races of mankind," says the pious Richard Watson, "one is to be found which has been treated with greater harshness by the rest--one whose history is drawn with a deeper pencilling of injury and wretchedness--that race, wherever found, is entitled to the largest share of compassion; especially of those, who, in a period of past darkness and crime, have had so great a share in inflicting this injustice. This, then, is the Negro race--the most unfortunate of the family of man. From age to age the existence of injuries may be traced upon the sunburnt continent; and Africa is still the common plunder of every invader who has hardihood enough to obdurate his heart against humanity, to drag his lengthened lines of enchained captives through the deserts, or to suffocate them in the holds of vessels destined to carry them away into interminable captivity. Africa is annually robbed "of FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND" of her children. Multiply this number by the ages through which this injury has been protracted, and the amount appals and rends

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the heart. What an accumulation of misery and wrong! Which of the sands of her deserts has not been steeped in tears, wrung out by the pang of separation from kindred and country? And in what part of the world have not her children been wasted by labours, and degraded by oppressions?"

        The hapless victims of this revolting system are men of the same origin as ourselves--of similar form and delineation of feature, though with a darker skin--men endowed with minds equal in dignity, equal in capacity, and equal in duration of existence--men of the same social dispositions and affections, and destined to occupy the same rank in the great family of Man.

        The supporters and advocates of Negro Slavery, however, in order to justify their oppressive conduct, profess, either in ignorance or affected philosophy, to doubt the African's claim to humanity, alleging their incapacity, from inherent defects in their mental constitution, to enjoy the blessings of freedom, or to exercise those rights which are equally bestowed by a beneficent Creator upon all his rational creatures.

        White men, civilized savages, armed with the power which an improved society gives them, invade a distant country, and destroy or make captive its inhabitants; and then, pointing to their colour, find their justification in denying them to be men. A petty philosophy follows in the train, and confirms the assumption by a specious theory which would exclude the Negro from all title to humanity. Thus would they strike millions out of the family of God, the covenant of grace, and that brotherhood which the Scriptures extend to the whole race of Adam.

        The calumniators of the Negro race--those who have robbed them of their lands, and still worse, of themselves--

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delight to descant upon the inferiority of their victims, withholding the fact, that they have been for ages exposed to influences calculated to develope neither the moral nor the intellectual faculties, but to destroy them. It may, perhaps, be fairly questioned, whether any other people could have endured the privations or the sufferings to which they have been subjected, without becoming still more degraded in the scale of humanity; for nothing has been left undone, to cripple their intellects, to darken their minds, to debase their moral nature, and to obliterate all traces of their relationship to mankind; yet, how wonderfully have they sustained the mighty load of oppression under which they have been groaning for centuries!

        Prejudice and misinformation have, for a long series of years, been fostered with unremitting assiduity by those interested in upholding the Slave system--a party, whose corrupt influence has enabled them to gain possession of the public ear, and to abuse public credulity to an extent not generally appreciated. In an age so distinguished for benevolence, we call only thus account for the indifference manifested towards this unfortunate race, and from the fact that they are supposed to be in reality destined only for a servile condition, entitled neither to liberty nor the legitimate pursuit of happiness.

        Has the Almighty, then, poured the tide of life through the Negro's breast, animated it with a portion of his own Spirit, and at the same time cursed him, that he is to be struck off the list of rational beings, and placed on a level with the brute? Is his flesh marble, and are his sinews iron, or his immortal spirit condemned, that he is doomed to incessant toil, and to be subjugated to a degradation, bodily and mental, such as none of the other of the children of Adam have ever endured? Away for ever with an idea so

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absurd! The subjugation of a large portion of mankind to the domination and arbitrary will of another, is as unnatural as it is contrary to the principles of justice, and repugnant to the precepts and to the spirit of Christianity; and in the advancing circumstances of the world, nothing can be more certain, than that Slavery must terminate. It is a blot which can never remain amidst the glories of Messiah's reign.

        My present purpose is not to enter into a recital of the horrors of the Slave system in any of its revolting details. The secrets of the dreadful traffic are veiled in those coffin-like spaces in the interior of Slave ships, in which the wretched victims are packed as logs of wood, their limbs loaded with manacles and chains, to be succeeded by the scourgings of the cruel driver! But I will forbear; the mind shudders at the idea of a serious discussion of deeds so hateful, which no prospect of private gain, no consideration of public advantage, no plea of expediency, can ever justify.

        The purport of the present volume, in contradistinction to the idea of the Negro being designed only for a servile condition, is to demonstrate that the Sable inhabitants of Africa are capable of occupying a position in society very superior to that which has been generally assigned to them, and which they now mostly occupy;--that they are possessed of intelligent and reflecting minds, and however barren these may have been rendered by hard usage, and have become indeed as "fountains sealed," that they are still neither unwatered by the rivers of intellect, nor the pure and gentle streams of natural affection. By a relation of facts, principally of a biographical nature, many of them now published for the first time, I hope to counteract that deeply-rooted prejudice, the growth of centuries, which

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attaches itself to this despised race--facts which render a practical negative to the imputation of inevitable inferiority; demonstrating, on the other hand, that, when participating in equal advantages, they are not inferior in natural capacity, or deficient of those intellectual and amiable qualities which adorn and dignify human nature.

        How far the attempt is successful must be left to the reader's decision, Whether it result in convincing the sceptical, or in confirming those already persuaded of the truth of the position maintained, may it engender a more lively feeling of brotherly sympathy towards this afflicted people, by demonstrating them to be capable of every generous and noble feeling, as well as of the higher attainments of the human understanding. Once convinced of this, we cannot contemplate with indifference their bodily and mental sufferings, but rather desire that every barrier may be removed which impedes their attaining to that station in society which an all-wise and beneficent Creator designed for them.

        Should the facts recorded be deemed of too insulated a nature to elucidate any general theory (most countries having produced some individuals of unusual powers, both of body and of mind), I may observe, that they are only a fractional part of what might have been adduced. I have still in reserve a mass of additional facts, teeming with evidence the most unequivocal, that the Almighty has not left the Negro destitute of those talents and capabilities which he has bestowed upon all his intelligent creatures, which, however modified by circumstances in various cases, leave no section of the human family a right to boast that it inherits, by birth, a superiority which might not, in the course of events, be manifested and claimed with equal justice by those whom they most despise.

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        I should be wanting in gratitude, were I to omit to acknowledge the kindness of many friends who have aided me during the progress of the work. Amongst these, I may particularly mention Thomas Thompson, of Liverpool; Thomas Scales,* and Thomas Harvey, of Leeds; Jacob Post, of London; Edward Bickersteth,* Rector of Watton; Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham; James Backhouse, of York; Thomas Winterbottom, M.D., North Shields; Captain Wauchope, of the Royal Navy; with many others. To Robert Hurnard, of Colchester, I am indebted for a Narrative and several M.S. letters of Solomon Bayley, of which I regret being able to avail myself only to a limited extent. Nor should I omit a tribute of thanks to my friend Bernard Barton, for his appropriate Introductory Poem, which adds to the interest of the volume.

        I may also acknowledge having frequently availed myself of the researches of Dr. Lawrence, and the more recent ones of Dr. J. C. Prichard, whose work on the History of Man is the ablest extant in any language.

        I have also derived much information from the work of the Abbé Grégoire, entitled "De la Littérature des

        * The reader will observe, throughout the present volume, except in the first plate, engraved under other auspices, an omission of the title of "Reverend," usually applied to Ministers of the Gospel. It is far from my wish to appear uncourteous; but whilst esteeming the virtuous and the good of every class, I feel a decided objection to the use of this title, on the ground of its being one assigned to the Almighty himself, whose name is Holy and Reverend. (Psalm cxi. 9.) It is to be regretted that Christian ministers, servants of Him who "made himself of no reputation," should feel satisfied with this appellation being used, both in public and private addresses, from their fellow-mortals. Neither the prophets of old, nor the apostles, nor any of the immediate followers of Christ, however eminent, required such an adulatory title, the tendency of which is, to exalt the fallen creature rather than to honour the Divine Creator.


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Nègres, ou Recherches sur leur Facultés Intellectuelles, leur Qualités Morales, et leur Littérature," &c. I am indebted to Thomas Thompson, of Liverpool, for this scarce volume, who kindly presented me with a copy of it, which is rendered additionally valuable from its being one presented by the Abbé in his own hand-writing to the late William Phillips, of London. To Gerrit Smith of Peterboro', U. S., I am also indebted for an English translation of the same, by D. B. Warden, Secretary of the American Legation at Paris. This admirable work includes a mass of information, the accuracy of which may be thoroughly relied upon, being the production of a man of great erudition and rare virtues, well known in the learned societies of his day. He was formerly Bishop of Blois, a member of the Conservative Senate, of the National Institute, the Royal Society of Gottingen, &c.

        It was partially announced that a list of Subscribers would be appended to the present volume, but as this would have occupied nearly thirty pages, it was thought preferable to extend the Biographical portion of the work, which now exceeds by about one hundred pages the number originally intended. The only object in publishing such a list, would have been to afford a demonstration of the feeling and interest existing on behalf of the oppressed race. Suffice it to say, that it embraces nearly a thousand of the most conspicuous characters in the walks of benevolence and philanthropy, both in Great Britain and America, including the Sovereign of the most enlightened country of the world.

        The proceeds arising from the sale of the "TRIBUTE for the NEGRO" will be appropriated for the benefit of the Negro race. On this ground, as well as in consideration of the primary design of publication, the friends of

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humanity will be interested in promoting its circulation. By so doing, they will advance the cause of freedom, by establishing the claims of depressed, degraded, suffering, and almost helpless millions.

        It may be observed, that in making the Biographical selection for this work, the author has been governed by no sectarian prejudice. With due regard to the primary object in view, he has embraced, in support of the proposition maintained, all classes, irrespective of their particular religious tenets. The Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, the Quaker, and the Moravian, are all alike included, not even excepting the half-civilized barbarian, on whom the light has but dimly shone. Whatever our own particular views may be, charity compels us to believe that the virtuous and the good are acceptable to the Universal Parent. A good life is the soundest orthodoxy, and the most benevolent man is the best Christian. Diversity of opinion is not a bar to the favour of Heaven, and it ought not to operate to the prejudice of our neighbor. We ought rather to bear and forbear with each other, remembering that the Sacred Mount of Divine Mercy is open alike to every humble traveller--"God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him." 'Tis these that constitute the "countless myriads" that shall be gathered from "all nations, kindreds, and tongues," to ascribe, throughout the boundless ages of eternity, hallelujahs and songs of incessant praise before the throne of the King Supreme.

        Having now completed my undertaking, after soliciting the Divine blessing upon it, I bequeath it as a legacy to the injured and oppressed. Though the design of the publication will, I trust, be deemed a sufficient apology for its appearance, I am prepared for a diversity of sentiment

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being expressed as to its propriety or necessity. I should count myself unworthy the name of a man or a Christian, if the calumnies of the bad, or even the disapprobation of the well-disposed, had deterred me from the performance of that which a feeling of duty prompted me to undertake. I court no man's applause, neither do I fear any man's frown. Conscious of many imperfections, I feel thankful in having completed this humble "Tribute" in aid of the cause of Freedom, Justice, and Humanity; and it will be a satisfaction to reflect, that a portion of my time has been employed on behalf of the most oppressed portion of our race, at least with a design to promote their welfare.

W. A.

Leeds, 10th Month, 1848

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CONTENTS.

Page xxii

Page xxxi

List of Portraits and Engravings.

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INTRODUCTORY POEM:
BY
BERNARD BARTON.


                         A TRIBUTE for the Negro Race!
                         With all whose minds and hearts
                         Have known the power of Gospel Grace,
                         The love which it imparts.


                         Who know and feel that God is Love!
                         And that His high behest,
                         Given from His throne in Heaven above
                         Says--"Succour the oppress'd!"


                         A TRIBUTE for our Brother Man!
                         Our Sister Woman too!
                         With all whose feeling hearts can own
                         What unto each is due:


                         Who cherish holy sympathy
                         With human flesh and blood,
                         And feel the inseparable tie
                         Of that vast Brotherhood!

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                         That the same God hath fashion'd all,
                         Moulded in human frame;
                         And bade them on His mercy call,
                         Pleading--A Father's Name!


                         That the same Saviour died for each,
                         So each to Him might live!
                         That the same Spirit sent to teach,
                         To ALL can Wisdom give.


                         A TRIBUTE to the mental power
                         Of Blacks, as well as Whites;
                         For Nature, in her ample dower,
                         Owns all her Children's rights:


                         And scorns, by casual tint of skin,
                         Those sacred rights to adjust,
                         Which, to the immortal Soul within,
                         Her God hath given in trust!


                         A TRIBUTE to fair Freedom's spells,
                         The boon of God on high;
                         For--ever--where His Spirit dwells,
                         There must be Liberty!


                         That Spirit breaks each galling yoke--
                         Fetters of cruel thrall,
                         The brand's impress, the scourge's stroke,
                         It loathes, laments them all.

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                         Lastly,--A TRIBUTE unto HIM,
                         OUR FATHER! throned in Heaven!
                         For all who yet, in life or limb,
                         Succumb to Slavery's leaven.


                         That He for such His arm may bare,
                         Their Liberator be;
                         And in His Will and Power declare
                         "The Negro shall be free!"


                         That as His mighty, outstretch'd hand
                         Led Israel forth of yore,
                         So He to Afric's injured land
                         Would Freedom--Peace restore.


                         That Gospel Love, and Gospel Grace,
                         May there His Power proclaim;
                         Make glad each solitary place,
                         And glorify His Name!

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A Tribute for the Negro.
PART I.

An Inquiry into the claims of the Negro
Race to humanity, and a Vindication of
their original equality with the other
portions of Mankind; with a few
observations on the inalineable rights of
Man, the sin of Slavery, &c., &c.

Illustration

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CHAPTER I.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE CLAIMS OF THE NEGRO RACE TO HUMANITY, &c.

Sin of Slavery increasingly acknowledged--Delusion respecting the moral and intellectual capacity of the Negro--An important question--To despise a fellow-being on account of any external peculiarity, a sin-- Christianity the manifestation of universal love--Inquiry into the causes of the diversity characterising various nations and people--Analogous in animals--Remarks of Buffon and Lawrence on this subject--Connection between the physiological, moral, and intellectual characters in Man--The diversities trifling in comparison with those attributes in which they agree--Nothing to warrant us in referring to any particular race an insurmountable deficiency in moral and intellectual faculties-- Scripture testimony to unity of origin in the human race.

        In the present enlightened age, talent and piety have combined their energies, in endeavouring to promote the welfare and emancipation of the degraded and enslaved African. The grievous sin of man making merchandise of his fellow-creatures, and holding them in perpetual slavery, has long been a subject of eloquent declamation, and has for some time been denounced by the unanimous voice of the British public. England has given to the nations a noble example, in abolishing, at a great sacrifice, a system of injustice and cruelty, in which she had long taken a guilty part.


                         " 'Twas Britain's mightiest sons that struck the blow!"


                         "And monarchs trembled at the o'erpowering sound,
                         And nations heard, and senates shook around,
                         And widely struck, by the victorious spell,
                         From Negro limbs, the enslaving shackles fell!"

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        Yet notwithstanding the evils of Slavery are becoming increasingly felt and acknowledged, it is evident that there still exists, in the minds of many who deprecate the whole system as unjust, a strong delusion with regard to the moral and intellectual capacities of the Coloured portion of mankind, and as regards their proper station in the scale of intelligent existence.

        It is an important question, whether the Negro is constitutionally, and therefore irremediably, inferior to the White man, in the powers of the mind. Much of the future welfare of the human race depends on the answer which experience and facts will furnish to this question; for it concerns not only the vast population of Africa, but many millions of the Negro race who are located elsewhere, as well as the Whites who are becoming mixed with the Black race in countries where Slavery exists, or where it has existed till within a very recent period. Many persons have ventured upon peremptory decisions on both sides of the question; but the majority appear to be still unsatisfied as to the real capabilities of the Negro race. Their present actual inferiority in many respects, comparing them as a whole with the lighter coloured portion of mankind, is too evident to be disputed; but it must be borne in mind that they are not in a condition for a fair comparison to be drawn between the two. Their present degraded state, whether we consider them in a mental or moral point of view, may be easily accounted for by the circumstances amidst which Negroes have lived, both in their own countries, and when they have been transplanted into a foreign land. But if instances can be adduced of individuals of the African race exhibiting marks of genius, which would be considered eminent in civilized European society, we have proofs that there is no incompatibility between Negro organization and high intellectual power.

        It has been well observed by a late writer, that it is important to elucidate this question, if possible, on several

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accounts; and that if it be proved to be correct, the Negro qualified to occupy a different situation in society to that which has been declared to belong to him, by the almost unanimous acclaim of civilized nations. If the capabilities and aptitudes of the Negro are such as some writers argue, he is only fitted, by his natural constitution and endowments, for a servile state; and the zealous friends of his tribe, Wilberforce and Clarkson, Allen and Gurney, with many others, who were thought to have obtained an exalted station among the great benefactors of the human race, must be regarded as having been simply well-meaning enthusiasts, who, under an imagined principle of philanthropy, argued with too much success for the emancipation of domestic animals, of creatures destined by nature to remain in that condition, and to serve the lords of the creation in common with his oxen, his horses, and his dogs. If science has led to this conclusion, as the true and just inference from facts, the sooner it is admitted the better: the opinion which is opposed to it must be unreasonable and injurious.

        But the purport of the present volume is to prove from facts which speak loudly, that the Negro is indubitably, and fully, entitled to equal claims with the rest of mankind; --a task by no means difficult, no more so indeed, to the impartial judge, than to demonstrate the self-evident truths


                         "That smoke ascends, that snow is white."
The claims of the Negro are, however, called in question by so many, and their rights as men denied by those who point at the colour which God has given them, with the finger of scorn, that some counteracting influence seemed desirable.

        To despise a fellow-being, or attach a degree of inferiority to him, merely on account of his complexion, or any other external peculiarity which may have been conferred upon him, is to arraign the wisdom of the Allwise Creator, and, consequently, an offence in the Divine sight. "He

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who cannot recognise a brother," says Dr. Channing, "a man possessing all the rights of humanity, under a skin darker than his own, wants the vision of a Christian." It proves him a stranger to justice and love, in those universal forms by which our benign religion is characterised. Christianity is the manifestation and inculcation of universal love; its great teaching is, that we should recognise and respect human nature in all its forms, in the poorest, most ignorant, most fallen. We must look beneath "the flesh," to "the spirit;" for it is the spiritual principle in Man that entitles him to our brotherly regard. To be just to this is the great injunction of our religion: to overlook this, on account of condition or colour, is to violate the great Christian law. The greatest of all distinctions in Man, the only enduring ones, are moral goodness, virtue, and religion. A being capable of these, is invested by God with solemn claims on his fellow-creatures, and to despise millions of such beings, to stamp them with inevitable inferiority, and to exclude them from our sympathy, because of outward disadvantages, proves, that in whatever we may surpass them, we are not their superiors in Christian virtue.

        But when erroneous opinions become thoroughly imbibed, it is difficult speedily, or, perhaps, in some instances, ever, entirely to eradicate them from the mind, however unfounded they may be. Although it is a common, and very just observation, that two individuals are hardly to be met with, possessing precisely the same features, yet there is generally a certain distinctive cast of countenance common to the particular races of men, and often to the inhabitants of particular countries. The differences existing in various regions of the globe, both in the bodily formation of Man and in the development of the faculties of his mind, are so striking that they cannot have escaped the notice of the most superficial observer.

        There is scarcely any question relating to the history of organized beings, calculated to excite greater interest,

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than inquiries into the nature of those varieties in complexion, form, and habits, which distinguish from each other the several races of men. Our curiosity on this subject ceases to be awakened when we have become accustomed to satisfy ourselves respecting it with some hypothesis, whether adequate or insufficient to explain the phenomenon; but, if a person previously unaware of the existence of such diversities, could suddenly be made a spectator of the various appearances which the tribes of men display in different regions of the earth, it cannot be doubted that he would experience emotions of wonder and surprise. To enter into a full consideration of this interesting subject is not within the province of this work. It will, however, be necessary to make a few observations upon it, so far as to demonstrate that the whole family of Man is identically of the same species. Those who desire to enter more largely into this study, may refer to Prichard's "Researches into the Physical History of Mankind," or to Dr. Lawrence's well known "Lectures," in which the able authors have maintained, with the greatest extent of research, and fully proved, a unity of species in all the human races.

        Notwithstanding the great diversity which is found to exist the extent of mental acquirements, as well as of the physiological peculiarities, and physical qualities, characterizing, the inhabitants of various portions of the world, there can be little doubt that this diversity is more attributable to external or adventitious causes, to the circumstances in which they live, to their particular habits, their progress in the culture of arts and sciences, and their advancement in civilization and refinement, and to a variety of physical and moral agencies and local circumstances, rather than to any singularity or variation in their original natural organization and endowment. To the operation of all these causes, may be added, the surprising effects of education when almost universally applied, which are sufficiently obvious wherever its influence extends.

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        That climate should also exert a powerful influence on Man may be very reasonably supposed; it has an analogous influence on the other tribes of animated beings. The animal kingdom presents us with numerous striking instances of diversity in the texture and colour of their coverings, occurring, undoubtedly, in the same species. Sheep are particularly marked by the great difference of their fleece, in different latitudes. In Africa, and very warm countries, a coarse rough hair is substituted in the place of its wool, which, in other situations, is soft and delicate. The dog loses its coat entirely in Africa, and has a smooth soft skin. The wool of the sheep is thicker and longer in the winter and in hilly northern situations, than in the summer and on warm plains. Climate, coupled with food, appear to be the great modifying agents, in the production of these and many other varieties in the animal world; but no attempt has been made to assign a separate origin in their case. The white colour, in the northern regions, of many animals, which possess other colours in more temperate latitudes, as the bear, the fox, the hare, beasts of burden, the falcon, crow, jackdaw, chaffinch, &c., seems to arise entirely from climate. This opinion is strengthened by the analogy of those animals which change their colour, in the same country, in the winter season, to white or grey, as the ermine and weasel, hare, squirrel, reindeer, white game, snow bunting, &c. The common bear is differently coloured in different regions.

        With regard to the physiological distinctions of Man, there is no point of difference between the several races, which has not been found to arise, in at least an equal degree, among other animals as mere varieties, from the usual causes of degeneration, &c. What differences are there in the figure and proportion of parts in the various breeds of horses; in the Arabian, the Barb, and the German! How striking the contrast between the long-legged cattle of the Cape of Good Hope and the short-legged

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of England! The same difference is observed in swine. The cattle have no horns in some breeds of England and Ireland; in Sicily, on the contrary, they have very large ones. A breed of sheep, with an extraordinary number of horns, as three, four, or five, occurs in some northern countries--as, for instance, in Ireland--and is accounted a mere variety. The Cretan breed of the same animals has long, large, and twisted horns. We may also point out the broad-tailed sheep of the Cape, in which the tail grows so large that it is placed on a board, supported by wheels, for the convenience of the animal. "Let us compare," says Buffon, "our pitiful sheep with the mouflon, from which they derived their origin. The mouflon is a large animal; he is fleet as a stag, armed with horns and thick hoofs, covered with coarse hair, and dreads neither the inclemency of the sky nor the voracity of the wolf. He not only escapes from his enemies by the swiftness of his course, scaling with truly wonderful leaps, the most frightful precipices; but he resists them by the strength of his body and the solidity of the arms with which his head and feet are fortified. How different from our sheep, which subsist with difficulty in flocks, who are unable to defend themselves by their numbers, who cannot endure the cold of our winters without shelter, and who would all perish if man withdrew his protection! So completely are the frame and capabilities of this animal degraded by his association with us, that it is no longer able to subsist in a wild state, if turned loose, as the goat, pig, and cattle are. In the warm climates of Asia and Africa, the mouflon, who is the common parent of all the races of this species, appears to be less degenerated than in any other region. Though reduced to a domesticated state, he has preserved his stature and his hair; but the size of his horns is diminished. Of all the domesticated sheep, those of Senegal and India are the largest, and their nature has suffered least degradation. The sheep of Barbary, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, Tartary, &c.,

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have undergone greater changes. In relation to Man, they are improved in some articles, and vitiated in others; but with regard to nature, improvement and degeneration are the same thing; for they both imply an alteration of original constitution. Their coarse hair is changed into fine wool; their tail, loaded with a mass of fat, and sometimes reaching the weight of forty pounds, has acquired a magnitude so incommodious, that the animals trail it with pain. While swollen with superfluous matter, and adorned with a beautiful fleece, their strength, agility, magnitude, and arms are diminished. These long-tailed sheep are half the size only of the mouflon. They can neither fly from danger, nor resist the enemy. To preserve and multiply the species they require the constant care and support of Man. The degeneration of the original species is still greater in our climates. Of all the qualities of the mouflon, our ewes and rams have retained nothing but a small portion of vivacity, which yields to the crook of the shepherd. Timidity, weakness, resignation, and stupidity, are the only melancholy remains of their degraded nature."*

        The pig-kind afford an instructive example, because their descent is more clearly made out than that of many other animals. The dog, indeed, degenerates before our eyes; but it will hardly ever, perhaps, be satisfactorily ascertained whether there is one or more species. The extent of degeneration can be observed in the domestic swine; because no naturalist has hitherto been sceptical enough to doubt whether they descended from the wild boar; and they were certainly first introduced by the Spaniards into the new world. The pigs conveyed in 1509, from Spain to the West Indian island Cubagua, then celebrated for the pearl fishery, degenerated into a monstrous race, with toes half a span long.** Those of Cuba became more than
* Buffon, by Wood, vol. 4, page 7.

** Clavigero, Storia Antica del Messico, vol. 4, page 145.

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twice as large as their European progenitors.* How remarkably, again, have the domestic swine degenerated from the wild ones in the whole world: in the loss of the soft downy hair from between the bristles, in the vast accumulation of fat under the skin, in the form of the cranium, in the figure and growth of the whole body. The varieties of the domestic animal, too, are very numerous: in Piedmont, they are almost invariably black; in Bavaria, reddish brown; in Normandy, white, &c. The breed in England, with straight back, is just the reverse of that in the north of France, with high convex spine and hanging head; and both are different from the German breed; to say nothing of the solidungular race, found in herds in Hungary and Sweden, known by Aristotle, with many other varieties.

        The ass, in its wild state, is remarkably swift and lively, and still continues so in his native Eastern abode.

        Common fowl, in different situations, run into almost every conceivable variety. Some are large, some small, some tall, some dwarfish. They may have a small and single, or a large and complicated comb; or great tufts of feathers on the head. Some have no tail. The legs of some are yellow and naked, of others, covered with feathers. There is a breed with their feathers reversed in their direction all over the body; and another in India with white downy feathers, and black skin. All these exhibit endless diversities of colour.**

        Most of the mammalia which have been tamed by Man betray their subjugated state, by having the ears and tail pendulous, a condition which does not belong to wild animals; and in many, says Lawrence, the very functions of the body are changed.

        The application of these facts to the human species is very obvious. If new characters are produced in the
* Herrera, Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas, &c., vol. 1, page 239.

** Lawrence.

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domesticated animals, because they have been taken from their primitive condition, and exposed to the operation of many, to them unnatural causes; if the pig is remarkable among these for the number and degree of its varieties, because it has been most exposed to the causes of degeneration; we shall be at no loss to account for the diversities in Man, who is, in the true, though not ordinary sense of the word, more a domesticated animal than any other.* He, like the inferior animals, is liable to run into varieties of form, size, stature, proportions, features, and colour, which being gradually increased, through a long course of ages, have become, to a certain extent, hereditary in families and nations.

        That the superficial observer, on beholding the great variation existing between the inhabitants of one portion of the world, and those of another, should be led to query, "Are all these brethren?" need not surprise us; yet, if we examine into the subject, we shall find that there is no one of the varieties to which Man is liable, which does not exist in a still greater degree in animals confessedly the same species, and the numerous examples of the widest deviation in the colour and physiological distinctions of these, fully authorize the conclusion, that, however striking may be the contrast between the fair European and the ebon African, and however unwilling the former may be to trace up his pedigree to the same Adam with the latter, the superficial distinctions by which they are characterized, are altogether insufficient to establish a diversity of species or any insurmountable disparity between the two.

        Having adverted to the diversities of external appearance exhibited in the various races of Man, and alluded to the physiological distinctions by which they are marked, let us inquire to what extent their moral and intellectual characters exhibit such peculiarities as the numerous modifications of physical structure might lead us to expect;
* Lawrence.

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whether the appetites and propensities, the moral feelings, and dispositions, and the capabilities of knowledge and reflection, are the same in all. There can be little doubt, that the races of Man are no less characterized by a diversity in the development of the mental and moral faculties, than by those differences of organization which have been already explained. There is an intimate connection between the mind and the body, and the various causes which exert their influence physically, have, to a certain degree, a corresponding effect upon the mental constitution of Man. That climate, again, and other elements of the external condition, are powerful agents in this respect, is very probable, if we may judge from their analogous influence on various animals. We are informed that the dog in Kamtschatka, instead of being faithful and attached to his master, is malignant, treacherous, and full of deceit. He does not bark in the hot parts of Africa, nor in Greenland; and in the latter country, loses his docility so as to be unfit for hunting.*

        There is a decided coincidence between the physical characteristics of the varieties of Man, and their moral and social condition, and it also appears that their condition in civilized society produces considerable modification in the intellectual qualities of the race. But this is a subject so extensive in its bearings, and in many particulars so intricate and complex, that I shall not attempt its further investigation here, but refer again to the works of Lawrence and Prichard, in which it is very ably elucidated.

        To whatever causes we may, ultimately, be able to attribute the numerous varieties existing amongst mankind, it is evident, if they have not been ordained to bind them together, they were never ordained to subdue the one to the other; but rather to give means and occasions of mutual aid. The good of all has been equally intended in the distribution of the various gifts of heaven; and certain
* Rees.

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it is, that the diversities among men are as nothing, in comparison with those attributes in which they agree: it is this which constitutes their essential equality. "All men have the same rational nature, and the same powers of conscience, and all are equally made for indefinite improvement of these divine faculties, and for the happiness to be found in their virtuous use. Who that comprehends these gifts, does not see that the diversities of the race vanish before them?"*

        It was long since declared, and it has been repeated thousands of times, that the Indian and the African, from their nature, are incapable of civilization, and only adapted to a state of servitude. Early in the sixteenth century, the question was regarded as one of such moment that Charles the Fifth ordered a discussion of the subject to be conducted before him. The advocate in favour of this idea was first heard, when a zealous champion, in answer, warmed by the noble cause he was to maintain, and nothing daunted by the august presence in which he stood, delivered himself with fervent eloquence that went directly to the hearts of his auditors. "The Christian religion," he concluded, "is equal in its operation, and is accommodated to every nation on the globe. It robs no one of his freedom, violates no one of his inherent rights, on the ground that he is of a slavely nature, as pretended; and it well becomes your majesty to banish so monstrous an oppression from your kingdoms, in the beginning of your reign, that the Almighty may make it long and glorious!"

        I am convinced, that the more we examine into the diversities characterizing the various families of Man, the more thoroughly shall we be able to prove, that the coincidence between them is greater than the diversity, and that we shall find nothing to warrant us in referring to any particular race, any further than we should between the rough-hewn and polished marble, a deficiency of those moral and
* Dr. Channing.

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intellectual faculties, which it has pleased the all-wise and beneficent Creator, who "hath made of one blood all the nations of men," to bestow alike on every portion of the human family. Thought, Reason, Conscience, the capacity of Virtue and of Love, an immortal destiny, an intimate moral connection with God,--these are the attributes of our common humanity, which reduce to insignificance all outward distinctions, and make every human being unspeakably dear to his Maker. No matter how ignorant he may be, the capacity of improvement allies him to the more instructed of his race, and places within his reach, the knowledge and happiness of higher worlds. "The Christian philosopher," says Dr. Chalmers, "sees in every man, a partaker of his own nature, and a brother of his own species. He contemplates the human mind in the generality of its great elements. He enters upon a wide field of benevolence, and disdains the geographical barriers by which little men would shut out one half of the species from the kind offices of the other. Let man's localities be what they may, it is enough for his large and noble heart, that he is bone of the same bone."

        A powerful argument may yet be adduced, which appears to me conclusive of the whole question relating to man's unity of origin, and that is, the testimony of the sacred Scriptures, which ascribe one origin to the whole human family. Our Scriptures have not left us to determine the title of any tribe to the full honours of humanity by accidental circumstances. One passage affirms, that "God hath made of one blood all the nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth;" that they are of one family, of one origin, of one common nature: the other, that our Saviour became incarnate, "that he, by the grace of God, should taste death for every man." "Behold then," says the pious Richard Watson, "the foundation of the fraternity of our race, however coloured and however scattered. Essential distinctions of inferiority and superiority

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had been, in almost every part of the Gentile world, adopted as the palliation or the justification of the wrongs inflicted by man on man; but against this notion, Christianity, from its first promulgation, has lifted up its voice. God hath made the varied tribes of men 'of one blood.' Dost thou wrong a human being? He is thy brother. Art thou his murderer by war, private malice, or a wearing and exhausting oppression? 'The voice of thy brother's blood crieth to God from the ground.' Dost thou, because of some accidental circumstances of rank, opulence, and power on thy part, treat him with scorn and contempt? He is thy 'brother for whom Christ died;' the incarnate Redeemer assumed his nature as well as thine; He came into the world to seek and to save him as well as thee; and it was in reference to him also that He went through the scenes of the garden and the cross. There is not, then, a man on earth who has not a Father in heaven, and to whom Christ is not an Advocate and Patron; nay, more, because of our common humanity, to whom he is not a Brother."

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CHAPTER II.

The idea that moral and intellectual inferiority is inseparable from a coloured skin, a fallacious one--Refuted by facts--The apparent inferiority of the Negro principally arises from Slavery and the ravages of the Slave trade--Extent of these--Their pernicious consequences--Prevent the Negro from advancing in civilization or improvement--Justified on the ground of Christianizing them, &c.--This plea philosophically false--What can we expect from Negroes in their present condition--The reproach falls on their treatment, &c.--Similar effects observable on any people--Instanced in European Slaves--Loose his shackles, and the Negro will soon refute the calumnies raised against him.

        If, as I have already shown, the claims of all mankind to one universal brotherhood are so clearly and unequivocally defined, we can have no authority for impressing upon a large portion of the great family the stigma of inferiority, under the mere pretext of some external peculiarities which the Creator has been pleased to confer upon them. Nothing can be more fallacious, nothing has ever been more pernicious in its consequences, than the assumption, that moral and intellectual inferiority are inseparable from a coloured skin. Oh! when will prejudice give way, if not through the influence of Christian kindness, before the pressure of facts? How long shall the White Man answer "No!" to the appeal of the injured Negro, "Am I not a man and a brother?" How long shall we persist in turning a deaf ear to the united cry of the whole ebon race of Africa:


                         "Deem our nation brutes no longer,
                         'Till some reason ye shall find,
                         Worthier of regard and stronger,
                         Than the colour of our kind.


                         "Slaves of gold! whose sordid dealings
                         Tarnish all your boasted powers,
                         Prove that you have human feelings,
                         Ere you proudly question ours."

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        I would invite all who entertain the opinion that the dark coloured portion of mankind necessarily belong to a race of beings inferior to the fairer portion of our species, casting aside all previously imbibed prejudice, to peruse the facts narrated in the following pages. They will be found to exhibit many striking instances of good and commendable traits existing naturally in the African character, to which facts and testimonies innumerable might be added, amply sufficient, considering the limited advantages they have possessed, not only to refute the groundless imputation of mental and moral deficiency, and prove their title to the claim of being accounted intelligent and rational creatures, but that they are also endowed with every characteristic constituting their identity with the great family of MAN. Their physical, moral, and intellectual capabilities, have been so far put to the test, that they can no longer be charged with being deficient in intelligence, enterprise, or industry. The facts brought forward in this volume are sufficiently substantiated as to leave the question no longer a doubtful or theoretical one, but to excite us at once to regard them as brethren, in every sense of the word, entitled to equal privileges with ourselves, to the enjoyment of all those inalienable rights with which Man has been entrusted by his Creator. Surely it will be impossible for us to peruse these facts, without blushing for the enormities, which beings with a fairer skin, and professing a religion which inculcates "universal love and good will to men," are still exercising over another portion of the same family.

        Happy would it be for humanity's sake, if we could draw the curtain of night over the many dark transactions that disgrace the conduct of the White Man towards his more sable brother, which consist indeed of little else than a series of wrongs and outrages, inflicted on the innocent and the defenceless! It is a lamentable fact, that whatever checks the atrocious traffic in the flesh and sinews of the Negro may, from time to time, have experienced, it is still

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pursued with increased energy and success, so much so, that it is impossible to form any adequate idea of its extent and horrors.* Africa is annually robbed of FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND of her population, to glut the cupidity, or to minister to the pride and luxury of nominal Christians, and the followers of the False Prophet. From 2 to 300,000 of this mighty host perish by fire and sword in their original capture; by privation and fatigue, in their transit to the coast; and by disease and death, in their most horrible forms, during the middle passage. The remainder are sold into perpetual Slavery, and subjected, with their offspring in perpetuity, to all the revolting incidents of that degraded state.

        To say nothing of the disgrace and the guilt which this nefarious system attaches to the civilized nations who are implicated in it, it is an utter impossibility, whilst the ravages consequent upon these violations of all the rights and feelings of man continue to be perpetrated against the natives of Africa, whilst the inhabitants of the whole continent, both on her defenceless coasts, and to her very centre, continue to be hunted like wild beasts of the forest; I say, it is an utter impossibility, whilst this state of things is permitted to exist, that Africa or her sons should experience any advances, either in civilization or improvement.

        The present apparent inferiority of the Negro race is undoubtedly attributable in a great measure to the existence of the Slave traffic in Africa, with all the baneful influences necessarily attendant upon it, and subsequently, to the degraded condition to which its unfortunate victims are
* When the contest against the Slave Trade first commenced, half a century ago, IT WAS CALCULATED THERE WERE FROM TWO TO THREE MILLIONS OF SLAVES IN THE WORLD! There were recently, according to documents quoted by Sir T. F. Burton, SIX TO SEVEN MILLIONS! When, fifty years ago, the Anti-Slavery operations began, it was estimated that ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND SLAVES WERE ANNUALLY RAVISHED FROM AFRICA! There are now calculated to be FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND ANNUALLY TORN FROM THEIR HOMES AND FRIENDS!!! These are the great facts regarding Slavery and the Slave Trade at this moment!

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reduced, and held by their oppressors. It is only when they are in possession of privileges and advantages equivalent to the rest of mankind, that a fair comparison can be drawn between the one and the other. The Negro, by nature our equal, made like ourselves after the image of the Creator, gifted by the same intelligence, impelled by the same passions and affections, and redeemed by the same Saviour, has now become reduced through cupidity and oppression, nearly to the level of the brute, spoiled of his humanity, plundered of his rights, and often hurried to a premature grave, the miserable victim of avarice and heedless tyranny! "Men have presumptuously dared to wrest from their fellows the most precious of their rights--to intercept, as far as they can, the bounty and grace of the Almighty--to close the door to their intellectual progress --to shut every avenue to their moral and religious improvement --to stand between them and their Maker. Oh! awful responsibility; how shall they answer for such a crime?" *

        But the Slave, we are told, is taught religion and Christianity. This is a cheering sound to be wafted from the land of bondage. It is cause of rejoicing to hear that any portion of the Negroes taken into Slavery are instructed in religion. But if ever this is the case, it forms the exception and not the rule. "In Georgia, any justice of the peace may, at his discretion, break up any religious assembly of Slaves, and may order each Slave present to be corrected without trial, by receiving, on the bare back, 25 stripes with a whip, switch, or cow-skin." In North Carolina, "to teach a Slave to read or write, or to sell, or give him any book (Bible not excepted), is punished with 39 lashes, or imprisonment." Such laws as these do not speak very strongly for the argument that the Slave is taught religion. "Woe to him that taketh away the key of knowledge!" To kill the body is a great crime; the Spirit we cannot kill, but we may bury it in a deathlike lethargy,
* Clarkson.

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and is this a light crime in the sight of Him who gave it?

        There can be no doubt that, generally speaking, not a ray of Christian truth is afforded to the Negro Slave, but, on the other hand, that it is often most cautiously withheld. The majority of persons connected with Slave property stand chargeable with criminal neglect, or the great proportion of Slaves would not now be degraded and immoral Pagans. Not a few are criminally hostile and persecuting. They have paled round the enclosures of darkness and vice, intent upon nothing so much as to scowl away the messengers of light and mercy, by whatever name they may be called, and to seal up the wretched people under their power, in ignorance and barbarism. Under such circumstances, the state of the Negro Slave is most deplorable. It may be emphatically said of a land of Slavery, that "darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people;" and if a single ray of light glimmers in the midst, it only serves to render the surrounding darkness still more visible--more clearly to exhibit the hideous abominations beneath which the Negro groans.

        But even if the opportunity is said to be afforded him, how can the Slave comprehend the principle of Love, the essential principle of Christianity, when he hears it from the lips of those whose relations to him express injustice and selfishness? And even suppose him to receive Christianity in its purity, and to feel all its power;--is this to reconcile us to Slavery? Is a being who can understand the sublimest truth that has ever entered the human mind, who can love and adore God, who can conform himself to the celestial virtue of the Saviour, for whom that Saviour died, to whom heaven is opened, whose repentance now gives joy in heaven,--is such a being to be held as property, driven by force as the brute, and denied the rights of man by a fellow-creature, by a professed disciple of the just and merciful Saviour? Has he a religious nature, and dares any one hold him as a Slave?

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        I am aware that much has been said on various occasions, respecting the compensations conquered and oppressed nations and people have received for the injuries inflicted upon them, when they have fallen under the sway of empires in a higher state of civilization than themselves. The atrocious outrages of the Slave trade, as we have heard, have been commended on this ground, as affording a means of imparting to the Negroes the blessings of civilization and Christianity, by transplanting them into a land of civilized men and of Christians. Could any plea be more philosophically false? Providence is sometimes pleased to bring good out of evil, but we are by no means justified on this ground in doing evil that good may ensue. On no occasion does God require the aid of our vices. He can overrule them for good, but they are not the chosen instruments of human happiness.

        Our war of extermination against the Kafirs has already cost us upwards of three millions, and will probably cost three millions more. How much better would it be to substitute religion and commerce for the sword. A dozen waggons laden with British goods would do more for the civilization and conciliation of that tormented country than all the bayonets of Europe. It is painful to reflect that the history of Africa, a country so long colonized by men professing that faith which teaches us that "God hath made of one blood all the nations of men," should furnish so few points of relief to the dark shades of a picture, which exhibits the inhabitants of that continent as the wretched victims of the White Man's avarice and cruelty. Yet, thanks be to God, there are some bright spots amidst this gloom of darkness, some fertile spots amidst this extensive waste and wilderness of iniquity and wo, and wherever they meet the eye they cheer the heart. These are principally the results of missionary enterprise, to which our attention will be drawn when we have to consider the advances of the Negro in a religious point of view.

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        To return again to the iniquities perpetrated so coolly against the unoffending African, we cannot but admire the subtle reasoning and humanity of those, whose hands are imbrued in the traffic in human flesh, asserting in defence of their nefarious deeds, that they may be the means of Christianizing their unhappy victims, and of advancing their moral condition; and who, after tearing the wretched Negroes from their native soil, transporting them in chains across the wide ocean, and dooming them to perpetual labour, complain that their understandings shew no signs of improvement, that their tempers and dispositions are incorrigibly perverse, faithless, and treacherous. What can be expected from them, when they are attended with everything that is unfavourable to their improvement, and are deprived of every means of bettering their condition, or cultivating their minds? "Destitute of all instruction, worked like brutes, and punished more severely; crushed by the iron hand of oppression into the very dust; having everything to fear, and nothing to hope for; without any impelling motive but that of terror; with scarcely any possibility of enjoyment but what arises from his mere animal nature, what virtue can we look for in the poor Slave? If his appetites and passions are checked, it is not by the operation of principle, but by the dread of corporeal punishment. Can anything manly or generous be expected from those who are debased to the condition of brutes, who are kept in a state of perpetual and abject servility? Can we suppose that a very nice sense of justice will be entertained by those who are constantly treated with injustice; who know it, and feel it; who see the White Man sin with impunity, and the Black Man often suffering without crime? Can we be so unreasonable as to look for undeviating honesty and integrity in those who are conscious that they are the objects of continued wrong, inflicted by those whom they regard as so much their superiors in knowledge? Are they not constantly

Page 24

taught by the conduct of White Men, that power is right; and that, therefore, whatever they are able to do with impunity they have a right to do? Must they not feel that fraud and cunning are the only weapons with which they can engage the White Man, and obtain any advantage? Shall we then wonder, when we are told by all who know the Negro character, that in the midst of all their ignorance, there is a shrewdness which seems natural to them; that the system of oppression under which they live, cherishes the habits of falsehood and petty theft? Can purity and chastity exist in such circumstances as theirs, where there is no protection of the marriage union; where all are allowed to herd together as the beasts of the field, and have, in the conduct of the White Man, so bad an example before their eyes? What means are used to enlighten their minds or form their morals? Can any plant of virtue, vegetate without the light of knowledge, and the culture of instruction? What are they suffered to know of Christianity, but its outward forms; and what impressions must they receive of it from their Christian (?) masters? Can they see anything in it which is attractive? What motives have they to embrace it? Ignorant alike of the doctrines and the duties, the divine consolation and the holy precepts of Christianity, they remain Pagans in a Christian land, without even an object of idolatrous worship; 'having no hope, and without God in the world.' Let not, then, the abettors of Slavery, who trample their fellow-creatures beneath their feet, tell us, in their own justification, of the degraded state, the abject minds, and the vices of the Slaves; it is upon the system which thus brutifies a human being that the reproach falls in all its bitterness."

        It is absurd to tell us of the vast inferiority of the Negro Race, whilst they are kept in a state of degradation, which renders mental and moral improvement an impossibility, which not only stints the growth of everything generous and manly, but destroys every spring of virtuous action, and

Page 25

reduces them nearly to the condition of brutes. Similar effects would be equally visible in those of any nation or complexion, were they subjected to a treatment as cruel as that which the Negro has long endured. "Treat men as wild beasts," says a philosophical writer, "and you will make them such." M. Dupuis, the British Consul at Mogadore, observes, that "even the generality of European Christians, after a long captivity and severe treatment among the Arabs, appeared at first exceedingly stupid and insensible. If they have been any considerable time in Slavery, they appear lost to reason and feeling; their spirits broken; and their faculties sunk in a species of stupor which I am unable adequately to describe. They appear degraded even below the Negro Slave. The succession of hardships, without any protecting law to which they can appeal for any alleviation or redress, seems to destroy every spring of exertion or hope in their minds. They appear indifferent to everything around them; abject, servile, and brutish." *

        There is ample proof that bondage and severity have a certain tendency to degrade the mind, and to debase and brutalize the feelings of mankind. It is impossible to mark the state of degradation to which the Negro is reduced, and not inquire,--how men can be elevated, while the burdens which oppress them are so great?--how they can be industrious, when the sinews of industry are so much crippled? --or, how they can be expected to discover anything like even a virtuous emulation, while precluded by their circumstances from rising above a condition of Slavery the most hopeless and wretched? But let the shackles be loosed from the Negro; let him feel the invigorating influence of freedom; let hope enter his bosom; and let him be cheered and animated with the prospect of reward for his exertions, and the foul calumny of his great and inevitable inferiority will soon be refuted in himself!


* Wilberforce's Appeal in behalf of the Negro Slaves of the West Indies.
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CHAPTER III.

Theory of Rousseau and Lord Kaimes--A false one--Injurious to the best interests of humanity, and contrary to Scripture--Injuries done to the Negro on the grounds of inferiority--Shocking effects resulting from this idea--Civilized nations before the Christian era--Romans, and their ancestors--Our own--Anecdote related by Dr. Philip--Cicero's remarks respecting them--Christian guilt towards Aborigines--Lamentable facts--Dr. Johnson on European conquest--Slavery justified by representing the Negro a distinct species--And even a brute--This supported by some writers--Arguments of Long--Strange book published at Charleston --Chamber's reply--Negroes said to admit their own inferiority--Remarks of Dr. Channing on this subject--Inferiority ascribed to other races--The Esquimaux--The whole refuted by Dr. Lawrence.

        Those who are acquainted with the writings of Rousseau, Lord Kaimes, and others belonging to the same school, are not ignorant of the attempt which has been made, in opposition to the Bible, to establish the theory, already alluded to, which represents the human race as derived from different stocks. Apart from the authority on which the Mosaic account of the creation of Man is built, the consideration of God's having "made of one blood all the nations of the earth," is much more simple and beautiful, and has a greater tendency to promote love and concord, than that which traces the different members of the human family to different origins, giving rise to invidious distinctions, flattering the pride of one class of men, and affording a pretext to justify the oppression of another. Had this opinion, which we are now combating, been perfectly innocuous in its operation, or had it been confined to philosophers, we might have left it to its fate; but its prevalence, and the use which has been made of it, show that it is as hostile to the best interests of humanity as it is contrary to the truth of Scripture.*

        It is a singular fact, that the injuries done to the Negroes
* Dr. Philip.

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on the East and West coasts of Africa, the murders formerly committed by the colonists on the Hottentots and Bushmen of South Africa, and the privations and sufferings endured by the Slaves in America and the Colonies, are justified on this principle, as involving in them a consequent inferiority. "Expostulate with many farmers in South Africa," says Dr. Philip, "for excluding their Slaves and Hottentots from their places of worship, and denying them the means of religious instruction, and they will tell you at once that they are an inferior race of beings. Asking a farmer in the district of Caledon, whether a Black Man standing by him could read, he looked perfectly astonished at the question, and supposed he had quite satisfied my query by saying, 'Sir, he is a Slave.' In the same manner, the cruelties exercised by the Spaniards upon the Americans were justified by their wretched theologians, by denying that the poor Americans were men, because they wanted beards, the sign of virility among other nations."

        The effects of this pretended idea of inferiority have been carried to an extent, towards the African, truly awful to contemplate. In their own country, they have become the most wretched of the human race; duped out of their possessions, their land, and their liberty, they have entailed on their offspring a state of existence, to which, even that of Slavery might bear the comparison of happiness, and to which death itself would be decidedly preferable. Such may not be the case universally, but it is the treatment by which the aborigines of Africa have been generally reduced to a state of degradation and wretchedness, surpassed in debasement only by the heartless barbarities of many Europeans, who, pretending to believe that the natives are destitute of the qualities, and excluded from the rights of human beings, find no difficulty in classing them with the beasts of the forest, and destroying them without compunction, that they may obtain undisturbed possession of their country. The only consideration from which their

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lives have often been either spared or preserved, seems to have been, that in a state scarcely above that of oxen or of dogs, they might perform every species of labour or drudgery in the dwellings or farms of those who now occupy the lands on which the herds of their ancestors formerly grazed in freedom.

        "A farmer," says Barrow, in 1797, "thinks he cannot proclaim a more meritorious action than the murder of one of these people. A farmer from Graaff-Reinet, being asked in the Secretary's office a few days before we left town, if the savages were numerous or troublesome on the road, replied, 'he had only shot four,' with as much composure and indifference, as if he had been speaking of four partridges. I myself have heard one of the humane colonists boast of having destroyed with his own hands nearly three hundred of these unfortunate wretches."

        A witness quoted by Pringle, says, "If the master took serious dislike to any of these unhappy creatures, it was no uncommon practice to send out the Hottentot on some pretended message, and then to follow and shoot him on the road."

        But the sad effects of this notion of inferiority are no where so conspicuously manifested as in the brutal treatment to which the poor African has been doomed in the New World, and in the degrading epithets by which he is designated by his lordly task-masters. The oppressors of the Negro have committed a serious moral mistake, in perverting what should constitute a claim to kindness and indulgence into a justification or palliation of their conduct in enslaving their fellow men, and of that revolting and anti-christian practice, the traffic in human flesh; a practice branded with the double curse of degradation to the oppressor and the oppressed. The very argument, which has been used for defending the wrongs committed against the African, appears to me to be a tenfold aggravation of the enormity. Superior endowments, higher intellect,

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greater capacity for knowledge, arts, and science, should be employed in extending the blessings of civilization, and in multiplying the enjoyments of social life; not as a means of oppressing the weak and ignorant, or of plunging those who are already represented as naturally low in the intellectual scale, still more deeply into the abyss of barbarism.

        When we see a strong and well armed person, attack one equally powerful and well prepared, we are indifferent as to the issue; or we may look on with that interest which the qualities called forth by the contest are calculated to inspire: but if the strong attack the weak, if the well armed assail the defenceless, if the ingenuity, knowledge, and skill, the superior arts and arms of civilized life are combined, to rob the poor savage of his only valuable property--personal liberty--we turn from the scene with indignation and abhorrence.

        "They who possess higher gifts should remember the condition under which they are enjoyed:--'From him to whom much is given, much will be required!' What a commentary on this head is furnished by Negro Slavery, as carried on, and permitted, by religious nations, by Christian Kings, Catholic Majesties, Defenders of the Faith, &c.!"*

        For the sake of argument, let us admit that there may exist an intellectual imbecility in the mind of the Negro, --instead of its justifying our inflicting upon him the miseries of Slavery, does it not rather give him an additional claim to our sympathy and Christian compassion? If the retreating forehead and depressed vertex do indicate an inferiority in the mental capacity of the Negro, does it prove that he is not a human being,--that he has not an immortal soul,--or that he is not an accountable creature? Does it prove that he is not capable of every rational act, and that he is unendowed with every social feeling which is
* Lawrence.

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essential to a man? Does it prove that the Negro race are less the children of "our Father who is in heaven," or authorize us to refuse a practical recognition of their being a part of the human family? Monstrous absurdity! If the dark-coloured race is admitted to be inferior in intellectual endowments, or physical proportions to the White, what, before the Christian era, were many of those nations which now stand amongst the most refined and intelligent?

        If we desire to ascertain how much the character of a people depends upon the influence of the circumstances under which they live, let us look at the contrast exhibited between many nations which at one period attained to the highest celebrity, and their present condition. If further evidence of this fact be wanting, we may vary our illustration, and show how nations which were once viewed as deficient in mental capacity, have reached the highest place in the scale of empire, while the very nations, which at one period contemned them, have sunk into a state of degeneracy.

        Take a number of children from the nursery, place them apart, and allow them to grow up without instruction and discipline; the first state of society into which they would naturally form themselves would be that of the hunter. While food could be obtained by the chase, they would never think of cultivating the ground: inured to hardships, they would despise many things, which, in a civilized state of society, are deemed indispensable. In seasons of common danger, they would unite their efforts in their own defence; their union, being nothing more than a voluntary association, would be liable to frequent interruptions; the affairs of their little community would be, to them, the whole world; and the range of their thoughts would be limited to the exercise which their fears and hopes might have, in relation to their own individual danger or safety.

        The Romans might have found an image of their own ancestors in the representation they have given of ours.

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And we may form not an imperfect idea what our ancestors were, at the time Julius Cæsar invaded Britain, by the present condition of some of the African tribes. In them we may perceive, as in a mirror, the features of our progenitors, and, by our own history, we may learn the extent to which such tribes may be elevated by means favourable to their improvement.*

        When the inhabitants of a free country are heard justifying the injuries inflicted upon the natives of Africa, or opposing the introduction of liberal institutions among any portion of them, on the vulgar ground that they are an inferior class of beings to themselves, it is but fair to remind them, that there was a period, when Cicero considered their own ancestors as unfit to be employed even as Slaves in the house of a Roman citizen. "Seated one day in the house of a friend in Cape Town," says Dr. Philip, "with a bust of Cicero in my right hand, and one of Sir Isaac Newton on the left, I accidentally opened a book on the table at that passage in Cicero's letter to Atticus, in which the philosopher speaks so contemptuously of the natives of Great Britain.** Struck with the curious coincidence arising from the circumstances in which I then found myself placed, pointing to the bust of Cicero, and then to that of Sir Isaac Newton, I could not help exclaiming, 'Hear what that man says of that man's country!' "

        Were it not so indubitably recorded on the page of history, we should hardly be willing to believe that there was a time when our ancestors, the ancient Britons, went nearly without clothing, painted their bodies in fantastic fashion, offered up human victims to uncouth idols, and
* Dr. Philip.

        ** Britannici belli exitus expectatur: constat enim aditus insulæ esse munitus mirificis molibus: etiam illud jam cognitum est, neque argenti scrupulum esse ullum in illa insula, neque ullam spem prædæ nisi ex mancipiis: ex quibus nullos puto, te literis aut musicis eruditos expectare." Epist. Ad. Atticum, 1. iv., Epist. 16.


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lived in hollow trees, or rude habitations, which we should now consider unfit for cattle. Making all due allowance for the different state of the world, it is much to be questioned whether they made more rapid advances than have been effected by many African nations, and that they were really sunk into the lowest degree of barbarism is unquestionable.

        Cicero relates that the ugliest and most stupid Slaves in Rome came from England! Moreover, he urges his friend Atticus "not to buy Slaves from Britain, on account of their stupidity, and their inaptitude to learn music and other accomplishments." With Cæsar's opinion of our ancestors, we are, perhaps, some of us not sufficiently acquainted. He describes the Britons generally, as a nation of very barbarous manners: "Most of the people of the interior," he says, "never sow corn, but live upon milk and flesh, and are clothed with skins." In another place, he remarks, "In their domestic and social habits, the Britons are as degraded as the most savage nations. They are clothed with skins; wear the hair of their heads unshaven and long, but shave the rest of their bodies, except their upper lip, and stain themselves a blue colour with woad, which gives them a horrible aspect in battle." *


                         "Let us not then the Negro Slave despise,
                         Just such our sires appeared in Cæsar's eyes."

        Should we not laugh at Tacitus or Pliny, if from the circumstances thus related, they had condemned the British Islands to an eternity of Boeotian darkness--to be the officina of hereditary bondage and transmitted helplessness?
* Quoted by Dr. Prichard, who also, after much research, imagines "the ancient Britons were nearly on a level with the New Zealanders or Tahitians of the present day, or perhaps not very superior to the Australians." Researches; III, 182. At page 187 of the same volume, Dr. Prichard also remarks, "Of all Pagan nations the Gauls and Britons appear to have had the most sanguinary rites. They may well be compared in this respect with the Ashanti, Dahomehs, and other nations of Western Africa."

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Yet this is the sort of reasoning employed by the perpetrators and apologists of Negro Slavery. Alas, for Christian guilt! can it be equalled by any Pagan crime? First we murder the aborigines of North America, to take possession of their hunting grounds, and then we rob the distant land of Africa of its inhabitants, to cultivate our stolen possessions. Thus do one set of "barbarians melt away before the sun of civilization," that we may fatten on their spoils, and another is pronounced "non compos mentis," that we may plunder them of the only property the God of nature has given to Man!


                         "We think unmoved of millions of our race,
                         Swept from thy soil by cruelties prolonged;
                         Another clime then ravaged to replace
                         The wretched Indians;--Africa now wronged
                         To fill the void where myriads lately thronged."

        It is a lamentable fact, that in our treatment generally, of what we term Savage nations, all respect for common honesty, justice, and humanity, appears to be utterly forgotten by men otherwise generous, kind, and apparently sensitively honourable. In an estimate formed by Dr. Johnson of what mankind have lost or gained by European conquest, having adverted to the cruelties which have been committed, and the manner in which the laws of religion have been outrageously violated, he adds, "Europeans have scarcely visited any coast, but to gratify avarice and extend corruption, to arrogate dominion without right, and practise cruelty without incentive," and he then gives it as his opinion, that "it would have been happy for the oppressed, and still more happy for the invaders, that their designs had slept in their own bosoms."

        The system of oppression under which the African race suffer so grievously, renders it imperative on their oppressors to allege some reasons, as plausible as they are able, in their own defence. That Slave merchants, who traffic

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in human flesh, and Negro drivers, who use their fellow-creatures worse than cattle, should attempt to justify their conduct by depressing the African to a level with the brute, is what might reasonably be expected. They lay great stress on the alleged fact, that Negroes resemble more nearly than Europeans, the monkey tribe; and they have even gone so far as to pronounce them, on the ground of this approximation, not only a distinct species, but "brute animals sent for the use of man." Thus do the oppressors of their fellow-men satisfy their consciences by pretending to believe that the unfortunate Negro is a brute, or at best, only a connecting link between the brute creation and Man. They desire to degrade him below the standard of humanity, attempting to deface all title to the Divine image from his mind; thus do they reconcile the cruel hardships under which the victims of their oppression are still doomed to groan, in the islands and on the continent of the New World.

        It has already been stated that some writers on natural history, and particularly on that of Man, have regarded the natives of Africa as inferior to Europeans in intellect, and in the organization contrived for the development or exercise of the mental faculties. By these writers it is maintained that Negroes make a decided approach towards the native inferiority of the monkey tribe--that they are endowed by the Creator with the noble gift of reason in a very inferior degree, when compared with the more favoured inhabitants of Europe. Two descriptions of men have come to this conclusion. The first are those who have had to contend with the passions and vices of the Negro in his purely Pagan state, and who have applied no other instrument to elicit the virtues they have demanded than the stimulus of the whip and the stem voice of authority. Who can wonder that they have failed? They have expected "to reap where they have not sown," and "to gather where nothing has been strown;" they have required

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moral ends, without the application of moral means; and their failure, therefore, leaves the question of the capacity of the Negro untouched. and proves nothing but their own folly. In the second class may be included our minute philosophers, who take the gauge of intellectual capacity row the formation of the bones of the head, and link morality with the contour of the countenance; men who measure mind by the rule and compasses, and estimate capacity for knowledge and salvation by a scale of inches and the acuteness of angles.

        Several of the writers alluded to, have spoken positively of the Negro, as being only one remove from the brute, and as forming the connecting link between the brute creation and the human race. Montesquieu at once pronounces them not human beings, but as occupying an intermediate rank below the Whites, and destined by their Creator to be the Slaves of their superiors. The historian Long goes through a lengthy course of argument, and occupies many quarto pages, to establish what he conceives a great probability, if not certainty, that some of the African tribes must have a close affinity with the ourang-outang. To these may be added the perverted judgment of a Jamaica historian, whose statements, made in 1774, may be accounted for when it is mentioned that he was a Slaveholder, while the Slave Trade was in all its vigour there. He says:--"Their brutality somewhat diminishes when imported young, after they become habituated to clothing and a regular discipline of life; but many are never reclaimed, and continue savages, in every sense of the word, to their latest period. We find them marked with the same bestial manners, stupidity, and vices, which debase their brethren in Africa, who seem to be distinguished from the rest of mankind, not in person only, but in possessing, in abstract, every species of inherent turpitude that is to be found dispersed at large among the rest of the human creation, with scarcely a single virtue to extenuate this

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shade of character, differing in this particular from all other men. When we reflect on the nature of these men, and their dissimilarity to the rest of mankind, must we not conclude that they are a different species of the same genus?"

        We might reasonably anticipate, that in the present enlightened age, opinions like these would have given way before the many proofs which have been adduced to show how grossly unfounded they are. But we have no occasion to refer to the past century for effusions of a proud and false philosophy, denying that the Negro has any claim to humanity, or, to say the very least of him, that he is so degenerate a variety of the human species, as to defy all cultivation of mind, and all correction of morals.

        It is but a few years since a strange book was published at Charleston, in South Carolina, entitled "The Natural History of the Negro Race," purporting to be a translation from the French of J. H. Guenebault. Its professed object is to prove, by investigation, that Negroes are not human beings, in the full sense of that expression, but are an inferior order of animals, forming a species between the ourang-outang or chimpanzee, and the White race of mankind. This audacious attempt is made with some show of ability. A very extensive physiological, metaphysical, and historical investigation is instituted, and no point is left unnoticed which is supposed to bear evidence against the unhappy black-skinned race.

        The volume commences with a long dedication to the members of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Charleston, setting forth, in the most affectedly pious manner imaginable, the beneficence of the Deity in giving such wonderful variety in all His works, which is of course intended to smooth the way for what is to follow. The first chapter refers to the general features, characteristics, figure, and colour of the Negro species; the second refers to the race in particular nations; the third is a comparison between the Negro, the White Man, and the ourang-outang;

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the fourth enters into the subject of the comparative anatomy of the Negro and the European; the fifth treats of Negro diseases and degenerations; the sixth and seventh of Mulattos and Creoles; and, lastly, there is a defence of Slavery. The author of this singular production asserts that "Every thing serves to prove that Negroes form not only a race, undoubtedly a distinct species, from the beginning of the world, as we see other species among other living beings." "Some Negroes," he says, "have been brought up with care and attention, have received in schools and colleges the same education given to White children, and yet they have been unable to reach the same degree of intellect." "Negroes," he continues, "are conscious that an affinity exists between them and monkeys, as, according to all travellers, they look upon monkeys as wild and lazy Negroes. In fact, when we consider the great analogy between monkeys, Hottentots, and Papous,--so great that Galen, in the anatomy of a Pitheque, mistook him for a man; when we remark how intelligent the ourang-outang is, how much his bearing, actions, and habits, are similar to those of Negroes, and how easily he is instructed, it seems that we must acknowledge the most imperfect Negroes to be next to the most perfect monkeys."

        Space admits not of our entering into the pleading of the author of South Carolina on this subject; suffice it to say, his argument in favour of the existence of Slavery is drawn from an alleged inferiority in the Negro races, as well as from the countenance which he asserts is given to a state of perpetual servitude in the Old and New Testaments. The inferiority of the Negro, in a mental, moral, and religious point of view, as well as the perversion of the Scriptures in support of Slavery, will be entered into more fully in the subsequent pages.

        The grand conclusion arrived at by the author, from all his specious arguments, is, that--"For such men, necessity is the only possible restraint--FORCE,

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the only law; so decreed by their constitution and climate."

        The talented editors of the "Edinburgh Journal," in reviewing this singular production, and quoting from it more at length, make the following very appropriate concluding observations:--"The answer to all these arguments is, we think, not difficult. Supposing that the Negroes differ in all the alleged respects from the Whites, the difference, we would say, is not such as to justify the Whites in making a property of them, and treating them with cruelty. But the Negroes are not, in reality, beyond the pale of humanity, either physically or mentally. Their external configuration is not greatly different from that of Whites. Their being the same mentally, is shewn by the fact, that many Negroes have displayed intellectual and moral features equal to those of Whites of high endowment. We might instance Carey, Jenkins, Cuffe, Gustavus Vassa, Toussaint, and many others. If any one Negro has shewn a character identical with that of the White race, the whole family must be the same, though in general inferior. The inferiority is shewn to be not in kind, but in degree; and it would be just as proper for the clever Whites to seize and enslave the stupid ones, as for the Whites in general to enslave the Blacks in general. The Blacks, moreover, have shewn a capability of improvement. They have shewn that, as in many districts of even our own island of Great Britain, many parts of mind appear absent only when not brought out or called into exercise, and that, by education, the dormant faculties can be awakened and called into strength, if not in one generation, at least in the course of several. The tendency of Slavery is to keep down, at nearly the level of brutes, beings who might be brightened into intellectual and moral beauty."

        With regard to the assertion of the author of the strange book alluded to, that "Negroes are conscious of their affinity with monkeys," and consequently acknowledge

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their own inferiority to the other races of mankind, I utterly deny the truth of such an assertion, unless, indeed, his allusion has reference only to those in a state of Slavery. If so, an answer may be given him in this particular, in the words of Dr. Channing:--

        "The moral influence of Slavery is to destroy the proper consciousness and spirit of a Man. The Slave, regarded and treated as property, bought and sold like a brute, denied the rights of humanity, unprotected against insult, made a tool, and systematically subdued, that he may be a manageable, useful tool, how can he help regarding himself as fallen below his race? How must his spirit be crushed? How can he respect himself? He becomes bowed to servility. This word, borrowed from his condition, expresses the ruin wrought by Slavery within him. The idea that he was made for his own virtue and happiness scarcely dawns on his mind. To be an instrument of the physical material good of another, whose will is his highest law, he is taught to regard as the great purpose of being. The whips and imprisonment of Slavery, and even the horrors of the middle passage from Africa to America, these are not to be named in comparison with this extinction of the proper consciousness of a human being, with the degradation of a man into a brute.

        "It may be said that the Slave is used to his yoke; that his sensibilities are blunted; that be receives, without a pang or a thought, the treatment which would sting other men to madness. And to what does this apology amount? It virtually declares, that Slavery has done its perfect work, has quenched the spirit of humanity, that the Man is dead within the Slave. It is not, however, true that this work of abasement is ever so effectually done as to extinguish all feeling. Man is too great a creature to be wholly ruined by Man. When he seems dead he only sleeps. There are occasionally some sullen murmurs in the calm of Slavery, showing that life still beats in the soul, that

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the idea of Rights cannot be wholly effaced from the human being.

        "It would be too painful, and it is not needed, to detail the processes by which the spirit is broken in Slavery. I refer to one only, the selling of Slaves. The practice of exposing fellow-creatures for sale, of having markets for men as for cattle, of examining the limbs and muscles of a man and woman as of a brute, of putting human beings under the hammer of an auctioneer, and delivering them, like any other article of merchandise, to the highest bidder, all this is such an insult to our common nature, and so infinitely degrading to the poor victim, that it is hard to conceive of its existence, except in a barbarous country.

        "The violation of his own rights, to which he is inured from birth, must throw confusion over his ideas of all human rights. He cannot comprehend them; or, if he does, how can he respect them, seeing them, as he does, perpetually trampled upon in his own person?"

        But, to return to our enlightened author of South Carolina,--I shall dismiss him by remarking, that it is a strange thing, in this nineteenth century, pre-eminent for the advancement of light and knowledge, to have occasion to assert, that the idea of the least identity between the Negro and any portion of the brute creation is as false and unfounded as it is shocking and detestable. Such an absurd theory, though always publishing its own falsehood, may serve its purpose, when civilized men themselves turn savages to advocate Slavery; "but let facts bring out the truth, as they do in the circumstance, that two native Africans have recently gone back from England, to the plains which gave them birth, as clergymen!"*

        That very little importance can be attached to the allegation of an external resemblance between the Negro and inferior animals, may be clearly inferred from the fact, that the same remark has been made, even by intelligent
* "Jamaica: Enslaved and Free."

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travellers, respecting particular people of other varieties of the human race. Regnard concludes his description of the Laplanders with these words: "voilà la description de ce petit animal qu'on appelle Lapon, et l'on peut dire qu'il n'y en a point, après le singe, qui approche plus l'homme." An Esquimaux, who was brought to London by Cartwright, when he first saw a monkey, asked "Is that an Esquimaux?" His companion adds, "I must confess, that both the colour and contour of the animal's countenance had considerable resemblance to the people of their nation." N. del Techo calls the Caaiguas of South America, "tam simiis similes, quam hominibus;" and J. R. Forster, in the observations of his journey round the world, asserts, "the inhabitants of the island of Mallicollo, of all the people whom I have seen, have the nearest relationship to the monkies."

        Whether we investigate the physical or the moral nature of Man, we recognize at every step the limited extent of our knowledge. That the greatest ignorance has prevailed on this subject, even in modern times, and among men of reputed learning and acuteness, is evinced by the strange notion very strenuously asserted by Monboddo and Rousseau, and firmly believed by some, that Man and the monkey, or at least the ourang-outang, belong to the same species, and are not otherwise distinguished from each other, than by circumstances which can be accounted for, by the different physical and moral agencies to which they have been exposed. The former of these writers even supposes that the human race once possessed tails! and he says "the ourang-outangs are proved to be of our species, by marks of humanity that are incontestible;" a poor compliment to Man, indeed.

        "The completely unsupported assertions of Monboddo and Rousseau," says Dr. Lawrence, only show that they were equally unacquainted with the structure and functions of men and monkeys; not conversant with zoology and

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physiology, and therefore entirety destitute of the principles on which alone a sound judgment can be formed concerning the natural capabilities and destiny of animals, as well as the laws according to which certain changes of character, certain departures from the original stock, may take place."

        "The peculiar characteristics of Man," continues the above writer, "appear to one so very strong, that I not only deem him a distinct species, but also put him into a separate order by himself. His physical and moral attributes place him at a much greater distance from all other orders of mammalia, than those are from each other respectively."

Illustration

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CHAPTER IV

Deduction of an affinity between the Negro and the brute creation, a mere subterfuge--European physiognomy often similar to the Negro's--Handsome Africans described by many travellers--Some remarkably beautiful --Not difficult to lose the impression of their colour--Blumenbach's Negro craniæ--Imperceptible gradations of one race into another--Further analogies in animals--Effects of the civilizing process in improving the form of the head and features--Exemplifications--Illustrated in the case of Kaspar Hauser--Testimony of Dr. Philip on this subject--Dr. Knox on Negro craniæ--His important conclusion--Dr. Tiedeman's experiments--Conclusive observations of Blumenbach--And others--The civilization of many African nations superior to that of European Aborigines--No deviations in the races of Man sufficient to constitute distinct species--Departures from the general rule accounted for--Equal variations observable in our own country--Remarkably exemplified in Ireland.

        It is evident than that the deduction of an affinity with the brute creation, from the allegation of a resemblance between the Negro and the Monkey, is a mere subterfuge. The Negroes of Mozambique, whom Barrow describes as inferior to many other Africans, may be instanced as exhibiting those general characteristics which are mostly associated with our ideas of Negro physiognomy. There are many Europeans who have countenances exactly resembling these and other Negroes; and varieties and intermediate gradations, almost imperceptible, may be traced, connecting all the different races. We perceive, indeed, an astonishing difference, when we place an ugly Negro (for there are such, as well as ugly Europeans,) against a specimen of a Grecian ideal model; but when we examine the intermediate gradations, this striking diversity vanishes. "The physiological characters of the Negro," says Dr. Lawrence, "taken in a general sense, are as loosely defined as his geographical distribution; for among the Negroes, there are some, who, in smoothness of the hair, and general beauty of form, excel many Europeans.

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        Clapperton describes the sultan of Boussa, as having features more like a European than a Negro. Lander was struck with the regularity of features, elegance of form, and impressive dignity of manners and appearance in the sable monarch Khiama.

        "Of the Negroes of both sexes," says Blumenbach, "whom I have attentively examined, in very considerable numbers, as well as in the portraits and profiles of others, and in the numerous Negro crania, which I possess, or have seen, there are not two completely resembling each other in their formation: they pass, by insensible gradations, into the forms of the other races, and approach to the other varieties, even in their most pleasing modifications. A Creole, whom I saw at Yverdun, born of parents from Congo, and brought from St. Domingo by the Chevalier Treytorrens, had a countenance, of which no part, not even the nose, and rather strongly marked lips, were very striking, much less, displeasing: the same features, with an European complexion, would certainly have been generally agreeable."

        The testimony of Le Maire, in his journey to Senegal and Gambia, is to the same effect; that there are Negresses, except in colour, as handsome as European women.

        Vaillant says of the Kafir women, that, setting aside the prejudice which operates against their colour, many might be accounted handsome, even in a European country.

        The accurate Adanson confirms this statement in his description of the Senegambians:--"Les femmes sont a peu prés de la taille des hommes, également bien faites. Leur form est d'une finesse et d'une douceur extrême. Elles ont les yeux noirs, bien fendus, la bouche et les levres petites, et les traits du visage, bien proportionnés. Il s'en trouve plusieurs d'une beauté parfaite. Elles ont beaucoup de vivacité, et sur tout un air aisé de liberté qui fait plaisir."

        The Jaloffs, according to Mungo Park, although of a deep black, have not the protuberant lip or the flat nose of

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the African countenance. Moore testifies concerning this tribe to the same effect:--"The Jaloffs," says he, "have handsome features." "Although their colour is a deep black," says Golberry, "and their hair woolly, they are robust and well made, and have regular features. Their countenances," he adds, "are ingenuous, and inspire confidence; they are honest, hospitable, generous, and faithful. The women are mild, very pretty, well made, and of agreeable manners."*

        Pigasetta states, that the Congo Negroes are very like the Portuguese, except in colour; and Dampier, in his account of Natal, describes the natives as having an agreeable countenance.

        Dr. Philip, speaking of a family of Bechuanas whom he visited, says:--"We were very much struck with their fine figures, and the dignified, easy manner with which they received us. Their countenances and manners discovered marks of cultivation, accompanied with an air of superiority, which at once marked the class of people to which they belonged, and which, under other circumstances, would have been admired in an English drawing-room."**

        Isert, a Danish traveller, says:--"Almost all the Negroes are of good stature, and those of Acra have remarkably fine features. The contour of the face, indeed, among the generality of these people, is different from that of Europeans; but, at the same time, faces are found among them, which, excepting the black colour, would in Europe be considered beautiful."***

        Abdallah, a native of Guber, in West Africa, although having the true Negro features and colour, is described as having a very intelligent, preposessing countenance. ****

        "On my late tour, in August, 1825," says Dr. Philip, "I first came in contact with the Bechuanas. I have
* Golberry's Travels, vol. 1.

** Philip's Researches.

*** Philosoph. Mag. III. 144.

**** Annals of Oriental Literature, 537.

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seldom seen a finer race of people; the men were generally well made, and had an elegant carriage; and many of the females were slender, and extremely graceful. I could see at once, from their step and air, that they had never been in Slavery. They had an air of dignity and independence in their manners, which formed a striking contrast to the crouching and servile appearance of the Slave."*

        On visiting a family of this tribe, Dr. Philip observes, "I had in my train a young man who was a native of Lattakoo; and when they found out there was a person in our company who understood their language, they were quite in raptures. I think I never saw two finer figures than the father and the eldest son. They were both above six feet; and their limbs were admirably proportioned. The father had a most elegant carriage, and was tall and thin; the son, a lad about 18 years of age, was equally well proportioned, and had one of the finest open countenances that can possibly be imagined. The second son was inferior in stature, but he had a fine countenance also; and, while they indulged in all their native freedom, animated by the conversation of my Bechuana, or began to tell the story of their misfortunes, expressing the consternation with which they were seized when they saw their children and parents killed by an invisible weapon, and their cattle taken from them, they became eloquent in their address; their countenances, their eyes, their every gesture, spoke to the eyes and to the heart."**

        "Teysho, chief counsellor of Mateebé, King of the Wankeets of South Africa, is a handsome man," says the same writer; "and the ladies who were with him were fine looking women, and had an air of superiority about them."***

        We have the testimony of another recent traveller, and resident for some time in South Africa. Thomas Pringle, in speaking of the Bechuana, or great Kafir family, says: "Some of them were very handsome. One man of the
* Philip's African Researches.

** Idem.

*** Idem.

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Tamaha tribe, was, I think, the finest specimen of the human figure I ever beheld in any country--fully six feet in height, and graceful as an Apollo. A female of the same party, the wife of a chief, was also a beautiful creature, with features of the most handsome and delicate European mould."*

        It has often been asserted, that independently of the woolly hair and the dark complexion of the Negroes, there are sufficient differences between them and the rest of mankind, to mark them as a very peculiar tribe. This may be the case to some extent. Yet from the foregoing remarks of accredited travellers, it is evident that the principal differences are not so constant as may generally be imagined. Many Negroes, we have been informed, strike Europeans as being remarkably beautiful. This would not be the case if they deviated much from the European standard of beauty. Slaves in the Colonies, brought from the east coast of intertropical Africa, and from Congo, are often destitute of those peculiarities, which, in our eyes, constitute ugliness and deformity. "In looking over a congregation of Blacks," observe Sturge and Harvey, "it is not difficult to lose the impression of their colour. There is among them the same diversity of countenance and complexion, as among Europeans; and it is only doing violence to one's own feelings, to suppose for a moment that they are not made of the same blood as ourselves."**


                         "Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh thou art,
                         Coheritor of kindred being thou;
                         From the full tide that warm'd one mother's heart,
                         Thy veins and ours received the genial flow."

        The six Negro craniæ engraved in the two first decades of Blumenbach, exhibit very clearly the diversity of character in the African race; and prove, most unequivocally, that the variety existing in individuals amongst
* Pringle's "Sketches of South Aftica."

** Sturge and Harvey's West Indies.

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them, is certainly not less, but greater, than the difference between some of them and many Europeans.

        Amongst the numerous tribes or nations in each division, comprising the five great varieties which naturalists have assigned to Man, some come nearer to one, and some to the other of the two immediately adjoining varieties. If we had numerous specimens of each, we might arrange them in such a manner, that the interval between the most perfect Caucasian model, and the most exaggerated Negro or Mongolian specimens, should be filled with forms, conducting us from one to the other, by almost imperceptible gradations. We must, therefore, conclude that the diversities of features and skulls are not sufficient to authorize us in assigning the different races of mankind in which they occur, to species originally different. This conclusion will also be strengthened by the analogies of natural history, to which reference has already been made. The differences between human crania are not more considerable, nor even so remarkable, as some variations which occur in animals confessedly of the same species. "The head of the wild boar is widely different from that of the domestic pig. The different breeds of horses and dogs are distinguished by the most striking dissimilarities in the skull; in which view, the Neapolitan and Hungarian horses may be contrasted. The very singular form in the skull of the Paduan fowl is a more remarkable deviation from the natural structure, than any variation which occurs in the human head."*

        That the debasement of Slavery and oppression have a tendency to disfigure the "human form divine," is unquestionable; on the other hand it is equally well known, that civilization, education, and the influence of religion, have a powerful effect in improving both the form of the head and features, as well as the expression of the countenance. Many proofs might be adduced in corroboration of this statement, which is sufficiently obvious in comparing
* Lawrence's Lectures.

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persons of various degrees of education, mental culture, and refinement.

        Sturge and Harvey state, that a gentleman of great intelligence, long resident in Antigua, remarked to them, that the features of the Negroes had altered within his memory, which he attributed to their elevation by education and religious instruction. Their countenances expressed much more intelligence, and much less of the malignant passions.* "M. Durand observes, "that there is so great a difference between the Free Black people (in the Gambia country) and Slaves, in their features, that even an inexperienced eye distinguishes these classes of people immediately." John Candler, in his "Brief Notices of Hayti," in alluding to an alteration which he observed in the general physiognomy of the people, draws from it the following inference:--"Perhaps it is that the features become more agreeable, in proportion as people recede from the effects and influence of Slavery."

        As an illustration of the remarkable effects of education in altering the features of Man, and entirely changing the expression of his contenance, we have one circumstance on record which is very conclusive. I allude to the singular case of Kaspar Hauser, who was confined in a dungeon in a state of entire ignorance, till he was about eighteen years of age. His biographer, Anselm Von Fuerbach, President of the Bavarian Court of Appeal, whose authority may be strictly relied upon, relates, "that on Kasper's being thrown adrift in the world, when he was first discovered by the inhabitants of Nuremburg, his face was very vulgar: when in a state of tranquility, it was almost without any expression; and its lower features being somewhat prominent, gave him a brutish appearance. His weeping was only an ugly contortion of the mouth, and the staring look of his blue, but clear bright eyes, had also an expression of brutish obtuseness." Von Fuerbach expressed a wish at this period,
* "West Indies."

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that Kaspar's portrait might be taken by a skilful painter, because he felt assured that his features would soon alter. His wish was not gratified, but his prediction was soon fulfilled. The effect of education produced a wonderful alteration in his whole countenance; indeed, the formation of his face altered in a few months almost entirely; his countenance gained expression and animation, and the prominent lower features of his face receded more and more, so that his earlier physiognomy could scarcely any longer be recognized.*

        The alteration and improvement of the features, under the influence of the civilizing process, is elucidated by so many indubitable facts, that it is unnecessary to dwell longer upon this subject. If the operation of this influence could be applied more thoroughly and universally, it would cause a nearer approximation to each other, between the European and the African, and must tend, in a great measure, to obliterate those distinctions, on which the untenable theories of diversity of origin have been founded, and which have been adduced in favour of Negro Slavery. Dr. Philip, from the facts which have come under his observation, says, he has no hesitation in giving it as his opinion, that the complexion, the form of the countenance, and even the shape of the head, are much affected by the circumstances under which human beings are placed at an early age. In corroboration of the opinion here advanced, he says, "I have ad the satisfaction to remark at our Missionary stations, what appeared to me an improvement, not only in the countenance, but even in the shape of the head, for three successive generations."

        If, as travellers inform us, many Africans differ from Europeans in little else than colour, the peculiar construction of the head, on the faith of which, some would class them as a distinct species, appears to be by no means a constant character. Dr. Knox, who has entered minutely
* Life of Kaspar Hauser.

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into the study of Man, says, that in considering the lower specimens of humanity, too much importance has been attached to the cranium and the science of cranioscopy; for it is not in the skull, says he, but in the outer covering of the body or skeleton, that nature has placed the great marks of difference. "Strip off the integuments of Venus, and compare her with a Bush Woman, and the difference would be seen to be very slight." Dr. Knox, it may be observed, after considerable research, arrives at this important conclusion, "that there is an impassable gulf between higher order the of animals and the Negro."

        I am not very partial to phrenology, but if quantity of brain and mental superiority have a connection with each other, we have a high authority, that of Dr. Tiedeman, an eminent German, for believing that no inferiority exists in this respect, for he asserts that in quantity of brain they equal the fair races. Dr. Tiedeman communicated a paper to the British Royal Society, detailing the comparative examination of the brains of a number of Negroes--size, weight, conformation, &c., demonstrating that no material difference exists, between them and the brains of the White races.

        Professor Blumenbach, the great German physiologist, bestowed much labour and research on the question of Negro capacity. He collected a large number of skulls, and also a numerous library of the works of persons of African blood or descent. He is, perhaps, the greatest authority, in favour of the identity of species and equality of intellect of the Black and White races. It is to Blumenbach, that we are indebted for the most complete body of information on this subject, which he illustrated most successfully by his unrivalled collection of the craniæ of different nations, from all parts of the globe. His admirable work On the Varieties of the Human Species, contains a short sketch of the various formations of the skull in different nations; but he has treated the subject at greater length, and

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with more minute detail, in his Decades Craniorum, in which the craniæ themselves are represented of theirnatural size.

        From the results of the observations of Blumenbach and others, it appears then, that there is no characteristic whatever in the organization of the skull or brain of the Negro which affords a presumption of inferior endowment either of the intellectual or moral faculties. If it be asserted that the African nations are inferior to the rest of mankind, from historical facts, because they may be thought not to have contributed their share to the advancement of human arts and science, the Mandingoes may be instanced as a people evidently susceptible of high mental culture and civilization. They have not, indeed, contributed much towards the advancement of human arts and science, but they have evinced themselves willing and able to profit by these advantages when introduced among them. The civilization of many African nations is much superior to that of the aborigines of Europe, during the ages which preceded the conquests made by the Goths and Swedes in the north, and by the Romans in the southern part. The old Finnish inhabitants of Scandinavia had long, as it has been proved by the learned investigations of Rühs, the religion of fetishes, and a vocabulary as scanty as that of the most barbarous Africans. They had lived from ages immemorial without laws, or government, or social union; every individual in all things the supreme arbiter of his own actions; and they displayed as little capability of emerging from the squalid sloth of their rude and merely animal existence. When conquered by a people of Indo-German origin, who brought with them from the East the rudiments of mental culture, they emerged more slowly from their pristine barbarism than many of the native African nations have since done. Even at the present day, there are hordes in various parts of northern Asia, whose heads have the form belonging to the Tartars, to the Sclavonians, and other Europeans, but who are below many of the African tribes in civilization.

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        It is evident, from what has already been adduced, that there are no differences in the form or component parts of the human body, amongst the various races of men, in any degree similar to those which zoologists are accustomed to employ, as distinctive characters. The peculiarities by which they are distinguished from each other are not material ones, existing only so long as the circumstances in which they are placed, and which originally gave rise to them, remain unchanged, There is no variation in the number or form of the extremities, which being least acted upon by situation and habitude, are usually considered as the surest test of distinct species. All races of men have the same number of fingers, of toes, and of teeth; while a very slight variation in any of these in animals constitutes the mark of a distinct species.

        The departures from the general rule, in various nations, and frequently in individuals of the same country, are easily solved, by the abundance or scarcity of food, and by other causes favourable or otherwise to the development of the human growth. We may witness partial demonstrations of this in our own country; a difference is every where observable between the leisurely opulent classes and those who are of necessity subjected to considerable muscular exercise, and that in the open air. Take "the lady," who lives almost constantly within doors, employed at the utmost in netting or needlework, and contrast her slim and delicate frame with the coarse robust figure of the fish-woman or female field-labourer, who works hard in the open air all day, and it is impossible to doubt that circumstances influencing their physical conditions have made them respectively what they are. A similar contrast is observable between the powerful frames of a set of male rustics, such as we find in almost any of the provinces of Britain, and the diminutive forms of the inhabitants of London. The cause is obvious. Constant muscular exercise in the open air, accompanied by nutriment

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sufficient in quantity and healthful in kind, develope the bone and muscle of the one order of persons to a powerful degree, while the want of muscular exercise, and a life spent mostly within doors, act on the other with an opposite effect, notwithstanding the advantage of perhaps a superior diet. Even the natural difference as to softness and elegance between the sexes, may be reversed by the operation of these causes. The women of Normandy, who labour constantly in the fields, are become much more masculine in form than the petit maitres of Paris; and we could, in our own country, point out many men, who, from parlour life, are infinitely more feminine in stature and the texture of the flesh, than many rustic women. It generally requires a series of generations to bring out these results in their fullest extent; but even in the life of a single individual the effect may often be traced. Thus we often see, amongst the rustic population, females who are comparatively elegant in form and of delicate complexion in their early years, but who become coarse after a brief experience of out-door labour.

        When, in addition to hard labour and exposure to the elements, there is an absolute deficiency of food and comfort, human beings become, in the course of a few generations, much degraded in form and aspect. An interesting remark, which bears upon this subject, has been made respecting the natives of some parts of Ireland. "On the plantation of Ulster, and afterwards on the success of the British against the rebels of 1641 and 1689, great multitudes of the native Irish were driven from Armagh and the south of Down into the mountainous tract extending from the barony of Flews eastward to the sea; on the other side of the kingdom the same race were expelled into Leitrim, Sligo, and Mayo. Here they have been almost ever since, exposed to the worst effects of hunger and ignorance, the two great brutalizers of the human race." The descendants of these exiles, are now distinguished physically, from their

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kindred in Meath, and in other districts, where they are not in a state of personal debasement. They are remarkable for "open projecting mouths, prominent teeth and exposed gums: their advancing cheek-bones and depressed noses carry barbarism on their very front." In Sligo and northern Mayo, the consequences of two centuries of degradation and hardship exhibit themselves in the whole physical condition of the people, "affecting not only the features, but the frame, and giving such an example of human degradation from known causes, as almost compensates by its value to future ages, for the suffering and debasement which past generations have endured, in perfecting its appalling lesson. "Five feet two inches upon an average, bow-legged, abortively-featured; their clothing a wisp of rags, &c., these spectres of a people that once were well-grown, able-bodied, and comely, stalk abroad into the daylight of civilization, the annual apparitions of Irish ugliness and Irish want." In other parts of the island, where the people have never undergone the same influences of physical degradation, it is well known that the same race furnishes the most perfect specimens of human beauty and vigour, both mental and bodily."*


* Dublin University Magazine, vol. iv., p. 653.
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CHAPTER V.

Complexion the most obvious external distinction in Man--Supposed to subvert the theory of a Unity of Race--Analogous in animals--Chief cause of diversity of Colour--Gradation in different latitudes--And in the same latitudes, at various elevations--Peculiarities of Structure and Complexion become hereditary--Illustrations--In the House of Austria--The Gipsies--Jews--The most striking instance of peculiar National Countenance--Persons of the same blood--Amongst the great and noble--The colour of Man not always corresponding with Climate, explained--Persistency of Colour not so great as supposed--Instances of Negroes becoming light-coloured--Of Whites who have become black--True Whites not unfrequently born among the Black races--Several instances recorded--If Colour is a mark of inferiority in Man, it attaches a stigma to a great portion of the inhabitants of the world--The Hindoos--Their learning two thousand years ago --Natives of Terra del Fuego much lighter than the Negro, but inferior in the scale of intelligence--Conclusion from the facts already stated-- Black colour of the Negro a merciful provision--Dr. Copland's remarks on this subject--The inquiry into Unity of Species admirably summed up by Buffon.

        The most obvious external point of distinction among mankind is the colour of the skin, a peculiarity of little natural, but which has become one of great moral imporance. It is the dark colour of the African that has been especially urged, as subverting the theory of a unity of races. Although a general survey of organized bodies, in both the animal and vegetable kingdom, by no means leads us to regard Colour as one of their most important distinctions, but, on the contrary, will soon convince us that it may undergo very signal changes without essential alterations of their nature, (and the remark holds equally good of the human subject), yet the different tints and shades of the skin, offering themselves so immediately to observation, and forcing themselves in a manner, on the attention of the most incurious, have always been regarded

Page 57

by the generality of mankind as the most characteristic distinction of separate races.

        That this idea is entirely an erroneous one, is proved (as other cases of variation) by a reference to various parts of the animal creation, colour in them being in no instance a mark of species. If we take a collective survey of the diversities of colour, distinguishing particular breeds in animals, we shall discover that, with considerable allowance for the organization of new varieties in form and organic structure, the primitive type and hue is stamped upon each kind. Though the same animals vary in colour in the same country, each has more frequently its own distinctive peculiarity. Ælian informs us that Eubæa was famous for producing white oxen.* Blumenbach remarks, that "all the swine of Piedmont are black, those of Normandy white, and those of Bavaria are of a reddish brown." "The turkeys of Normandy," he states, "are all black; those of Hanover almost all white. In Guinea, the dogs and the gallinaceous fowls are as black as the human inhabitants of the same country."**

        To enter into a full discussion of this subject would lead us beyond our limits. A few more observations must suffice. That colour in Man is much influenced by climate is evident, and its variation appears to a considerable extent gradational throughout different parts of the globe. "The heat of the climate," says Buffon, "is the chief cause of blackness among the human species." Without assuring however, that solar heat is the alone agent affecting the colour of Man, the action of the sun in darkening the human tint is too obvious to be denied or unnoticed. How swarthy do Europeans become who seek their fortunes in the tropics or under the equator, who have their skins parched by the burning suns of "Afric or either Ind." The effects are soon visible in their complexion, in the most distinct manner. A child, however fair, if allowed to
* Ælian, lib. xii. cap. 36.

** Prichard.

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romp in the open air, without any shade over the head, will become what is called sunburt or dusky in a few months. If we observe the gradations of colour in different localities in the meridian under which we live, we shall perceive a very close relation to the heat of the sun in each respectively. Under the equator we have the deep black of the Negro; then the copper or olive of the Moors of Northern Africa; then the Spaniard and Italian, swarthy compared with other Europeans; the French still darker than the English; while the fair and florid complexion of England and Germany passes, more northerly, into the bleached Scandinavian white. At last, indeed, the gradation is broken, for a dusky tint reigns along the whole circuit of the Arctic border. The cause of this is not well explained; but the universal prevalence of a dusky hue under that latitude, seems clearly to indicate that there is something in the climate with which it is connected. During their short but brilliant summer, the sun, perpetually above the horizon, shines with an intensity unknown in temperate climates. May not the natives who spend this season almost perpetually in the open air, in hunting or fishing, receive from it that dark tint, which is not easily effaced? It may be partially smoke-brown, for the tenants of all this bleak circuit necessarily spend half the year in almost subterraneous abodes, heated by fires as ample as they have fuel to maintain; the smoke of which, deprived of any legitimate vent, constantly fills their apartments, and must have an effect in darkening the complexion, to which it very closely adheres.*

        It may be remarked, that in the central regions of America there are many shades of colour in different parts, amongst nations evidently one in origin, the variations bearing a general reference to the situations in which the people are respectively placed. For instance, the inhabitants of high grounds in Central America, are pale compared with
* Murray's North America.

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those of the low districts. Here we cannot doubt that the climate has operated, either in clearing the dusky or rendering dusky the white.

        In the case of the aborigines of Hindostan, who are dark in complexion, the action of climate is clearly observable; and is proved by the circumstances of the female inhabitants of the harem, derived from the same stock, being generally very fair. This is unquestionably the consequence of their secluded life, which prevents that exposure of person which their relations of the other sex necessarily undergo.

        Let us survey the gradations of colour on the continent of Africa itself. The inhabitants of the north are whitest; and as we advance southwards towards the line, and those countries in which the sun's rays fall more perpendicularly, the complexion gradually assumes a darker shade. And the same men, whose colour has been rendered black by the powerful influence of the sun, if they remove to the north, gradually become whiter (I mean their posterity), and eventually lose their dark colour.

        It is well known, that in whatever region travellers ascend mountains, they find the vegetation at every successive level altering its character, and gradually assuming the appearances presented in more northern countries; thus indicating, that state of the atmosphere, temperature, and physical agencies in general, assimilate, as we approach alpine regions, to the peculiarities locally connected with high latitudes. If, therefore, complexion, and other bodily qualities belonging to races of men, depend upon climate and external condition, we should expect to find them varying in reference to elevation of surface; and if they should be found actually to undergo such variations, this will be a strong argument that these external characters do, in fact, depend upon local conditions. Now, if we inquire respecting the physical character of the tribes inhabiting high tracts in warm countries, we shall find that they coincide

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with those which prevail in the level or low parts of more northern tracts. The Swiss, in the high mountains above the plain of Lombardy, have sandy, or brown hair. What a contrast presents itself to the traveller, who descends into the Milanese territory, where the peasants have black hair and eyes, with strongly marked Italian and almost Oriental features. In the higher part of the Biscayan country, instead of the swarthy complexion and black hair of the Castilians, the natives have a fair complexion, with light blue eyes, and flaxen, or auburn hair.*

        In the intertropical region, high elevations of surface, as they produce a cooler climate, occasion the appearance of light complexions. In the higher parts of Senegambia, which front the Atlantic, and are cooled by winds from the Western Ocean, where, in fact, the temperature is known to be moderate, and even cool at times, the light copper coloured Fúlahs are found surrounded on every side by black Negro nations inhabiting lower districts; and nearly in the same parallel, but on the opposite coast of Africa, are the high plains of Enarea and Kaffa, where the inhabitants are said to be fairer than the inhabitants of southern Europe.**

        It must be observed, that all varieties of structure and complexion which are congenital, that are a part of the original constitution impressed upon an individual from his birth, or that arise from the development of a natural tendency, are hereditary, or liable, with a greater or less degree of certainty, to be transmitted to offspring. Persistency in this respect is, however, far from invariable, and apparently, much more uncertain as regards colour than any peculiar formation of the body, as will be shown hereafter. In general, the peculiarities of the individual are transmitted to his immediate descendants; in other instances they have been observed to reappear in a subsequent generation, after having failed, through the operation of some circumstances
* Prichard.

** Idem.

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quite inexplicable, to show themselves in the immediate progeny. This fact has been noticed by Lucretius:--


                         "Fit quoque ut interdum similes existere avorum
                         Possint, et referant proavorum sæpe figuras;
                         Proptera quia multa modis primordia multis
                         Mist suo celant in corpore sæpe parentes,
                         Quæ patribus patres tradunt à stirpe profecta.
                         Inde Venus variâ producit sorte figuras,
                         Majorumque refert voltus vocesque, comasque."

        Many striking instances of singularities of structure, originating in the human kind, as well as among animals, have occasionally arisen and been propagated through many generations. The growth of supernumerary fingers or toes, and corresponding deficiencies, are circumstances of this description. Maupertius has mentioned this phenomenon; he assures us that there were two families in Germany, distinguished for several generations, by six fingers on each hand and the same number of toes on each foot.* Many similar peculiarities have been recorded as being transmitted through successive generations. **

        The thick lip introduced into the imperial house of Austria by the marriage of the Emperor Maximilian with Mary of Burgundy, is visible in their descendants to this day, after a lapse of three centuries.*** Haller observed, that his own family had been distinguished by tallness of stature for three generations, without excepting one out of numerous grandsons descended from one grandfather.****

        The gipsies afford an example of a people spread over all Europe for the last four centuries, and nearly confined by marriages, and their peculiar way of life, to their own tribe. In Transylvania, where there are great numbers of them, and the race remains pure, their features can be more accurately observed. In every country and climate, however, which they have inhabited, they preserve their
* Prichard.

** Idem, vol. i., chap. iv.

*** Coxe's Mem of the House of Austria.

**** Elem. Physiol. Lib. xxix.

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distinctive character so perfectly, that they are recognized at a glance, and cannot be confounded with the natives.

        But, above all, the Jews exhibit the most striking instance of a peculiar national countenance, so strongly marked in almost every individual, that persons the least accustomed to physiognomical observations, detect it instantly; though not easily understood or described. Religion has, in this case, most successfully exerted its power in preventing communion with other races; and this exclusion of intercourse has preserved the Jewish countenance so completely, in every soil and climate of the globe, that a miracle has been thought necessary to account for the continued transmission.

        It is owing to native or congenital peculiarity of form and complexion being transmitted by generation, that we perceive a general similitude in persons of the same blood. Hence we can frequently distinguish one brother, by his resemblance to another, or know a son by his likeness to the father or mother, or even to the grand-parents. All the individuals of some families are characterised by particular lines of countenance, and we frequently observe a peculiar feature continued in a family for many generations.

        The great and the noble, have generally had it more in their power to select the beauty of nations in marriage; and thus, while without system or design, they have merely gratified their own taste, they have distinguished their order, as much by elegant proportions of person, and beautiful features, as by its prerogatives in society. This remark is universally applicable. "The same superiority," says Cook, "which is observable in the erees, or nobles, in all the other islands, is found here, (Sandwich Islands.) Those whom we saw, were, without exception, perfectly well formed: whereas, the lower sort, besides their general inferiority, are subject to all the variety of make and figure that is seen in the populace of other countries."*
* Lawrence's Lectures.

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Dr. Philip was particularly struck with the difference between the appearance of the chiefs and their families, and the common people (in South Africa); the superior class were taller in their stature; "their countenances approached nearer to the European model than those of a lower rank; their complexions were lighter, and they had in air of nobility about them, which indicated that they were born to command."* "The men of Ashantee," says Bodwick, "are very well made; the women also are generally handsome; but it is only among the higher orders that beauty is to be found; and among them, free from all labour or hardship, I have not only seen the finest figures, but, in many instances, regular Grecian features, with brilliant eyes, set rather obliquely in the head."[ ** ]

        When any characters have become thoroughly worked into the system, it is only probable that they should for some time survive the causes which gave them birth, especially when no very active ones are in operation. This may serve for the solution of many cases, in which the colour of Man and the climate do not appear to correspond. The Chinese, descended from the Mongols, still retain a modified Mongol visage and shape. The natives of New South Wales spring from the Oriental Negro, and continuing, from their rude habits, exposed to the constant action of sun and air, they have remained black. In like manner may we account for Indostan being still peopled by races of various form and colour.

        These are cases especially urged by those who argue in favour of a diversity of species in Man, on the ground of features and colour. Instances are also adduced, in which individuals transplanted into another climate than that of their birth, are said to have retained their peculiarities of form and colour unaltered, and to have transmitted the same to their posterity for generations. But cases of this kind, though often substantiated to a certain extent, appear to
* Philip's Researches.

** Bodwick, p. 318

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have been much exaggerated, both as to the duration of time ascribed, and the absence of any change. It is highly probable, that the original characters will be found undergoing gradual modifications, which tend to assimilate them to those of the new country and situation.

        The Jews, however slightly their features may have assimilated to those of other nations amongst whom they are scattered, from the causes already stated, certainly form a very striking example as regards the uncertainty of perpetuity in colour. Descended from one stock, and prohibited by the most sacred institutions from intermarrying with the people of other nations, and yet dispersed, according to the divine prediction, into every country on the globe, this one people is marked with the colours of all: fair in Britain and Germany; brown in France and in Turkey; swarthy in Portugal and in Spain; olive in Syria and in Chaldea; tawny or copper-coloured in Arabia and in Egypt;* whilst they are "black at Congo in Africa."**

        The researches of Dr. Prichard have dispelled many of the ideas formerly entertained with respect to the general persistency of colour and features in the human race, especially of colour, on which the greatest stress has been laid. In some particular states of the constitution, the skin of Whites becomes, either wholly or in part, black. On the other hand, it is well known that the Black loses part of his original tint in a state of civilization. It is remarked, in the United States, that while Negroes kept at field-labour retain their pristine colour, those who are domesticated as servants become paler at the second and subsequent generations, and also lose their African features and other peculiarities. There are also instances of Negroes losing their original colour wholly or in part, under the influence of disease or some other constitutional affection. Dr. Strach records the case of a man who was converted by a fever into a perfect Negro in colour. Blumenbach
* Smith on the Complexion of the Human Species.

** Prichard.

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in the middle of his body, and also about the knees, without ill health having any concern, appparently, in producing these appearances. Other instances are recorded of Negroes, in different countries, without the action of any apparent disease, gradually losing their black colour and becoming as white as Europeans. An example of this kind is recorded in the "Transactions of the Philosophical Society." Klinkosch mentions the case of a Negro who lost his blackness and became yellow;* and Caldani declares that a Negro, at Venice, was black when brought during infancy to that city, but became gradually lighter coloured.** There are throughout Africa several nations, unquestionably Negro originally, who have acquired handsome forms and faces, as well as a lighter tint, in consequence of their living in mountainous regions, approaching to the temperate climate.

        Instances of white people who have become black, in consequence of migrating into tropical latitudes, are more rare, and not so distinctly made out; yet, according to several accurately informed and scientific writers, such as Waddington, Dr. Rüppell, and M. Rozet, there are black races in Africa, among the genuine descendants of emigrants from Arabia. Detachments of the Arabian family emigrated, eleven or twelve hundred years ago, into northern Africa, where they have founded states of some importance, and, in some instances, they have passed into a perfectly black complexion; although improved in form and stature, and notwithstanding that they reside to the north of the Negro countries. A remarkable fact in the history of Loango, in the empire of Congo, is, that the country, according to a statement which was fully credited by Oldendorp, himself a writer of most correct judgment and of unimpeachable veracity, contains many Jews settled in it,

* Klinkosch, de verà natura Cuticulæ; Prag. 1775.

** Caldani Institut. Physiol. 170.

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who retain their religious rites and the distinct habits which keep them isolated from other nations. Though thus separate from the African population, they are black, and resemble the other Negroes in every respect as to physical character.* It is probably in allusion to this case that Pennington, in his "Text Book," says, "the descendants of a colony of Jews, originally from Judea, settled on the coast of Africa, are black."** M. Rozet declares that there are many Negresses in the Algerine country, whither they have doubtless been brought from the interior of Soudan, and very probably from Haússa, who are of a jet black colour, but with truly Roman countenances.*** In one case, a degradation resembling that instanced among the Irish people, has been recorded to have taken place in the oasis of Fezzan. "The general appearance of the men in that locality is plain, and their complexion black; the women are of the same colour, and ugly in the extreme. Neither sex is remarkable for figure, height, strength, vigour, or activity. They have a very peculiar cast of countenance, which distinguishes them from other Blacks; their cheek-bones are higher and more prominent, their faces flatter, and their noses less depressed and more pointed at the top than those of other Negroes. Their eyes are generally small, and their mouths of an immense width, but their teeth are generally good; their hair is woolly, though not completely frizzled." They are a dull phlegmatic people. Here we have, with black skins, Negro faces, and woolly hair, a people descended from the white tribes of Arabia, and who still speak the language of that country.

        The Portuguese who planted themselves on the coast of Africa a few centuries ago, have been succeeded by descendants blacker than many Africans.****

        Langsdorf mentions an English sailor who had been for
* Oldendorp's Geschicte der Mission der Evangelischen Brüder, &c.

** Text Book, p. 26.

*** M. Rozet's Voyage, II. 140.

**** Pennington's Text Book, p. 96.

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some years in Nukahiwah, one of the Marquesas Islands, becoming so changed in colour that he was scarcely to be distinguished from the natives.*

        It is a remarkable circumstance attending the black people in Africa, in India, and in Central America, that amongst them Albinos are frequently born; that is, persons of a pure dead white, with white hair and red eyes. This is thought to be a diseased condition; but, besides these, there are instances by no means unfrequent, of true Whites being born amongst the Black races. This fact was long doubted; but it seems to be now set at rest. White children, or Dondoes, are frequently born from Black parents in all parts of Africa. Many of them are of what we should call a fair complexion. Among the Fungé, a race of Shilukh Negroes, who, some hundred years ago, conquered and settled in Sennaar, they are particularly numerous; insomuch as to have formed a separate caste, distinguished by the name of El Aknean (the red people.) Buffon has given a minute description of a white Negress, born in the island of Dominica, of black parents, who were natives of Africa.** A white Negro is described by Dr. Goldsmith, who saw him exhibited in London. He says, "upon examining this Negro, I found the colour to be exactly like that of a European; the visage white and ruddy, and the lips of the proper redness." "However," he adds, "there were sufficient marks to convince me of his descent."*** Burchell has given a description of a female of a light complexion, born from the race of the Black Kafirs in South Africa. "The colour of her skin was of the fairest European, or, more correctly described, it was more pink and white." Her features were those of her race, the parents being genuine Kafirs.**** Dr. Winterbottom mentions two white Negroes of the Mandingo country, from the testimony of an eye-witness. He describes from
* Langsdorf's Voyages, V. p. 90.

** Prichard.

*** Goldsmith's Hist. Earth and Anim. Nat., ii. 124.

**** Prichard.

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his own observation, a white Negro woman whom he saw in the Sooson country, whose relatives were all black. No doubt could be entertained of her being of genuine Negro origin. Pallas has minutely described a white Negress seen by him in London in 1761. She was born of Negro parents in Jamaica, and was sixteen years of age. She was of small stature, fair complexion, with ruddy lips and cheeks. Her hair was quite woolly, and of a light yellow colour. This girl had the Negro features strongly marked, and had every appearance of genuine Negro descent. There are many other well attested accounts of such persons, but it would be tedious to enumerate them. The foregoing are brought forward merely to show that the dark colour of the Negro is neither constant, nor always entailed on posterity, and therefore can form no criterion of a distinct species.

        Besides the numerous varieties in colour, which the different races of men present, there are other points of distinction equally obvious, and found to exist with similar regularity. Some of these are considered of minor importance, as the shade of the hair, eyes, beard, &c.

        If complexion be made to constitute the great mark of inferiority in Man, if it be accounted the distinguishing livery of degradation and servitude, the stigma is equally attached to a great part of the inhabitants of the world; the sentence of imbecility must necessarily be passed on a very large portion of mankind; for "the dark-coloured races," says Dr. Lawrence, "cover more than half of the earth's surface." The colour of many of the Hindoos is perfectly black, as black as any Negroes. The Brahmins of the highest order are black. Yet the dark colour of the Hindoos is often united with a delicacy of form and expression, arising from habits of mind and of life, which render them in this respect, the antipodes of what the Negro is supposed to be. This people, it is said, calculated eclipses 2000 years ago, and at a more recent period astonished Alexander the Great, and his savans, by their advancement

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in civilization. Here we have an incontrovertible evidence that neither inferiority, nor imbecility, are the necessary accompaniments of a coloured skin. It may be observed, that there are portions of mankind much lighter in complexion than Negroes, who are, nevertheless, their inferiors in an intellectual point of view. Whilst the dark races of Africa are often found to produce intellects of respectable capacity, sometimes above mediocrity, the natives of Terra del Fuego, who are much lower in the scale of human intelligence, are far from being tinged with so deep a dye, and have hair more nearly resembling that of the European races.

        Every one who will make himself acquainted with facts, must be satisfied that the whole of the pretexts alleged in support of the assumption of some of the races of Man being irremediably inferior to others, are as entirely fallacious, as the opinion of such being the case, has been pernicious in its consequences. The deviations from a common model in mankind, it has been proved, are less in degree than those which are found to exist in many other parts of the animal creation. Not one of the distinctive characters that can be adduced, in any of the varieties constituting the great family of Man, is sufficient to warrant the supposition of anything approaching to distinct species. It has been shown that there are differences equally great, and even greater, between individuals of the same family, and families of the same nation; and we may discover particular men, and even entire families, in this country, who are intellectually weaker, than any reasonable person could pretend the generality of the Africans to be.

        Whatever may be the immediate or remote causes of the dark complexion of the, Negro, or other races, philosophical enquiry, if unable fully to solve the problem, has at all events proved it to be a provision of mercy and benevolence. It can be shown that hot water, in vessels of different and equal capacities, cools faster in the dark or

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black ones. The black colour of the native of tropical regions may justly, then, be considered as a wise expedient provided by Omnipotence, for cooling or modulating the fever of the blood, under the influence of a scorching sun. To call in question the proper humanity of the Negro, to scorn him on account of his colour, is to insult that Great and Allwise Being, who, by the most beautiful and benevolent provision, thus protects him from the deleterious influences around him. Copland, in his "Dictionary of Practical Medicine," observes:--"The skin of the dark races is not only different in colour, but is also considerably modified in texture, so as to enable it to perform a greater extent of function than the more delicately formed skin of the white variety of the species. The thick and dark rete mucosum of the former, is evidently more suited to the warm, moist, and miasmal climates of the tropics, than that with which the latter variety is provided. The skin of the Negro is a much more active organ of depuration than that of the White. It does not merely exhale a larger proportion of aqueous fluid and carbonic acid from the blood, but it also elaborates a more unctuous secretion; which, by its abundance and sensible properties, evidently possesses a very considerable influence in counteracting the heating effects of the sun's rays upon the body, and in carrying off the superabundant caloric. Whilst the active functions, aided by the colour of the skin, thus tend to diminish the heat of the body, and to prevent its excessive increase by the temperature of the climate, those materials that require removal from the blood, are eliminated by this surface; which, in the Negro especially, perform excreting functions very evidently in aid of those of respiration, and of biliary secretion, &c."*

        The interesting branch of philosophical investigation we have been pursuing, is admirably summed up by Buffon: --"Upon the whole," says he, "every circumstance concurs
* Article--Climate.

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in proving, that mankind are not composed of species essentially different from each other; that, on the contrary, there was originally but one species, which, after multiplying and spreading over the whole surface of the earth, has undergone various changes from the influence of climate, food, mode of living, diseases, and mixture of dissimilar individuals; that, at first, these changes were not so conspicuous, and produced only individual varieties; that these varieties became afterwards more specific, because they were rendered more general, more strongly marked, and more permanent, by the continual action of the same causes; that they are transmitted from generation to generation, as deformities or diseases pass from parents to children; and that, lastly, as they were originally produced by a train of external or accidental causes, and have only been perpetuated by time and the constant operation of these causes, it is probable that they will gradually disappear, or at least that they will differ from what they are at present, if the causes which produced them should cease, or if their operation should be varied by other circumstances and combinations."

        In the consideration of the various points of distinction which the external appearance of Man presents, one circumstance ought, therefore, to be deeply impressed on the mind, viz.:--that neither peculiarity of conformation nor colour, have the slightest reference to original endowment, either in a mental or moral point of view, and consequently, that no race whatever has been doomed to perpetual degradation. In all human beings the same nature has been implanted, in however different degrees; and no man whatever be his colour, or form, or country, is so low in the intellectual and moral scale as to be entirely deficient of any one of the properties which constitute the most splendid talent and virtue.

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CHAPTER VI.

Not in External Characteristics alone that Man is pre-eminently distinguished-- In Articulate Language--Its universality--Total absence among brutes--Uniform traits in human nature--Superior Psychical endowments--Reason and Intellect--Universal belief in a Supreme Being--And ideas of his attributes, existence of the soul after death, and a state of retribution--Prevalence of similar inherent ideas amongst the various Negro tribes--They possess the same internal principles as the rest of mankind--And a portion of that Spirit which is implanted in the heart of "every man"--Further coincidence when converted to Christianity--Early attempt to convert the Slaves of the Caribbee Islands--Its singular success; as also in other Islands--Subsequently in Africa and the West Indies--After restoring to the Negro his rightful liberties, it is our duty to promote the cultivation of his moral and religious faculties-- Final blending of all the various tribes in harmony.

        Our observations have, thus far, been confined almost exclusively to the consideration of the physiological distinctions of Man. It is not, however, in external characteristics alone that we are able to discriminate our species from that portion of the inferior animal creation which most nearly resemble us. It is neither in these solely, nor even principally, that the great differences consist, by which Man is so pre-eminently distinguished, and which separate him, at so wide an interval, from the most anthropomorphous of animals.

        The use of articulate language may be regarded as one of the most peculiar and characteristic endowments of mankind. The universality of its existence among our species is a fact not less striking than its total absence among brutes, even those which make the nearest approach to perfection, and in whose organization nothing has been discovered that precludes its use. We may have heard of children being born dumb, but there is no tribe of men without speech. There are uniform traits in human nature and habitudes, both intellectual and moral, which

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may be regarded as fixed principles of action, as well as the more variable ones, exhibited in the use of artificial clothing, fire, the necessary arts of life, arms, and the practice of domesticating animals. These are all peculiar characteristics of Man, inasmuch as they do not exist in the brute creation, beyond what mere instinct may teach.

        Perhaps there are no traits existing in animated beings more characteristic of species, than the psychical qualities with which Providence has severally endowed them. Under this term may be included the whole of the sensitive and perceptive faculties, reason, intellect, feelings, sentiments, &c., or, what in the lower animals approaches nearest to them.

        Reason and intellect, with the feelings, sympathies, internal consciousness of mind, and the habitudes of life and resulting therefrom, are perhaps the most real and essential characteristics of humanity. These are common to all the races of Man; they stamp him with an infinite superiority over any of those animals which most nearly resemble him, and they will ever constitute an impassable gulf between the one and the other. A full and complete investigation of these attributes, would require a comprehensive survey of human nature in its various relations. Our limits will not permit us to traverse so wide a field. The reasoning powers of Man being everywhere self-evident, what I shall endeavour now more particularly to illustrate, is the universality of certain ideas or apprehensions, by nature inherent in every portion of our species.

        There are individuals, apparently amongst all the races of men, who, even in an uncivilized and barbarous state, entertain ideas, faint and imperfect though they may sometimes be, of the existence of a supernatural power, by which all things exist and are controlled; differing often materially in their conceptions of its nature and attributes, and having also various methods of worshipping and endeavouring to conciliate the favour of this Great Power, to

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which they hold themselves to be subject and responsible, &c. Availing myself largely of the admirable "Researches" of Dr. Prichard on this subject, I shall be enabled to demonstrate the general prevalence of such ideas amongst the Negro tribes, and, in addition to their conception of a Supreme being, a belief in their responsibility to that Being, their apprehension of the existence of the soul after death, and also of a state of retribution.

        It is commonly said that the religion of the African nations, those at least who have not embraced Mahomedanism, is the superstition of Fetisses; that is, of charms or spells. This expression conveys a notion which is not perfectly correct. The superstition of charms or spells holds a place in the minds of the idolatrous Negroes, but this does not preclude a very general prevalence in their belief of the first principles of natural religion. It may be observed that among nations enjoying a much higher degree of mental culture, the prevalence of superstitions and practices, more or less resembling the Fetissism of Africa, may be recognized.

        Barbot, in his description of Guinea, relates, that "Father Godfrey Loyer, apostolical prefect of the Jacobites, who made a voyage to the kingdom of Issini, and studied the temper, manners, and religion of the natives, declared they had a belief in one universally powerful Being, to whom the people of the countries visited by Father Loyer, address prayer." "Every morning," he says, "after they rise, they go to the river side to wash, and throwing a handful of water on their head, or pouring sand with it to express their humility, they join their hands and then open them, whispering softly the word 'Eksuvais.' Then lifting up their eyes to heaven, they make this prayer [translated],--'My God, give me this day rice and yams, give me gold, &c.' "

        The excellent missionary, Oldendorp, who appears to have had rare opportunities, and to have taken great pains

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to become accurately acquainted with the mental history of the Negroes, assures us that he recognised among them an universal belief in the "existence of a God," whom they resent us very powerful and beneficent. "He is the maker of the world and of men; he it is who thunders in the air, as he punishes the wicked with his bolts. He regards beneficent actions with complacency, and rewards them with long life. To him the Negroes ascribe their own personal gifts, the fruits of the earth, and all good things. From him the rain descends upon the earth. They believe that he is pleased when men offer prayers to him in all their wants, and that he succours them in dangers, in diseases, and in seasons of drought. This is the chief God, who lives far from them on high; he is supreme over all the other gods."

        "Among all the Black nations," continues Oldendorp, "with whom I have become acquainted, even among the utterly ignorant and rude, there is none which did not believe in a God, which had not learnt to give him a name, which did not regard him as the maker of the world, and ascribe to him more or less clearly all the attributes which I have here briefly summed up. Besides this supreme and beneficent divinity whom all the various nations worship in some way or other, they believe in many gods of inferior dignity, who are subject to the chief Deity, and are mediators between him and mankind."*

        "The Negroes," says Oldendorp, "profess their dependence upon the Deity in different ways, especially by prayers and offerings. They pray at different times, in different places, and, as the Amina Negroes told me, in every time of need. They pray at the rising and setting
* In this account of the religion of the Negroes, Oldendorp asserts that he relates nothing which he has not received immediately and exactly from the Negroes themselves.--See C. G. A. Oldendorp's Geshichte der Mission der Evangelischen Brüder auf den Caraibaischen Inseln St. Thomas, St. Croix, und St. Jan; 1777, s. 318.

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of the sun, on eating and drinking, and when they go to war. Even in the midst of the contest, the Amina sing songs to their God, whom they seek to move to their assistance by appealing to his paternal duty. The daily prayer of a Watje Negress was, 'O! God, I know thee not, but thou knowest me; thy assistance is necessary to me.' At meals they say, 'O! God, thou hast given us this, thou hast made it grow;' and when they work, 'O! God, thou hast caused that I should have strength to do this.' The Sember pray in the morning, 'O! God, help us; we do not know whether we shall live to-morrow; we are in thy hand.' The Mandingoes pray also for their deceased friends."

        The Kafirs are not, as some have thought, destitute of religious ideas. The Kosas believe in a Supreme Being, to whom they give the appellation of Uhlunga, supreme, and frequently the Hottentot name Utika, beautiful. They also believe in the immortality of the soul. They have some notion of Providence, and pray for success in war and in hunting expeditions, and during sickness for health and strength. They conceive thunder to proceed from the agency of the Deity, and if a person has been killed by lightning, they say that Uhlunga has been among them.*

        The Watje Negroes assemble at harvest upon a pleasant plain, when they thank God thrice upon their knees, under the direction of a priest, for the good harvest, and pray to him for further blessings. When they have risen, the whole assembly testify their gratitude to God by their rejoicing, and clapping of hands. **

        "Of the Bliakefa, the priests of Karabari and of Sokko, it is remarkable, that they give some instruction to the people concerning the Divinity and prayer. The Negroes come to them for this purpose, either singly, or in companies, when they pray with them, on their knees, that God, whom they call Tschukka, will protect them from war, captivity, and the like."


* Prichard's Researches.

** Oldendorp.
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        "There is scarcely any nation of Guinea which does not believe in the immortality of the soul, and that it continues to live after its separation from the body, has certain necessities, performs actions, and is especially capable of the enjoyment of happiness or misery."*

        "The Negroes believe almost universally that the souls of good men, after their separation from the body, go to God, and the wicked to the evil spirit, whence, at the death of their chiefs, they make use of the expression, 'God has taken their souls!' The Loango imagine the abode of the blessed to be where Sambeau Pungo, that is, God, dwells; but hell, to be above, in the air, while others on the contrary suppose it to be deep in the earth."

        "Those who will candidly consider these facts," says Dr. Prichard, "and give them their due weight, must allow that they prove the same principles of action, and the same internal nature in the African races as are recognized in other divisions of mankind; and this conviction will be increased by a careful perusal of all the details which the Missionaries have afforded, of the progress of their conversion, and of the moral changes which have accompanied it."

        It is evident, from the foregoing statements, that the Negroes of Africa exhibit, in their original and primitive state of mind, untaught by foreign instructors, at least within the reach of history, the same internal principles, in common with the rest of the human family. However latent, and even imperceptible it may sometimes be, they are undoubtedly endowed with a portion of that Spirit, which the Almighty has implanted in the heart of "every man that cometh into the world." Let us endeavour to ascertain how far the process of their conversion to Christianity, indicates a further coincidence of feeling and sentiment between them and the other divisions of mankind.

        The first attempt to convert the Slaves of the Caribbean islands to Christianity, originated in a meeting of some
* Oldendorp.

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followers of Count Zinzendorf, with one Anthony, a Negro from the island of St. Thomas, who had been baptized at Copenhagen. This man represented in so strong colours the wretchedness and ignorance of his countrymen and relatives, and urged so zealously his entreaties on the brethren to undertake their conversion, that the congregation at Herrnhut, before whom he had been induced to appear, were disposed to make the attempt under the most unfavourable circumstances. The work proceeded slowly at first, and amidst great opposition; yet a small number of bearers were soon collected, some of whom gave signs of sincere conversion, and of disgust at their former courses of life. When Bishop Spangenberg visited the mission in 1736, he found in it not less than 200 Blacks who attended the services of the brethren, who evinced a great desire to be instructed in the Christian religion. By the constant exhortations of the brethren, a perceptible change was soon produced in the minds and characters of the Negroes. In 1793 Count Zinzendorf visited the island, and was filled with astonishment at the greatness of the work which had been accomplished.

        The other Danish islands, St. Croix and St. Jan, were afterwards visited by the Moravian Missionaries, whose exertions were attended with like success. In 1768, the number of Negroes who had been baptized in the three islands by the missionaries during thirty-four years, amounted to 4711.

        It may be said that there is no evidence in this, that Negroes are capable of receiving all the impressions implied in conversion to Christianity. This evidence can only be fully appreciated by those who read the biographical notices, and other particulars detailed by the historians of the community to which Oldendorp belonged. But no part of the evidence is more conclusive, than the selection of short homilies composed by Negro preachers or assistants, and addressed by them to congregations of

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their countrymen. Some of these, though they do not rival in strength of diction the discourses of Watts or Doddridge, breathe the same spirit, and were evidently written under the influence of the same sentiments and impressions. A selection of these addresses has been appended by Oldendorp to his work, which I have so often cited. Translations of a few of them will be found in the subsequent pages of the present volume.

        On the majority of the Negro race, the light of the Gospel has never yet shone fully; the seeds of truth implanted in their hearts have made but little progress. Yet there are, both in Africa and the British West Indies, thousands and tens of thousands of them who have been brought to the "excellent knowledge of Christ," with all the spirit-stirring, controllIng, and cheering truths of religion, some of whom now, even from childhood, assisted by the pious instruction of the Missionary, catch with the first opening of their understandings, the rays which emanate from the Gospel sun. Numerous societies, too, and congregations of adults, listen to the truths of the Gospel, meditate on them at their labours, talk of them in the hut, sing them in hymns, and in admonitory advices commend them to their children. The light of religion has now penetrated, so to speak, the solid darkness of minds, hitherto left without instruction; it has struck the spark of feeling into hearts unaccustomed to salutary emotions: the darkness is not yet dissipated, but that day has dawned upon the ebon race of Africa, which never more shall close.

        The facts recorded in the present chapter are very conclusive; they need no comment, demonstrating as they do, so clearly, that the despised African is blessed with the same living principle, the same psychical endowments, by which Man is everywhere so pre-eminently distinguished. Let then, the rightful liberties of the injured Negro be restored to him, and, as a recompense for the long series of injuries inflicted on their unhappy race, let it be our concern

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to promote the cultivation of their intellectual and religious faculties, and endeavour to bring the animal propensities their uncivilized nature may possess, under the control of their moral sentiments. The intellectual faculties may at first be small, the moral sentiments weak, and the animal impulses powerful; but every exercise of those which are good will make them better; while the bad, by being controlled, will gradually become more controllable. It is evident that the Deity has designed Man to be to a great extent his own creator, furnishing only the elements from which by an active exercise of what he has, he may work out higher gifts. And though the progress he makes may be so slow, that, like some of the great astronomical movements, its full effects cannot be detected by any single generation, it is not the less sure. Human improvement becomes always more and more rapid in its course, for every new generation starts at the point at which the preceding one had attained. There is every reason to hope, then, that ultimately, civilization will become universal, and that all the various tribes of the earth will be willing to join harmoniously, in the exercise of those sentiments by which men on earth may furnish a species of heaven.

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CHAPTER VII.

Deep-rooted prejudice to eradicate respecting Colour in Man--Less in Europe than the New World--Evinced in the case of Douglass-- National expression of sympathy for him from the British public--The "Douglass Testimonial"--British Christians respect the Divine image alike in ebony and ivory--Effects of prejudice in South Africa--Americans deeply implicated in this feeling--Have an interest in keeping it up--strongest in the Free States--Several instances of its nature and extent--Circumstance exhibiting a striking contrast in favour of the Sable race--Further effects of prejudice--Public opinion so strong in the United States that it is dangerous to protest against the Unchristian conduct practised towards persons of Colour.

        Previous to the advent of that glorious era which the conclusion of our last chapter predicts, much deep-rooted prejudice, the growth of centuries, will require to be overcome. A thorough change in public opinion must be wrought, before an entire reconciliation can take place between the White and Black races. Although the prejudice against the latter does not exist in Europe to the extent to which it is carried in the New World, there are too many on this side the Atlantic who entertain the fallacious idea that a black skin necessarily confers an inferiority on its possessor; and some of the professed friends of the Coloured race, who deprecate Slavery as unjust, are still unwilling to extend towards them the full rights of social intercourse and Christian fellowship.

        In consequence of our coming so little in contact with the objects of this prejudice, opportunities do not often occur to elicit the real feeling amongst us towards them; and when they do occur, whatever private opinions individuals may hold, the popular feeling is so much on the side of the Negro, that ideas of prejudice, for the most part, remain quietly suppressed in the bosoms of those who entertain them But the gross indignity offered to Frederick Douglass, and, the unwarrantable injustice done to

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him about a year ago, in depriving him of his purchased right to a cabin passage in the ship "Cambria," is a circumstance which cannot be overlooked. That a British agent, upon British soil, should be found to yield to a despicable prejudice, and deliberately persevere in refusing, to an honourable and noble-minded man, the enjoyment of unquestionable rights, was an act as disgraceful to our country as it must have been painful to the feelings of a fellow creature. It affords but another feature of that hateful system which drives the Negro to the cotton field, which separates him from his family, and reduces him to the condition of a chattel. The facts of the case may be stated as follows:--

        Frederick Douglass, a highly-respectable and talented Coloured gentleman, from America, who had been for some time advocating the rights of his oppressed brethren in this country, being about to return to his native land, applied to the London agent of the Cunard steamers for a cabin passage to Boston from Liverpool, and engaged a berth in the "Cambria," paying the stipulated sum. He took the precaution of inquiring whether the fact of his being a Man of Colour would be any bar to his enjoyment of full social intercourse, and was told that he would be entitled to all the rights and privileges of other cabin passengers. On the morning of the day of sailing, accompanied by several kind friends, he presented himself on board the steamer at Liverpool, and having applied for the cabin for which he had paid, he was politely informed that it had been appropriated to another passenger, and that unless he consented to take his meals alone, he could not be admitted as a passenger. There was no time for legal redress; the "Cambria" was sailing the next morning, and an affectionate family were awaiting the arrival of a husband and father on the other side of the Atlantic.

        This conduct was in strong contrast with the fact, that during the nineteen previous months, his distinguished

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talents, his amiable manners, and his high moral worth, had given him a ready admission into the best English society. It was only when he came under commerical influences, that his colour was discovered to be a sufficient reason, not for denying to him, in advance, the right to acquire a conveyance in the ship on the advertised terms of passage, but for breaking a solemn contract already entered into, and ratified by the payment and acceptance of his money, and the delivery to him of his berth certificate. Whence this exclusion? Was he unfit for social intercourse with the other passengers? Was he supposed to be a suspicious character? No such thing. GOD "who has made of one blood all nations of men" had given him a darker complexion than any of the other passengers, and for this he was insulted, degraded, and socially excluded. The circumstance was said to be mainly attributable to the saloon company being partially composed of Americans. Be this as it may, it must be remembered, that the act took place in England, in Liverpool--and on board a steam-ship, a large proportion of whose proprietors are Englishmen!--yes, these free-born Englishmen consent, "for filthy lucre," to a regulation which excludes from social intercourse some of the finest specimens of humanity which ever came from the hand of GOD. Such treatment bowed Douglass's spirit to the uttermost, and he parted from his friends on board the steamer, the next morning, with absolute agony, yet throughout, he evinced much Christian bearing and unsubdued moral firmness under the infliction of this outrageous wrong. One of his friends, in allusion to this circumstance, wrote as follows:--"I never felt the real dignity of his character, as on this trying occasion. With the spirit of his Lord and Master, he calmly bore the outrage. 'When he was reviled, he reviled not again;' but he exhorted us to be temperate, and above all, not to let blame attach to parties who were guiltless." It is but justice to the Captain of the "Cambria" to add, that he kindly and promptly placed his

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own cabin at Douglass's disposal, and assured him of every attention. He consequently took his meals there, seeing that his society, however highly it had been prized in Great Britain, was not good enough for these representatives of the American republic.

        The unlooked for, and unwarranted treatment, of one so deservedly esteemed in this country, roused the sympathies of the British public. From the cottage to the lordly mansion--from the hamlet to the cities of our land, was felt the injustice he had experienced, and the cry was Shame! Shame! As a more full expression of the genuine feeling of national sympathy, it was determined that an appropriate Testimonial should be presented to the sufferer, whose only crime was the complexion given him by his Creator! A public subscription was commenced, which soon exhibited a sum total of £500. This sum was forwarded to Frederick Douglass by the Boston mail steamer, along with a valuable library of books collected by a lady in the south of England. It was intended that the amount should be applied in behalf of the millions, who still lie crushed under the rod of the oppressor; or in such a manner as shall tend to elevate the moral and intellectual condition of the Coloured people, and to assist in bursting those fetters which have so long held them in thraldom.

        In the Douglass Testimonial, the aristocracy of the skin will have a substantial proof that British Christians respect the Divine image, alike in ebony and ivory; and that true nobility of character, generous self-sacrifice for the good of others, and an honest, daring advocacy of human rights, are appreciated in this country without reference to complexion.

        The friends of Negro liberty will be glad to learn that Frederick Douglass has already provided himself with an excellent press and printing materials, out of the proceeds of the British subscription, and has established a weekly anti-Slavery paper, at Rochester, State of New York, entitled The North Star. The object of The North Star, is

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to attack Slavery in all its forms and aspects, to advocate universal emancipation, to exalt the standard of public morality, to promote the moral and intellectual improvement of the Coloured people, and to hasten the day of freedom to the three millions of our enslaved fellowmen. We wish it every encouragement and success, and cannot doubt it will be a formidable instrument in bringing down the walls of the modern Jericho. *

        Of the effects of prejudice, in another quarter of the world, we have strong proof in the following circumstance related by Thomas Pringle in his "Residence in South Africa." A clergyman, he states, refused to marry Christian Groepe, a Mulatto Hottentot, a most respectable and well-educated man, because the poor woman could not accurately repeat the Church Catechism! "The fact is," says Pringle, "there existed a strong prejudice among the White Colonists against the full admission of the Coloured class to ecclesiastical privileges, and the majority of the colonial clergy were so little alive to the apostolic duties of their sacred office, as to lend their sanction, directly or indirectly, to these unchristian prejudices, which were also countenanced by the Colonial laws."

        "As for religion," says Dr. Philip, "it was considered a serious crime to mention the subject to a native. They were not admitted within the walls of the churches. By a notice stuck above the doors of one of the churches, 'Hottentots and dogs' were forbidden to enter."

        Our trans-atlantic brethren are very deeply implicated in the ungenerous and anti-Christian prejudice against colour, and in America it may be said to pervade all classes of the community. Their churches being often composed of Slave-holders, or those connected in some way or other
* The price of the North Star is two dollars (8s. 6d.) per annum, if paid in advance, or two dollars and a half (10s. 6d.) if payment be delayed over six months. English subscribers will be liable to an additional charge of 2d. per week postage. The names of subscribers may be sent to T. P. Barkas, Grainger Street, Newcastle-on-Tyne.

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with the system, are nearly all more or less deeply imbued with the predominating feeling in regard to the African race. There is, indeed, an interest there, in keeping up this prejudicial feeling. Few, if any of the Christian communities, are exempt from a portion of that load of guilt, which pervades free and religious America like a feculent fog; and unless there be a thorough change in this respect, and the rights of mankind become fully recognised, and extended to every shade of colour, no other result can rationally be contemplated, than a prolongation for generations yet to come, of those manifold indignities, and similar revolting scenes of wrong and barbarity, which are now inflicted on millions of the down-trodden race of Africa. Happily this prejudice is steadily giving way, yet many instances might be mentioned, of frequent occurrence, which prove it to be still very strong; and in general, the striking language of De Beaumont, a recent French traveller in the United States, will be found too true. "The prejudice against colour," says he, "haunts its victim wherever he goes,--in the hospitals, where humanity suffers,--in the churches, where it kneels to God,--in the prisons, where it expiates its offences,--in the grave-yards, where it sleeps the last sleep."

        I do not now altogether allude to the prejudice against the Slave population, but to the general tone of feeling against the whole mass of the descendants of Africa; for the extent to which it is carried, appears to be greatest, according to every authority, in those States of America which hold no Slaves. It seems remarkable, that the strongest prejudice against Colour should exist in the Free States, and against Free Coloured persons! But such is the case, and the feeling is stronger towards them in proportion to their advancement in a moral or religious point of view, or their rise in the scale of society. There is never any objection expressed to mixing with Coloured people while they are Slaves; as such, the daintiest ladies

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and gentlemen do not hesitate to ride in the same carriage with them, to have them about their persons, and to nurse their children. "Their sufferings," says H. C. Howells, "are just in proportion to their exaltation in society, to their mental attainments, to the acuteness of their religious feeling, and to their standing in social life. It is not the class of Coloured people sunk in degradation, wretchedness, ignorance, and filth, that are despised supremely in the United States. Strange to tell, they are not the people against whom the prejudice of the United States seems to bear. No; those who are sunk in degradation are supposed to be in their proper position, and they are passed by as the swine that wallow in the mire, with indifference, it being scarcely thought worth while to point the finger of scorn at them. I was once in the family of Mr. Forten, a Coloured gentleman of Philadelphia, a man of the most refined and courteous character, with a wife full of amiability and Christianity, and elegance of deportment, with a fine lovely family of sons and daughters, and I saw the tears trickle down her cheeks when, speaking of the Coloured people, and the indignities they were called to endure, she said:--In proportion as Coloured persons are respectable, so are their sufferings; we cannot even go out of our own home without having a company of degraded creatures running after us in the streets and calling out, 'Nigger, nigger!' " *

        The prejudice against colour is stronger in Barbadoes than in any of the British colonies, although the Coloured class of its population are numerous, wealthy, and respectable, comprising some of the first merchants of the island. The public opinion of the colony is powerful, and exercises an unfavourable influence, the Blacks being considered an inferior race by nature, born to a servile condition; and a spirit of caste is cherished between the White, Black, and intermediate races.


* Speech of H. C. Howells, A. S. Conv. 1840.
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        "A Coloured gentleman," says Joseph Sturge, "informed me, that last winter, his wife being about to take a journey by rail to Philadelphia, she was compelled, though in delicate health, to travel in the comfortless exposed car, expressly provided for Negroes, though he offered to pay double fare for a place for her in the regular carriage."*

        "To give some idea of the extent to which the prejudice against persons of Colour operates," says George Thompson, "I will state one or two facts. I had occasion to go from the city of New York by means of a steam vessel. I was on the deck of the vessel when a four-wheeled carriage came up, from which two very well-dressed persons got out. They were persons of Colour, though not very dark. They occupied a space about mid-ship, and I took occasion to watch the conduct of the passengers and crew towards them. The bell rang for supper, and I went down into the cabin. Some time afterwards I returned to the deck. A thick mist, almost equal to rain, had fallen. I discovered this couple leaning upon a large heap of luggage, and perceived that they were excluded from the company. I went down into the cabin and fetched up a friend, Dr. Graham, with whom I had before conversed upon the subject, and who had denied that such prejudices existed. Come, Doctor, said I, and judge for yourself. He came upon the deck. The gentleman and lady had removed from the place where I had left them, and were standing at the door of the kitchen, a situation which the cooking and other things that were going on rendered very offensive. The gentleman was earnestly entreating the cooks to let his lady go in and sit down there during the night. The Doctor said, why do you not go and put your wife into a berth? The gentleman replied, I would willingly give twenty times the value for a berth, but I am not allowed. I saw that delicate female, who was in circumstances
* Sturge's United States.

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that required sympathy and attention, sit down upon a butter tub which was turned up for her, and there she remained during the night. There was another case, in which a gentleman took a Coloured man down into the cabin with him. The captain instantly said, 'Take that Coloured man away!' 'What,' said the gentleman, 'will you not allow him to stay with me?' 'No! nor you either if you take his part.' 'Then I do take his part,' said the gentleman. The captain then took the White gentleman by the throat, and considerably maltreated him. He then put him on shore, and left him midway."

        "I was once travelling in a carriage," says George Bradburn, (a member of the Massachusetts legislature), "into which twelve or thirteen persons, most of them my friends, were crowded. Accompanying us was another carriage, in which there were only two persons; but they were Coloured persons. For the purpose, as well of bearing testimony against this prejudice, as of getting a more comfortable seat, I got into the carriage with the two Coloured men. At this, my friends felt themselves so much scandalized, that one of. them said, it had sunk me fifty per cent. in his estimation; and others doubted, if they could ever more give me any of their votes."*

        "In the state in which I live," says Col. Miller, "one of the judges was once travelling in the night. A lady was in the carriage. The night was cold. 'Madam,' says he, 'I hope you do not feel the cold!' and again, 'madam, I hope you do not suffer from the inclemency of the season.' He paid her other compliments also. When they came to the inn, the waiter brought in a light, when he found that it was a Black lady to whom he had been so remarkably polite. He was filled with confusion, and ran out of the room with the waiter. People are shocked at the idea of regarding the Coloured people as their equals. 'What!' they cry, 'are we to live with the Niggers? What! all mixed up together,
* Speech in Anti Slavery Convention, 1840.

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as if we were all the same sort of flush and blood?' "* A thousand instances of this kind might easily be cited, but as they are not exactly within the scope of the present work, further than being illustrative of the effects of that prejudice which results from the idea of inferiority attaching to the Negro race, I shall conclude with a few extracts from John Candler's "Brief Notices of Hayti," the first exhibiting a striking contrast much in favour of the Sable race.

        "Our first visitor at Jacmel was a Mulatto gentlewoman, the widow of a Black man, who had filled the office of Collector of the Customs, and who occupied one of the best houses in the place. She had lived in the United States, spoke our language fluently, and came to pay us respect as strangers. This kind-hearted matron paid us several visits, entertained us at her table, and introduced us to some of the best families of the place. Her conduct was the more remarkable, as, in America, she had suffered grievous persecution from the cruel prejudice existing in that country against Colour. Her first husband was a sea captain: on one occasion, she left the shore with him in a boat, to take a final leave of him on board a vessel, and was carried by the winds to a greater distance from home than she expected. The boat re-conveyed her to the shore and landed her at a strange place. Seeing a tavern, she made her way to it to obtain lodging for the night: the landlady looked at her repulsively, and spurned her from the door. 'We take in no Niggers here,' was her coarse language; 'if you want to rest, go to the Nigger huts on the top of the hill!' The poor lady told us her heart was too full to bear this unchristian rebuke with meekness: she sat down and burst into tears. She did, however, toil tip to the Negroes' huts, and was there received kindly. The Americans, in their own estimation and boast, are the freest people on the face of the globe: according to the terms of their constitution, 'all men are free and equal;' yet they
* Speech in Anti Slavery Convention, 1840.

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treat the houseless stranger, if tinged with a coloured hue, as one of nature's outcasts! Whenever a White man from America or Europe falls sick in Jacmel, no one is so ready to offer to nurse, and show him kindness, as this poor despised woman, whose mother was an African. What a contrast; and what a striking lesson does such a fact as this teach to the proud republicans of 'Columbia's happy land.'

        The son and son-in-law of General Inginac, Secretary of State for Hayti, on their return home a few years since from Paris, where they had been received in a manner suited to their rank and station in life, landed at New York, with a view of visiting the United States; but no tavern or boarding-house keeper would receive them as guests, for fear of giving offence to the inhabitants of that city. One of the richest merchants at Port-au-Prince, whose father was one of Christophe's Barons, assured me that he went into a woollen draper's store in Philadelphia, and desiring to be measured for a black coat, the storekeeper retorted with an impudent falsehood, 'We have no cloth here, Sir:' a hatter also, whose store was attended, when he called, by some White customers, refused to sell him a hat!

        "Such," adds. John Candler, "is the tyranny of public opinion in this professedly free land, that a man dare not protest against conduct like this, and call it as it is, barbarous and unchristian, without the danger of being treated contemptuously."

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CHAPTER VIII.

Result of the idea of inferiority in the Negro race a prolongation of their oppression--Unequal rights and privileges--Their tendency--Human beings possess certain inalienable rights--All men created equal-- Acknowledgment of this great doctrine in the American Declaration of Independence--Slavery a stain on the glory of America--A lie to the declaration of the Federal Constitution--Columbia may yet redeem her character--No new laws required--Only that all should be placed on an equality--No exemption of the Negro from law, but should enjoy its protection--Slavery said to be only a nominal thing--A false statement --Observations on equitable laws--Justice always the truest policy-- America called to a great and noble deed--Address to Columbia.

        In countries where one class of beings look down upon another as an inferior race, Slavery and intolerance pass unnoticed, they are seldom regarded as inconsistencies among those who have had the misfortune to be brought up in the midst of them. It has been justly remarked by an eminent writer, that, although by the institution of different societies, unequal privileges are bestowed on their members, and although justice itself requires a proper regard to such privileges, yet he who has forgotten that men were originally equal, easily degenerates into the Slave, or, in the capacity of a master, is not to be trusted with the rights of his fellow-creatures.

        While it is now universally admitted, that the natural tendency of the exercise of uncontrolled authority is to harden the heart, extinguish the moral sense, and give birth to every species of crime and calamity, it is evident that the wealthy part of the community are elevated in the scale of being by the effective legislative enactments by which the poor are protected from oppression. The barbarizing effects of uncontrolled authority on minds in the least danger of being corrupted by its influence, may be seen in every page of the history of human nature, and is well illustrated in the invaluable tract of Bishop Porteus on the

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Effects of Christianity on the temporal concerns of mankind. After having pourtrayed with glowing indignation, the horrid condition of those in a state of servitude among the polished and civilized Greeks and Romans, we find the following judicious remark:--"These are the effects which the possession of unlimited power over our species has actually produced, and which (unless counteracted and subdued by religious principle) it has always a natural tendency to produce, even in the most benevolent and best cultivated minds."

        When such is the general effect, what must it be where one class of people is considered as inferior beings? Where all the avenues to preferment are closed to them, where no prize is held forth to ambition, where their minds are without wholesome stimulants, there can be no energy in the national character. Different degrees of rank and office are necessary in all well-constituted societies; but laws which are made for favouring one part of the community, and depressing another, give rise to, and increase those moral obliquities, which destroy the proportion and mar the face of society. Invidious distinctions, by which one class of men is enabled to trample upon another, engender pride, arrogance, and an oppressive spirit in the privileged order, while they repress everything noble and praiseworthy in the oppressed. *

        It has been justly remarked, that the noblest, the most elevated distinction of a country, is a fair administration of justice. Nothing can be done to elevate and improve a people, if the administration of justice is corrupt; but to insure a pure administration of justice in a country, it must be accessible to all classes of the community. In a state of society where there is one law for the White Man and another for the Black, and the sanctions of the law are borrowed to render the latter the victims of oppression, moral distinctions are confounded, and the names of virtue
* Dr. Philip.

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and vice come to be regarded as exchangeable terms. Independent of printed statutes, there are certain rights which human beings possess, and of which they cannot be deprived but by manifest injustice. The wanderer in the desert has a right to his life, to his liberty, his wife, his children, and his property. The Negro has an undoubted right to these, and also to a fair remuneration for his labour; to an exemption from cruelty and oppression; to choose the place of his abode, and to enjoy the society of his children. No one can deprive him of these rights without violating the laws of nature and of nations.


                         " 'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower
                         Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume;
                         And we are weeds without it. All constraint,
                         Except what wisdom lays on evil men,
                         Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes
                         Their progress in the road of science; blinds
                         The eyesight of discovery; and begets,
                         In those that suffer it, a sordid mind,
                         Unfit to be the tenant of man's noble form."*

        The great doctrine, that God hath "created all men equal, and endowed them with certain inalienable rights," and that amongst these are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," is affirmed in the American Declaration of Independence, and justified in the theory of its constitutional laws. But there is a stain upon its glory; Slavery, in its most abject and revolting form, pollutes its soil; the wailings of Slaves mingle with its songs of liberty; and the clank of their chain is heard, in horrid discord, with the chorus of their triumphs. The records of the States are not less distinguished by their wise provisions for securing the order and maintaining the institutions of the country, than by their ingenious devices for riveting the chain, and perpetuating the degradation of, their Coloured brethren; --their education is branded as a crime,--their freedom is dreaded as a blasting pestilence,--the bare suggestion of
* Cowper.

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their emancipation is proscribed as a treason to the cause of American independence. These things are related with sorrow, and with feelings deeply deploring the flagrant inconsistency so glaringly displayed between the lofty principles embodied in the great charter of the liberties of the Union and the evil practices which have been permitted to grow up under it.

        The monstrous and wicked assumption of power by man over his fellow man, which Slavery implies, is alike abhorrent to the moral sense of mankind, to the immutable principles of justice, to the righteous laws of God, and to the benevolent principles of the Gospel. It ought, therefore, to be indignantly repudiated by all the fundamental laws of truly enlightened and civilized communities. But behold the debasing servitude in which millions of the Negro race are still held in the United States, by a people calling themselves Christian, and boasting of their country as the freest on the earth. What a mockery of religion was once the conduct of Great Britain towards the Slaves in her colonies--what a mockery of religion is the present conduct of America; and what a lie to the declaration of her federal constitution, that "all men by nature are free and equal."

        Columbia may yet redeem her character; but if the claims of the suffering Negro are not speedily heard, the treatment of that people will continue to be one of the foulest blots upon her national honour that ever stained the escutcheon of the most degenerate nation.


                         "Columbia! upon thy shore
                         The fetters clank: arise!
                         And let thy noble eagle soar
                         Unsullied to the skies."

        We ask for no new laws; we simply require that the different classes of inhabitants should have the same civil rights granted to them. The liberty required is not an exception from the law, but the advantage of its protection;

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the law grants no rights to the White man which it may not extend with perfect safety to all classes. All we ask for is, that the enslaved tribes should be placed on an equality with the long dominant race in civil and religious liberty; that the people who have been, for generations, deprived of the inalienable rights conferred upon them by their Creator, and oppressed by a system of Slavery, should have the enjoyment of those rights restored to them.

        It is argued by the abettors of Slavery, that it is only a nominal thing, that the power of extreme punishments, &c. are rarely resorted to, and are used reluctantly. In every Slave country there are undoubtedly masters who desire and purpose to practice lenity to the full extent which the nature of their relation to the Slaves will allow. Still, human rights are denied them. They lie wholly at another's mercy, and we must have studied history in vain if we need be told that they will be continually the prey of absolute power. If the leg is galled by an iron chain it is vain to prescribe ointment to cure the wound while the fetter remains. The first step towards the improvement of the Negroes must commence in removing the cause of their present degradation. They have been corrupted and debased by the uncontrollable power exercised over them by their lordly masters; legislative enactments bestowing on them equal rights, would prove a salutary check to the one, and afford a stimulus of hope to the other. The first movement on the part of the legislature in their favour should be, the introduction of measures to ameliorate their condition, and teach their oppressors to respect them. When it shall be seen that the laws of the country make no distinction between the proud master and those whom he considers as belonging to an inferior class of beings, the administration of an impartial justice will generate within the breast of the former ideas of common relationship, and secure for the oppressed a milder treatment.

        The establishment of law, forms an important era in the

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civilization of a people, and the statute which prevents the superior from oppressing or tyrannizing over his inferior, is as favourable to the humanity of the one, as it is to the happiness of the other. While equitable laws, and their impartial administration, elevate the standard of morals, raise the tone of thinking, exalt the character of a country, and increase the patriotism of a people, they generate the principles of love and justice in the hearts of a great and effective part of the population. Let the Coloured people be admitted to a full and fair participation of those privileges from which they have been excluded, and rest assured that justice being done to the one, will prove, ultimately, the happiness and prosperity of the other. Justice is in all cases the truest policy, it has proved itself so in the abolition of Slavery in the British Colonies; and what an example is there upheld to those nations, who, in spite of warning, and in defiance of Christian principle, persist in continuing Slavery.

        Columbia!--thou art called to a great and to a noble deed;--delay it not. There is, indeed, a grandeur in the idea of raising some millions of human beings to the enjoyment of human rights, to the blessings of Christian civilization, to the means of indefinite improvement. The Slaveholding States are called to a nobler work of benevolence than is committed to any other communities. Do you comprehend its dignity? This you cannot do, till the Slave is truly, sincerely, with the mind and heart, recognized as a Man, till he ceases to be regarded as Property.


                         "When old Europe blazons proudly,
                         Volumes of historic fame;
                         You, more loftily and loudly,
                         Echo young Columbia's name:
                         When we boast of Guadalquivirs,
                         Thames and Danubes, Elbes and Rhones;
                         You rejoice in statelier rivers--
                         Mississippis--Amazons!


                         Many a poet, many a pæan,
                         Shouts our mountain songs, and tells

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                         Alpine tales, or Pyrenean--
                         Snowdon, Lomond, Drachenfels!
                         But, across the Atlantic surges,
                         Andes higher claims prepares;
                         Snow-crowned Chimborazo urges
                         Mightier sovereignty than theirs!


                         "And if thus your works of nature
                         Our sublimest works outdo;
                         Should not Man--earth's noblest creature,
                         Should not Man be nobler too?
                         From our crouching, cowed example,
                         When your Pilgrim fathers fled,
                         Reared they not a prouder temple,
                         Freedom's temple, o'er your head?


                         "Tyrant-stories stain our pages;
                         Priests and kings have forged our chains;
                         Ye were called to brighter ages;
                         Ye were born where Freedom reigns;
                         Many a dreary, dark disaster,
                         Here has dug the free man's grave;--
                         Ye have never known a master--
                         How can ye endure--A SLAVE?"*
* Dr. Bowring

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CHAPTER IX.

Pernicious influence of Slavery--Those brought up in the midst of it, apparently unconscious of its evils--Their hearts become hardened, and their feelings blunted--Deceptiveness of the "Slavery Optic Glass"-- The products and gains of oppression tainted--Nothing can sanction violence and injustice--To prosper by crime, a great calamity--Melancholy situation of those implicated in Slavery--Our prayers should ascend both for the oppressor and the oppressed--Plea of the necessity of coercion--Negroes represented as most degenerate and ungovernable-- These accounted for--Demoralizing effects of Slavery--When its asperities have been mitigated, various latent virtues and good qualities have been brought into exercise.

        In countries where Slavery exercises its pernicious influence upon the inhabitants, its tendency is to lead them to regard those of a dark complexion as inferior beings, a species of property, or deserving only to become such. This has greatly aggravated, and its natural tendency is to keep up the prejudicial feeling against the Negro. When persons live, and are brought up in the very midst of cruelty and Slavery, and are inured from their infancy to behold the sufferings of the poor victims of oppression, to listen to their cries, and behold them treated with impunity, as creatures possessed of mere animal propensities, the vilest of the vile, it is no marvel that they should imbibe those feelings of prejudice which are thus early instilled into their minds. Perceiving the mental and moral degradation of the Slaves, and being taught to look down upon their unfortunate fellows, as a race of beings in all respects inferior to, and not entitled to the enjoyment of, or even fit to be intrusted with, equal privileges as themselves, their hearts become hardened, and their feelings blunted and deadened towards them.

        The practice which strikes one man with horror, may seem to another, who was born and brought up in the midst of it, to be not only innocent, but meritorious; and it

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is to be feared, there are many who grow up almost unconscious of the responsibility of their station, and insensible of the enormity of the evils they are committing. "A man born among Slaves," says Dr. Channing, "taught its necessity by venerated parents, associating it with all whom he reveres, and too familiar with its evils to see and feel their magnitude, can hardly be expected to look on Slavery as it appears to more impartial and distant observers."--"Men," he continues, "may lose the power of seeing an object fairly, by being too near as well as by being too remote. The Slaveholder is too familiar with Slavery to understand it. To be educated in injustice is almost necessarily to be blinded by it more or less. To exercise usurped power from birth, is the surest way to look upon it as a right and as a good." Alas! then, for the unfortunate Negro;--his oppressor, swallowing the gilded bait of commerce, advancing rapidly to fame and fortune, beholds his victim through a very imperfect and defective lens.

        The Slavery Optic Glass is not famed for developing all the wonders of creation; on the other hand, it disfigures and disparages the Almighty's most glorious work, Man, made after the image of his Maker. The atmosphere of Slavery freezes, as it were, the current of sympathy; like a deadly upas tree, it corrupts every thing within its influence; and so all those who acquire gain produced by the "thews and sinews" of the poor Negro, become, sooner or later, inclined to foster evil, and ere long embark with


                         "Those who travel far, and sail
                         To purchase human flesh; to wreathe the yoke
                         Of vassalage round beauteous liberty,
                         Or suck large fortune from the sweat of Slaves."

        Every morsel of food, thus forced from the injured, ought to be more bitter than gall, and the gold cankered. The sweat of the Slave taints the luxuries for which it streams. Better were it for the selfish wrong doer, to live as the Slave, to clothe himself in the Slave's raiment, to

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eat the Slave's coarse food, to till his fields with his own hands, than to pamper himself by day, and pillow his head on down at night, at the cost of a wantonly injured fellow-creature. What man, without a conscience seared, can earn, even his bread, "Not by the sweat, but by the blood of man?" Consider! ye who are sitting in ease and enjoyment; think how much cruelty is involved in the luxuries you enjoy.


                         "Think! ye masters, iron-hearted,
                         Lolling at your jovial boards,
                         Think, how many backs have smarted
                         For the sweets your cane affords.


                         "Is there, as you sometimes tell us,
                         Is there One, who reigns on high;
                         Has He bid you buy and sell us,
                         Speaking from His throne, the sky?


                         "Ask Him, if your knotted scourges,
                         Fetters, blood-extorting screws,
                         Are the means which duty urges,
                         Agents of His will to use?"

        No earthly interest should induce any one to sanction violence and injustice; neither can it authorize the systematic degradation of so large a portion of our fellow-creatures as are now held in cruel Slavery. "The first question to be proposed by a rational being is, not what is profitable, but what is right. Duty must be primary, prominent, most conspicuous among the objects of human thought and pursuit. If we cast this down from its supremacy, if we inquire for our interests, and then for our duties, we shall err. We can never see the right, clearly and fully, but by making it our first concern. No judgment can be just or wise, but that which is built on the conviction of the paramount worth and importance of duty. This is the fundamental truth, the supreme law of reason; and the mind which does not start from this, in its inquiries into human affairs, is doomed to great, perhaps, fatal error. Whoever places his faith in the everlasting law of rectitude, must, of course, regard the question of Slavery, first and chiefly as a moral

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question. All other considerations will weigh little with him compared with its moral character and moral influences."

        No greater calamity can befall a people than to prosper by crime; and there is, perhaps, no greater crime than that of man enslaving his fellow-men. The blight which falls on the soul of the wrong-doer, the desolation of his moral nature, is a more terrible calamity than he inflicts. In deadening his moral feelings, he dies to the proper happiness of a man: in hardening his heart against his fellow-creatures, he sears it to all true joy: in shutting his ear against the voice of justice, he turns the voice of God within him into rebuke. He may prosper, indeed, and hold faster the Slave by whom he prospers; but he rivets heavier and more ignominious chains on his own soul than he lays on others. No punishment is so terrible as prosperous guilt. No fiend, exhausting on us all his power of torture, is so fearful as an oppressed fellow-creature. The cry of the oppressed, unheard on earth, is heard in heaven. God is just, and if justice reign, the unjust must terribly suffer.

        Melancholy is the situation of those who grow up unconscious of their responsibility, and the enormity of the evil they are committing, in being implicated in this great crime. Whilst our tenderest sympathies are awakened for the victims of their tyrannical barbarity, we should mourn deeply over their oppressors; our aspirations ought daily to ascend before Him, who can unstop the deaf ear, and open the eyes of those "who are blind," that He would, in His mercy, show them the awful situation in which they stand.

        Under the plea of a necessity for Slavery, Negroes have been spoken of as the most degenerate creatures upon earth. They are represented, as we have already been informed, as the lowest class of human beings, if, indeed, they are allowed to be included within the pale of humanity; as void of memory, filthy, and disgusting to a degree exceeding credibility, and so ungovernable in their propensities, that nothing will subdue them but severe coercion.

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        That the various bad qualities which have been ascribed to Negroes, belong rather to their habits than to their nature, and are derived both from the low state of civilization in which nearly the whole race at present exists, as well as from their unnatural condition in Slavery, is a proposition not only consistent with the analogy of all the other races of mankind, but immediately deducible from well established facts. Moral evils are uniformly and necessarily inherent under a system of oppression. It is a state in which no class of society, the dominant or the subject, is not vitiated, --vitiated in temper, in principle, in conduct. All history is proof of this; and if history failed, the present state of things, where Slavery exists, would supply ample testimony to its truth. It may well be said, that "a debasement of all the mental and moral faculties, that destruction of every honourable principle, are the never-failing consequences of Slavery; so that even the most high-spirited and courageous Negroes become, after remaining a few years in Slavery, cunning, cowardly, and to a certain degree malevolent." "It is the fact of experience, that Slavery is essentially demoralizing, and that it compounds into the character all the faithlessness and feculence of moral turpitude. There is a class of mere human virtues, which may exist independently of the direct influence of religion; but even these cannot, except by very accidental circumstances, vegetate in this soil, nor flourish in the fog and impurities of this stifling atmosphere; they require a purer air, a brisk wafting of the nobler passions, the excitement of hope, the warmth of charity, and the mountain breeze of freedom."*

        Nevertheless, when a master's absolute will has been expressed in a kindly tone; when authority has been enforced with a look which told that though he had the power to command, he had not the heart to be a tyrant; when he has applied his attention to their comforts, not because they were his Slaves, but because they were children of feeling,
* Richard Watson's Sermons.

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and members of the one family of mankind; when he has borne before them the impression that he has a Master in heaven, while he is a master to them; when the asperities of Slavery have thus been mitigated by the manner in which its powers and obligations have been carried out, many have been the virtues called into operation; many the soft, the gentle, the devoted feelings brought into steady exercise; many the good, the trustworthy, and altogether praiseworthy habits which have been formed and confirmed on the part of Slaves; and, under these circumstances, the Slave has become so much alive to his master's interests, so identified in all his feelings with his master's property, and so attached to his person and his family, that he would have regarded his emancipation as a decree of banishment, if his freedom necessarily forced him from a master, to have been whose Slave, he felt, had been his happiness. There have been such cases; and though most common with domestic Slaves, they have been found among the other classes. That this state of things has not been more generally realized, is to be ascribed to no deficiency in the dispositions of the Negroes, but from their masters not exercising that kindly influence, which always so acts upon the human heart as to bring out something of its own echo.

        It is to the tyranny of managers and overseers, their demoralizing conduct, and the abuse of their authority, that we may mainly trace the cunning, the dissimulation, and immoral habits of the enslaved Negro, which have so long been attributed to his inherent character.


                         "The Negro, spoiled of all that nature gave
                         To free-born man, soon shrinks into a Slave;
                         His passive limbs, to measured tasks confined,
                         Obey the impulse of another's mind;
                         A silent, secret, terrible control,
                         That rules his sinews, presses too his soul.
                         Where'er their grasping arms the spoilers spread,
                         The Negro's joys, his virtues too are fled."

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CHAPTER X.

To form a just estimate of Negro character, we must observe him under more favourable circumstances than those of Slavery--Statements of travellers who have visited Africa, describing the natives as mild, amiable, virtuous, generous, hospitable, lively, intelligent, and industrious, &c.--Their ingenuity--Clarkson's interview with the Emperor of Russia--The Emperor's surprise at the proficiency of Negroes-- Wadstrom's testimony before the House of Commons--Further testimonies of Major Laing, Dr. Knox, Robin, Mungo Park, Dr. Channing, J. Candler, Benezet, Barrow, Le Vaillant, Dr. Philip, Pringle, Shaw, &c., &c.--Description of a Chief--Observatious of the Editor of the "Westminster Review"--Remarkable that Negroes should retain so many good qualities when labouring under great disadvantages-- Testimony of H. C. Howells--Dr. Channing says "we are holding in bondage one of the best races of the human family"--His delineation of the real character of the Negroes.

        In order to form a just estimate of the character and capabilities of the Negro, we must observe him in a somewhat more favourable situation than in those dreadful receptacles of human misery, the crowded deck of the Slave ship, or in the less openly shocking, but constrained and extorted, and consequently painful labours of the sugar plantation or of the cotton field. Amongst the civilized tribes of Africa, as well as amongst those who remain in a more savage state, we may often meet with lofty sentiments of independence, and instances of ardent courage and devoted friendship, which would sustain a comparison with the most splendid similar examples in the more highly advanced races. Honourable and punctual fulfilment of treaties and compacts, patient endurance of toil, hunger, cold, and all kinds of hardship and privation, inflexible fortitude, and unshaken perseverance in avenging insults or injuries, according to their own peculiar customs and feelings, show that they are not destitute of the more valuable moral qualities.

        Many travellers, and those who have had the most frequent intercourse with Africans, assure us that the

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natural dispositions of the Negro race, are mild, gentle, and amiable in an extraordinary degree. They bear ample testimony to their being possessed of intellectual capacities of no inferior order, assuring us also, how susceptible they are of every generous and noble feeling of the mind, abounding in benevolence, hospitality, generosity, and filial affection, thus demonstrating their capability of arriving at the highest attainments of the human understanding. Not unfrequently they are described as being conspicuous for the nobler attributes of our nature, and instead of the inhabitants of that vast continent being doomed to inevitable inferiority, many are the pleasing proofs, that they are highly capable of civilization, and that they would perhaps even excel in a moral and religious point of view.

        "Many of the dark races," says Dr. Lawrence in his Lectures delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons, "although little civilized, display an openness of heart, a friendly and generous disposition, the greatest hospitality, and an observance of the point of honour according to their own notions, from which nations more advanced in knowledge might often take a lesson with advantage. They possess a natural goodness of heart, and warmth of affection." "I can see no reason," he adds, "to doubt that the Negro is equal to any in natural goodness of heart. It is consonant to our general experience of mankind, that the latter quality should be deadened or completely extinguished in the Slave ship."

        Major Denham and his followers describe the Negroes as a kind-hearted race, lively, and intelligent.

        That in his own country, the Negro is not that lazy, worthless, and brutified being he is frequently described to be, is clearly demonstrated by the testimony of many travellers. "The industry of the Foulahs," says Mungo Park, "in agriculture and pasturage, is everywhere remarkable." Speaking of the Negroes near one of the Sego ferries, he says,--"The view of this extensive city, the numerous

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houses on the river, the crowded population, and the cultivated state of the country, formed altogether a prospect of civilization and magnificence which I little expected to find in the bosom of Africa." The same traveller, after relating an affecting interview between a poor blind Negro widow and her son, adds, "From this interview I was fully convinced that whatever difference there is between the European and the Negro in the conformation of the nose and the colour of the skin, there is none in the genuine sympathies and characteristic feelings of our common nature." Of the truth of this observation he gives a striking example in the conduct of the Negro woman who found him, without food or shelter, sitting under a tree in the country of Bambarra. This pleasing circumstance will be found recorded in Park's own words in another part of the present volume.

        In reading Ledyard, Lucas, Mungo Park, and others, we find that the inhabitants of the interior are more virtuous and more civilized than those on the sea coast; surpass them also in the preparations of wool, leather, cotton, wood, and metals; in weaving, dyeing, and sewing.

        Adanson, who visited Senegal in 1754, when describing the country, says, "It recalled to me the idea of the primitive race of men. I thought I saw the world in its infancy. The Negroes are sociable, humane, obliging, and hospitable; and they have generally preserved an estimable simplicity of domestic manners. They are distinguished by their tenderness for their parents, and great respect for the aged; a patriarchal virtue, which in our day is too little known." Golberry says, that in Africa there are no beggars except the blind.

        Barrow gives a picture, by no means unpleasing, of the Hottentots. Their indolence he attributes to the state of subjection in which they live, as the wild Bushmen are particularly active and cheerful. "They are a mild, quiet, and timid people; perfectly harmless, honest, faithful; and,

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though extremely phlegmatic, they are kind and affectionate to each other, and not incapable of strong attachments. A Hottentot would share his last meal with his companions. They have little of that kind of art or cunning that savages generally possess. If accused of crimes of which they have been guilty, they generally divulge the truth. They seldom quarrel among themselves, or make use of provoking language. Though naturally fearful, they will run into the face of danger if led on by their superiors. They suffer pain with patience. They arc by no means deficient in talent."*

        "In his disposition," says Barrow, " the Bushman is lively and cheerful; in his person, active. His talents are far above mediocrity; and, averse to idleness, they are seldom without employment. They are very fond of dancing, exhibit great industry and acuteness in their contrivances for catching game, and considerable mechanical skill in forming their baskets, mats, nets, arrows," &c., &c. **

        That the Africans are very similar to the inhabitants of other parts of the globe, and regulate their conduct towards others according to the treatment they receive, may be easily gathered from the statements of many writers. "The feelings of the Negroes," says one, "are extremely acute. According to the manner in which they are treated, they are gay or melancholy, laborious or slothful, friends or enemies. When well fed, and not maltreated, they are contented, joyous, and ready for every enjoyment; and the satisfaction of their mind is painted in their countenance. Of benefits and abuse, they are extremely sensible, and against those who injure them they bear a mortal hatred. On the other hand, when they contract an affection to a master, there is no office, however hazardous, which they will not boldly execute, to demonstrate their zeal and attachment. They are naturally affectionate, and have an ardent love for their children, friends, and countrymen.
* Barrow's Travels in South Africa.

** Idem.

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The little they possess, they freely distribute among the necessitous, without any other motive than that of pure compassion for the indigent."*

        The acute and accurate Barbot, in his large work on Africa, says, "The Blacks have sufficient sense and understanding, their conceptions are quick and accurate, and their memory possesses extraordinary strength. For, although they can neither read nor write, they never fall into confusion or error, in the greatest hurry of business and traffic. Their experience of the knavery of Europeans has put them on their guard in transactions of exchange; they carefully examined all our goods, piece by piece, to ascertain if their quality and measure were correctly stated; and showed as much sagacity and clearness in all these transactions, as any European tradesman could do."

        Of those imitative arts, in which perfection can be attained only in an improved state of society, it is natural to suppose that the Negroes can have but little knowledge; but the fabric and colours of the Guinea cloths are proofs of their native ingenuity; and, that they are capable of learning all kinds of the more delicate manual labours, is proved by the fact, that nine-tenths of the artificers in the West Indies are Negroes: many are expert carpenters, and some watchmakers. The drawings and busts executed by the wild Bushman in the neighbourhood of the Cape are praised by Barrow for their accuracy of outline, and correctness of proportion.

        Of those who have speculatively visited and described the Slave coast, there are not wanting some who extol the natural abilities of the natives. D'Elbée, Moore, and Bosman, speak highly of their mechanical powers and indefatigable industry. Desmarchais does not scruple to affirm that their ingenuity rivals the Chinese.

        In 1818, when the sovereigns of Europe met in congress at Aix la Chapelle, Thomas Clarkson obtained an interview
* Hist. des Antilles, p. 483.

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with the Emperor of Russia, and was received with marked attention by that amiable monarch. Clarkson's object was to interest him on behalf of the oppressed Slave. The Emperor listened to his statements, and promised to use his influence with the assembled monarchs, to secure the suppression of the trade in human beings as speedily as possible.

        Describing this interview with the Emperor of Russia, in which the subject of Peace Societies, as well as the abolition of the Slave-trade was discussed, Thomas Clarkson observes:--"We then rose up from our seats, to inspect some articles of African manufacture, which I had brought with me as a present, and which had been laid on the table. We examined the articles in leather first, one by one, with which he was uncommonly gratified. He said they exhibited not only genius, but taste, and that he had never seen neater work either in Petersburgh or in London. There was one piece of cotton cloth which attracted his particular notice, and which was undoubtedly very beautiful. It called from him this observation,-- 'Manchester,' says he, 'I think, is your great place for manufactures of this sort,--do you think they can make a better piece of cotton there?' I told him I thought I had never seen a better piece of workmanship of the kind anywhere. Having gone over all the articles, the Emperor desired me to inform him, whether he was to understand that these articles were made by the Africans in their own country; that is, in their own native villages, or after they had arrived in America, where they would have an opportunity of seeing European manufactures, and experienced work-men in the arts? I replied, that such articles might be found in every African village, both on the coast and in the interior, and that they were samples of their own ingenuity, without any connection with Europeans.

        " 'Then,' said the Emperor, 'you astonish me--you have given me a new idea of the state of these poor people.

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I was not aware that they were so advanced in society. The works you have shown me, are not the works of brutes, but of men endued with rational and intellectual powers, and capable of being brought to as high a degree of proficiency as any other men. Africa ought to be allowed to have a fair chance of raising her character in the scale of the civilized world.' I replied, that it was the cruel traffic in Slaves alone, which had prevented Africa rising to a level with other nations; and that it was only astonishing to me that the natives there, had, under its impeding influence, arrived at the perfection which had displayed itself in the specimens of workmanship which he had just seen."

        Walstrom, in his admirable "Essay on Colonization," in speaking of the African race, makes the following remarks:--"Their understandings have not been nearly so much cultivated as those of Europeans; but their passions, both defensive and social, are much stronger. Their hospitality to unprotected strangers, is liberal, disinterested, and free from ostentation. Their kindness and respectful attention to White persons, with whose characters they are satisfied, arises to a degree of partiality, which, all things considered, is perfectly surprising. On those parts of the coast and country where the Slave-trade prevails, the inhabitants are shy and reserved, (as well they may,) and on all occasions go armed, lest they should be way-laid and carried off. In maternal, filial, and fraternal affection, I scruple not to pronounce them superior to any Europeans I ever was among. So very successful have the European Slave-dealers been, in exciting in them a thirst for spirits, that it is now become one of the principal pillars of their trade; for the chiefs, intoxicated by the liquor with which they are purposely bribed by the Whites, often make bargains, and give orders fatal to their subjects, which, when sober, they would gladly retract.

        "On a question put to me in a committee or the British House of Commons, I offered to produce specimens of

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their manufactures in iron, gold, filigree-work, leather, cotton, matting, and basket-work; some of which, equal any articles of the kind fabricated in Europe, and evince that, with proper encouragement, they would make excellent workmen. Even the least improved tribes make their own fishing tackle, canoes, and implements of agriculture. If even, while the Slave-trade disturbs their peace, and endangers their persons, they have made such a progress, what may we not expect if that grievous obstacle were removed, and their ingenuity directed into a proper channel? The Slave-trade disturbs their agriculture still more than their manufactures; for men will not be fond of planting, who have not a moral certainty of reaping. Yet, even without enjoying that certainty, they raise grain, fruits, and roots, not only sufficient for their own consumption, but even to supply the demands of the European shipping, often to a considerable extent; in some islands and part of the coast, where there is no Slave-trade, they have made great progress in agriculture. Though, on the whole, passion is more predominant in the African character than reason; yet their intellects are so far from being of an inferior order, that one finds it difficult to account for their acuteness, which so far transcends their apparent means of improvement."

        "The Blacks living in London," he adds, "are generally profligate, because uninstructed, and vitiated by Slavery, for many of them were once Slaves of the most worthless description; namely, the idle and superfluous domestic, and the gamblers and thieves who infest the towns in the West Indies. Some come to attend children and sick persons on board, and others are brought by their masters by way of parade. In London, being friendless, and despised on account of their complexion, and too many of them being really incapable of any useful occupation, they sink into abject poverty."

        Major Laing, in his "Travels in Western Africa," observes, "A destitute old man is unknown among the

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Mandingoes. A son considers it his first duty to look after and provide for his aged father's comfort; and if he is unfortunate enough to have lost his own, he perhaps looks for some aged sire, who, being without children, requires the care and attention of youth. There is no nation with which I am acquainted, where age is treated with so much respect and deference."

        Writers on the history of mankind seem to be nearly agreed in considering the Bushmen of South Africa as the most degraded and miserable of all nations, and the lowest in the scale of humanity; yet there are accurate observers, who cannot be suspected of undue prepossession towards opposite sentiments and representations, who have drawn a less unfavourable picture of the moral and intellectual character of the Bushmen. Burchell, who sought and obtained opportunities of conversing with them and observing their manner of existence, though he found them in the most destitute and miserable state, yet discovered among them traits of kind and social feelings, and all the essential attributes of humanity.* Among other interesting remarks of this intelligent traveller, tending to the same result, we find an observation, that the females among the Bushmen displayed as much the signs of modesty as Europeans. "The young women were as delicate in feelings of modesty, as if they had been educated in the most decorous manner." He adds, that they are pleasing by a sprightly and interesting expression of countenance, though far from beautiful, and although their features have the peculiar type of the Bushmen race. Mr. Thompson confirms this account, and even gives a still more favourable description of the females of the Bushmen. **

        Dr. Knox asserts, that the Negroes are capable of civilization, and mentions the Kaffirs as being a very superior race, "scorning to use poisoned weapons, or resort to subtlety; being strong, valiant, and chivalrous."


* Diet. Class d'Hist. Nat. Art. Homme.

** Travels in Africa, I. 431.
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        Robin speaks of a Slave in Martinico, who, having gained money sufficient for his own ransom, purchased with it his mother's freedom. The most horrible outrage that can be committed against a Negro, is to curse his father or his mother, or to speak of either with contempt.

        Mungo Park observes, that a Slave said to his master: "Strike me, but curse not my mother;" and that a Negress having lost her son, her only consolation was, that he had never told a lie. Casaux relates that a Negro, seeing a White Man abuse his father, said: "Carry away the child of this monster, that it may not learn to imitate his conduct."

        "Of all the races of men," says Dr. Channing, "the African is the mildest and most susceptible of attachment. He loves, where the European would hate. He watches the life of a master, whom the North American Indian, in like circumstances, would stab to the heart."

        "There is in the Negro race," says John Candler, "a spirit of kindness not common to barbarous or half-civilized nations; such is the testimony of Mungo Park and other African travellers. A few days before our arrival at the Cape, a ship from Bremen, with 170 German emigrants, bound for New Orleans, had been wrecked at Point Isabella, and driven on shore in a heavy gale of wind. No lives were lost; much damage was sustained; but the passengers and crew were brought in safety to the Cape. The news of their arrival--strangers in a land speaking an unknown tongue, dejected, care-worn, much of their little property lost in the wreck, some of them sick, and nearly all without food--aroused the feelings of these good people, and awakened the liveliest sympathy. The authorities, all Black or Coloured men, ordered houses to be opened for their reception, into which beds and moveables were conveyed; medical men proffered their assistance, and the inhabitants supplied them with food and clothing. We passed through some of the buildings where they were

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placed, and were cheered to witness the alacrity with which they were served.*

        Anthony Benezet, a highly philanthropic and benevolent individual, a member of the Society of Friends, established a school in Philadelphia for the instruction of Negroes, in which he himself taught gratuitously. No one had a better opportunity of ascertaining their capabilities than he had: and he says, "I can with truth and sincerity declare, that I have found amongst the Negroes as great variety of talents as among a like number of Whites; and I am bold to assert, that the notion entertained by some, that the Blacks are inferior in their capacities, is a vulgar prejudice founded on the pride or ignorance of their lordly masters, who have kept their Slaves at such a distance, as to be unable to form a right judgment of them."

        Surely testimonies so creditable to the character and capabilities of the Negro race, proceeding spontaneously from men in all respects intelligent and trustworthy, are sufficient to refute those calumnies which describe them as insensible to the blessings of freedom, and as incapable of appreciating those blessings, and even designed for no other than a servile and ignominious rank in the human family. Surely they are enough to convince us that they are able "to manage their own concerns;" that they need not the impulse of the whip, having, in a state of freedom, no disinclination to work, and that willingly, from the natural impulse only of their own reflections.

        Volumes might be filled with equally honourable testimonies in favour of the calumniated Negro. Travellers who have visited the interior of Africa, where the effects of the Slave Trade are much less felt than upon the coasts, assure us that the natural dispositions of the Negro are mild, gentle, and amiable in an extraordinary degree; and that far from wanting ingenuity, they have made no contemptible progress in the more refined arts; and have even
* Brief Notices of Hayti.

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united into political societies of great extent and complicated structure, notwith standing the grievous obstacles which are thrown in the way of their civilization, by their remote situation, and their want of water carriage; that their disposition to voluntary and continued exertions of body and mind, their capability for industry, the great promoter of all human improvement, is not inferior to the same principle in other tribes in similar situations: in a word, that they have the same propensity to improve their condition, their faculties, and their virtues, which forms so prominent a feature of the human character over all the rest of the world.

        The travels of Barrow, Le Vaillant, and Mungo Park, and the writings of Dr. Philip, Pringle, and Shaw, &c., abound with incidents, honourable to the moral character of the Africans, and prove that they betray no deficiency in the amiable qualities of the heart. One of these travellers gives us an interesting description of the Chief of a tribe:--"His countenance was strongly marked with the habit of reflection; vigorous in his mental, and amiable in his personal qualities, Gaika was at once the friend and ruler of a happy people, who universally pronounced his name with transport, and blessed his abode as the seat of felicity." Many highly polished European kings would appear to little advantage by the side of this sable Chief.

        There is no just ground for supposing that Negroes in general are inferior to any variety of the human race in natural goodness of heart; but it is consonant with our experience of mankind, that this quality should be deadened, or completely extinguished, in the Slave ship or the plantation: indeed it is as little creditable to the head as to the heart of their White tormentors, to expect a display of amiable or moral qualities from the Negro, after his treatment in oppression and Slavery.

        "The Africans," writes the editor of the Westminster Review, "are apt to imitate, quick to seize, ambitious to

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achieve civilization. Whenever brought into contact with Europeans, they copy their manners, imbibe their tastes, and endeavour to acquire their arts. The imitative disposition and the imitative faculty, are both in them particularly strong. They are neither unwilling nor unable to learn the lessons and endure the toils and shackles of civilized existence. In those qualities of acquiring and progressing, which distinguish Man from the brute, they resemble Man. They have now been for three centuries in contact with Europeans, exposed during that period to the most barbarous treatment and the most destroying and depressing influences; yet not only has nothing occurred to indicate for them the fate of other unhappy races whom European cruelty or European superiority has trodden out, but they have actually advanced under circumstances the most hostile to advancement." Even in their native Africa, where they have received gunpowder and rum from the very hands which ought to have imparted to them all the better influences of civilized life; cheated by knavish agents, cajoled by European governments, and hunted with bloodhounds,--still, under all these retrograding influences, they have afforded admirable proofs that they are as susceptible of civilization as any other people on the face of the earth.

        It is indeed remarkable, that under the peculiar disadvantages to which the Negro race are subjected, so many of their good qualities should often remain to a considerable extent unimpaired. The African is, as we have said, naturally so affectionate, imitative, and docile, that under the least favourable circumstances, he often imbibes much that is good. The influence of a wise and kind master, (the effects of which have been already alluded to,) are visible in the very countenance and bearing of his Slaves, and notwithstanding all their degradation, sufficiently deep to erase from them nearly every trace of the divine image, there are occasionally to be found, even among Slaves, examples of

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superior intelligence and virtue, strongly evincing the groundlessness of the opinion that they are incapable of filling a higher rank than that of Slavery, and demonstrating also, that human nature is too generous and hardy to be wholly destroyed in the most unpropitious state. We also frequently witness in this class "a superior physical development, a grace of form and motion, which almost extorts a feeling approaching respect."

        H. C. Howells, of Pittsburg, U. S., made the following statement in the Anti-Slavery Convention, in London, in 1843. "There are in Pittsburg 2500 people of Colour who stand as high in point of intellect, and of moral conduct, as the same number of the White population. With all their disadvantages pressing them down to the dust, there is a buoyancy raising them above everything. There are among them whom I love as my dearest kindred,--men who are imbued with the spirit of the gospel in no ordinary degree, and whose fidelity would make them ornaments to any station of life." *

        Is it not evident then, to use the words of the excellent Dr. Channing, whom I have so often quoted, that "we are holding in bondage one of the best races of the human family?" The Negro, "says he," is among the mildest and gentlest of men. He is singularly susceptible of improvement from abroad. His children, it is said, receive more rapidly than ours the elements of knowledge. How far he can originate improvements, time only can teach. His nature is affectionate, easily touched; and hence he is more open to religious impressions than the White Man. The European races have manifested more courage, enterprise, invention; but in the dispositions which Christianity particularly honours, how inferior are they to the African. When I cast my eyes over our southern region, the land of bowie knives, lynch law, and duels,--of chivalry, honour, and revenge,--and when I consider that Christianity is
* Report of Convention.

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declared to be a spirit of charity, which seeketh not its own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and endureth all things,--can I hesitate in deciding to which of the races in that land, Christianity is most adapted, and in which its noblest disciples are most likely to be reared? The African carries with him, much more than we, the germs of a meek, long-suffering virtue. A short residence among the Negroes in the West Indies impressed me with their capacity of improvement. On all sides I heard of their religious tendencies, the noblest in human nature."

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CHAPTER XI.

The African race examined in an Intellectual point of view--Their origin and noble ancestry--Ethiopians and Egyptians considered--Some Negroes have arrived at considerable intellectual attainments--Have distinguished themselves variously--Exemplified in Amo--State of learning at Timbuctoo in the sixteenth century--Abdallah--Hannibal-- Lislet--Fuller--Banneker--Derham--Capitein-- Ignatius Sancho-- Gustavus Vassa--Lott Carey--Phillis Wheatley---Placido--Jasmin Thoumazeau--Paul Cuffe--Toussaint L'Ouverture, and many others-- Further testimony of Blumenbach to their capacity for scientific cultivation--Corroborative evidence in the United States--West Indies-- Liberia--Gnadenthal--Further demonstration of Negro capabilities inliving witnesses--Jan Tzatzoe--Pennington--Douglass--Remond-- Crummell--Dr. M'Cune Smith--Edward Frazer, Wesleyan Minister in Antigua--Richard Hill, Esq.--Some of the highest offices of State in Brazil filled by Blacks--Blacks and Mulattoes are distinguished officers in the Brazilian army--Coloured Roman Catholic Clergy--Lawyers-- Physicians--Dr. Wright's testimony to the capabilities and intellect of the Negro.

        With regard to the intellectual capabilities of the African ace, it may be observed, that Africa was once the nursery of science and literature, and it was from thence that they were disseminated among the Greeks and Romans. Solon, Plato, Pythagoras, and others of the master spirits of ancient Greece, performed pilgrimages into Africa in search of knowledge; there they sat at the feet of ebon philosophers to drink in wisdom!* How many multitudes flocked from all parts of the world to listen to the instructions of the African Euclid, who, 300 years before Christ, was at the head of the most celebrated mathematical school in the world? Africa had once her churches, her colleges, and repositories of learning and of science; once, she was the emporium of commerce, and the seat of an empire which contended with Rome for the sovereignty of the world;
* It is said that the ancient Greeks represented Minerva, their favourite Goddess of Wisdom, as an African Princess.

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she has been termed the cradle of the ancient Church, and she was the asylum of the infant Saviour. Say not then, that Africa is without her heraldry of science and of fame!

        Antiochus the Great welcomed to his court, with the most signal honours, the African Hannibal; and the great conqueror of Hannibal made the African poet, Terence, one of his most intimate associates and confidants! Being emancipated by his master, who took him to Rome and gave him a good education, the young African soon acquired reputation for the talent he displayed in his comedies. His dramatic works were much admired by the Romans for their prudential maxims and moral sentences, and compared with his contemporaries he was much in advance of them in point of style.

        Some of the most eminent Fathers and writers in the primitive Church, Origen, Tertullian, Augustine, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Cyril, were Africans. Can the enlightened Negrophobists of America tell us why these tawny Bishops of Africa, of Apostolic renown, were not colonized into a Negro pew, when attending the ecclesiastical councils of their day? And how do they reconcile their actions with the example of the Evangelist Philip, who, in compliance with the intimation of the Spirit, went and joined the Ethiopian in his chariot, preached to him the gospel of Christ, and baptized him in his name?

        Most eminent writers and historians concur in the opinion that the ancient Ethiopians were Negroes, though perhaps exhibiting the peculiar features of the race in a less aggravated degree than the dwellers on the coast of Guinea: to the Ethiopians we are justified in ascribing the highest attainments They appear to have been the parents of Egyptian science and civilization, and attained, as existing monuments attest, a high eminence in many arts in the very earliest periods of history.

        Respecting the physical history of the ancient Egyptians, it has been a matter of discussion to what department of

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mankind they belonged. The fact has been strongly maintained by some that they were Negroes. If we form an opinion of them from the accounts left us by Herodotus and other writers, who say that they were "woolly-haired Blacks, with projecting lips," we cannot doubt that they were perfect Negroes. Volney assumes it as a settled point that this was really the case. But the authority of Herodotus is of most weight, as he travelled in Egypt, and was therefore well acquainted, from his own observation, with the appearance of the people; and it is well known that he is generally very faithful in relating the facts, and describing the objects, which fell under his personal observation. In his account of the people of Colchis, he says, that they were a colony of Egyptians, and supports his opinion by this argument, that they were "black in complexion and woolly-haired." These are the exact words (translated) used in his description of undoubted Negroes. But neither the Copts, their descendants, nor the mummies, of which so many thousands are yet extant as unquestionable witnesses, allow the supposition to be maintained that their general complexion was black.*

        That the ancient Ethiopians were black, I have stated, most eminent writers are agreed upon; hence the Scripture query, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin?" Now, it is a fact of history, that Egypt and Ethiopia were originally peopled, contemporaneously, by the brothers, Misraim and Cush, and were long confederated under one government, being a similar people in politics and literature, &c. As
* Dr. Prichard, in his History of Man, has brought together, with great learning and industry, most of the ancient testimonies illustrative of the question. By the most extensive researches, he has endeavoured to prove an affinity between the ancient Egyptians and Indians; and to show that both are marked by the characters of the Negro race. Those who desire to study this question in detail, will find ample materials in Dr. Prichard's work, Vol. II., p. 282, 289, 330; in "Volneys Ruins of Empires," App. 278; "Burkhardt's Travels;" "Denon Descrip. de l'Egypte;" &c.

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evidence of this, down to the time of Herodotus, eighteen out of three hundred Egyptian sovereigns were Ethiopians.*

        If it be not admitted that these nations were black, they were undoubtedly of very dark complexion, having much of the Negro physiognomy, as depicted in Egyptian sculpture and painting, and from them the Negro population, indeed the whole race of Africa, have sprung. Say not then, I repeat it, that Africa is without her heraldry of science and of fame! Its inhabitants are the"off-shoots,-- wild and untrained it is true, but still the off-shoots,--of a stem which was once proudly luxuriant in the fruits of learning and taste; whilst that from which the Goths, their calumniators, have sprung, remained hard, and knotted, and barren."**

        However, putting this noble ancestry entirely out of view, which all Africans are, nevertheless, fully entitled to claim as their own;--instances are not unfrequent of undoubted Negroes, who have distinguished themselves in an intellectual point of view; and some who have been more fortunately favoured with opportunities of education and improvement, have arrived at intellectual attainments of no mean order. They are not without their philosophers, linguists, poets, mathematicians, ministers of the Gospel, merchants, lawyers, generals, and physicians, eminent in their several attainments, energetic in enterprise, and honourable in character. That examples of distinguished intellect and ability are not more frequent among the Negro race, is doubtless owing, chiefly, to the want of opportunities of cultivation and means of improvement, added to the other disadvantages under which they have laboured through successive generations. Let us again revert to facts, for I desire not to make any assertion without having the support of undubitable evidence.

        Among the Turks, Negroes have sometimes arrived at the most eminent offices. Different writers have given the
* Herod, Lib. II., cap. 100.

** Richard Watson.

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same account of Kislar Aga, who, in 1730, was chief of the Black eunuchs of the Porte, and have described him as possessing great wisdom and profound knowledge.*

        In 1765, the English papers cited as a remarkable event, the ordination of a Negro, by Dr. Keppel, Bishop of Exeter.** Among the Spaniards and Portuguese, it is a common occurrence. The history of Congo gives an account of a Black Bishop who studied at Rome.***

        Correa de Serra, a learned secretary of the Academy of Portugal, informs us that several Negroes have been learned lawyers, preachers, and professors; and that many of them in the Portuguese possessions, have been signalized by their talents. In 1717, the Negro, Don Juan Latino, taught the Latin language at Seville. He lived to the age of 117. ****

        An African Prince, and many young Africans of quality sent into Portugal in the time of king Immanuel, were distinguished at the Universities, and some of them were promoted to the priesthood.*****

        Near the close of the 17th century, Admiral Du Quesne, saw at the Cape Verd Islands, a catholic Negro clergy, with the exception of the Bishop and Curate of St. Jago. ******

        In 1734, Anthony William Amo, an African from the coast of Guinea, took the degree of Doctor in Philosophy at the University of Wittemburg. Two of his dissertations, according to Blumenbach, exhibit much well digested knowledge of the best physiological works of the time. He was well versed in Astronomy, and spoke the Latin, Hebrew, Greek, French, Dutch, and German languages. In an account of his life, published by the academic council of the University, his integrity, talents, industry, and erudition are highly commended.*******


* Observations sur la religion, &c., des Turcs; p. 98.

*** Gentleman's Mag., 1765, p. 145.

*** Prevot, General History of Voyages, V. p. 53.

**** Gregoire.

***** Cledes's History of Portugal, I. p. 594. Paris, 1735.

****** Gregoire.

******* Gregoire.
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        According to the statements of Leo Africanus, who visited the city of Timbuctoo, on the Niger, in the 16th century, the progress of learning must have been considerable in its locality at that period. "In this city," observes Leo, "there are great numbers of judges, of teachers, of priests, and of very learned men, who are amply supported by the royal bounty. An infinite quantity of M.S. books are brought hither from Barbary; and much more money is derived from the traffic in these than from all the other articles of merchandize." As if to prevent us from referring these things to the Moors, Leo mentions Abubakir, surnamed Bargama, the kings brother, with whom he was well acquainted, as "a man very black in complexion, but most fair in mind and disposition."*

        Abdallah, a native of Guber, in West Africa, although having the true Negro features and colour, is described as having a very intelligent, prepossessing countenance. "In his mental faculties," says Dr. Steetzen, "he appeared to be by no means inferior to Europeans."**

        The capacity of the Negro for the mathematical and physical sciences, is proved by Hannibal, a Colonel in the Russian artillery, and Lislet of the Isle of France, who was named a corresponding member of the French academy of Sciences, on account of his excellent Meteorological Observations. Fuller, a Slave of Maryland, was an extraordinary example of quickness in mental calculation. Being asked in a company, for the purpose of trying his powers, how many seconds a person had lived who was seventy years and some months old, he gave the answer in a minute and a half. On reckoning it up after him in figures, a different result was obtained; "have you not forgot the leap years?" asked the Negro. This ommission was supplied, and the number then agreed precisely with his answer. Fuller was a native of Africa, and could neither read nor write.
* Travels of Leo Africanus.

** Annals of Oriental Literature, p, 537.

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This circumstance is related by Dr. Rush from his own knowledge, a most creditable authority, and is quoted by Dr. Lawrence, Gregoire, Rees, Chambers, &c.

        Another instance occurred in the United States during the last century, of a Coloured man showing a remarkable skill in Mathematical Science. His name was Richard Banneker, and he belonged also to Maryland. He was altogether self taught, and having directed his attention to the study of astronomy, his calculations were so thorough and exact, as to excite the approbation of Pitt, Fox, Wilberforce, and many other eminent persons. An almanac which he composed, was produced in the British House of Commons, as an argument in favour of the mental cultivation of the Coloured people, and of their liberation from their wretched thraldom.*

        Boerhaave and De Haen have given the strongest testimony that our Coloured fellow-men possess no mean insight into practical medicine; and several have been known as very dexterous surgeons. A Negress at Yverdun is mentioned by Blumenbach as being celebrated for real knowledge, and a "fine experienced hand."**

        James Derham, originally a Slave in Philadelphia, became one of the most distinguished physicians in New Orleans.***

        J. E. J. Capitein was brought from Africa when about seven years old, and purchased by a Slave-dealer. Of his early history but little is known, or by what means he became instructed in the elements of the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldaic languages. He was a painter from taste. He published at the Hague, an elegy in Latin verse, on the death of his instructor. From the Hague he went to the University of Leyden; on entering which, he published a Latin dissertation on the calling of the Gentiles. He also published several sermons and letters at Leyden, one
* Gregoire.

** Chambers' Tracts, v. vii.

*** Mott's Biogr. Sketches.

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of which, went through four editions very quickly. He took his degree at Leyden, and was ordained to the office of a Christian minister in Amsterdam. He went to Elmina on the Gold Coast, where it is probable he was either murdered or sold into Slavery.*

         The son of the King of Nimbana came to England to study, acquired a proficiency in the sciences, and learnt Hebrew, that he might read the Bible in the original. This young man, of whom great expectations were entertained, died soon after his return to Africa.**

        Stedman was acquainted with a Negro who knew the Koran by heart.

        Higiemondo was an able artist. If the painter's business is to impart life to nature, he was master of this, according to the testimony of Sandrart. He resided in India. In 1788, he or Cugoano, a native African, were in the service of Cosway, first painter of the Prince of Wales.***

        Ignatius Sancho and Gustavus Vassa, the former born in a Slave ship, on its passage to the West Indies, and the latter in Guinea, on the coast of Africa, distinguished themselves in England in modern times. Gustavus Vassa exhibited talents, without much literary cultivation, to which a good education would have been a great advantage. Fortune bringing Ignatius Sancho to England, the interest of the Duke of Montague became excited on his behalf, and he befriended him. Some letters of Sancho's were published in two volumes after his decease. These letters exhibit a considerable display of epistolary talent, of rapid and just conception, of wild patriotism, and of universal philanthropy; and when it is borne in mind that they were written by an untutored African, and never designed for publication, it must be admitted they evince the possession of abilities in the writer, equal to a European. Sancho supported a commerce with the Muses, amidst the
* Lawrence's Lectures.

** Gregoire.

*** Pennington's Text Book, p. 49.

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trivial and momentary interruptions of a shop; he studied the Poets, and even imitated them with some success; he constructed two pieces for the stage; the "Theory of Music" he discussed, published, and dedicated to the Princess Royal; and painting was so much within the circle of his judgment, that Mortimer came often to consult him; Garrick and Sterne were well acquainted with him; the latter corresponded with him.*

        In proof of the musical talents of the Negro, it may be mentioned that they have been known to earn so much in America, as to purchase their freedom with large sums. The younger Friedig, in Vienna, was an excellent performer both on the violin and violincello; he was also a capital draftsman, and made a very successful painting of himself.**

        Amongst others of the Negro race who have possessed no mean share of the intellectual qualities, I may mention Sadiki, a learned Slave in Jamaica, redeemed through the intercession of Dr. Madden, who speaks most highly also of his conduct, and of his great discernment and discretion.***

        Job Ben Solliman, Prince of Bunda on the Gambia, a learned Slave, translated M. S. S. for Sir Hans Sloane; was introduced to Court by the Duke of Montague, and graciously received by the Royal Family and nobility, &c. ****

        Lott Carey, was born a Slave in Virginia, but by repeated presents for his integrity, and subscriptions amongst merchants, by whom he was highly esteemed, he purchased his freedom. His intellectual ability, his firmness of purpose, unbending integrity, correct judgment, and disinterested benevolence, placed him in a conspicuous situation, and gave him wide and commanding influence. *****

        Phillis Wheatley, was stolen for a Slave when a little
* Life of Ignatius Sancho.

** Rees, Lawrence, &c.

*** Dr. Madden's West Indies.

**** Mott's Biog. Sketches.

***** Mott and Chambers.

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girl from her parents in Africa. In sixteen months she acquired the English language so perfectly, that she could read any of the most difficult parts of Scripture, to the great astonishment of those who heard her; and this she learned without any instruction, except what was given her in the family. She wrote poems between the age of 14 and 19, which were published in this country. The talented editors of the Edinbro' Journal in quoting a portion from one of her poems "On the Providence of God," observe, "it shows a very considerable reach of thought, and no mean powers of expression." Phillis visited England and was admired in the first circles of society.*

        Amongst learned Mulattoes, Castaing may be mentioned as exhibiting poetic genius. His compositions ornament various editions of poetry. Barbaud-Royer Boisrond, the author of the "Precis des Gemissements des Sang-mêlés," announces himself as belonging to this class; and Michael Mina (also called Miliscent) was a Mulatto of St. Domingo. Julien Raymond, likewise a Mulatto, associated himself with the class of moral and political sciences, for the section of legislation. Without being able to justify in every respect the conduct of Raymond, we may praise the energy with which he defended Men of Colour and Free Negroes. He published many works, the greater part of which relate to the history of St. Domingo, and may serve as an antidote to the impostures circulated by the colonists. The principal of these is entitled, "Origine des troubles do St. Domingo."**

        Cæsar, a Negro of North Carolina, was the author of several poems, which were published, and have become popular, like those of Bloomfield.***

        Durand and Demanet, who resided a long time in Guinea, found Negroes with a keen and penetrating mind, a sound judgment, taste, and delicacy.****


* Life of Phillis Wheatley.

** Gregoire, p. 167.

*** Idem, p. 168.

**** Durand, p. 58--Demanet, Hist. del 'Afrique, II., p.3.
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        On different parts of the coast of Africa there are Negroes who speak two or three languages, and are interpreters.* In general, they have a very retentive memory. This has been remarked by Vaillant, and other travellers.**

        Adanson, astonished to hear the Negroes of Senegal mention a great number of stars, and converse pertinently concerning them, believes that if they had good instruments, they would become good astronomers.***

        Henry Diaz, who is extolled in all the histories of Brazil, was a Negro. Once a Slave, he became Colonel of a regiment of foot soldiers of his own colour, to whom Brandano bestows the praise of talents and sagacity****

        Mentor, born at Martinico, in 1771, was a Negro. In fighting against the English he was made prisoner. In sight of the coast of Ushant, he took possession of the vessel which was conducting him to England, and carried her into Brest. To a noble physiognomy he united an amenity of character, and a mind improved by culture. He occupied the legislative seat at the side of the estimable Tomany. Such was Mentor, whose latter conduct has perhaps sullied these brilliant qualities. He was killed at St. Domingo.*****

        Cinque, the Chief of the Mendian Negroes, who planned and carried into effect their own rescue by overpowering the crew of the Slaver on which they were embarked, was a man of uncommon natural capacity, and his great mental superiority impressed all who came in contact with him. ******

        Placido was a gifted but unfortunate Negro, of whose history more may perhaps be learnt hereafter. He was a poet of no mean order.

        A collection of poems, written by a Slave recently liberated in the Island of Cuba, was presented to Dr. Madden, in 1838, by a gentleman in Havannah. Some of these pieces
* Clarkson, p. 125.

** Prevot, IV. l98.

*** Voyage au Senegal, p. 149.

**** Gregoire.

***** Idem, p. 102.

****** Sturge's United States.

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had fortunately found their way to that place, and attracted the attention of the literary people there, while the poor author was in Slavery in Cuba. Dr. Madden made a translation of a few of them into English. "I am sensible," says the Doctor, "I have not done justice to these poems, but I trust I have done enough to vindicate in some degree the character of Negro intellect, at least the attempt affords me an opportunity of recording my conviction, that the blessings of education and good government are alone wanting to make the natives of Africa, intellectually and morally, equal to the people of any nation on the surface of the globe." The author of the poems is now living at Havannah, and gains his livelihood by hiring himself out as an occasional servant. His father and mother lived and died in Slavery in Cuba. He has written his history in Spanish, in a manner alike creditable to his talents and his integrity. This, with a few of his compositions translated, will be found amongst the pages of the present volume. As to the merit of the poems, they are highly spoken of by a very talented Spanish scholar, distinguished not only in Cuba, but in Spain, for his literary attainments. The Cuban poet was introduced to Dr. Madden by this gentleman in the following terms:-- "Mi querido Amigo esta carta se la entregara a v, el poeta J. F. M. de quien hable à v, y cuyos versos y exelente ingenio han llamada la atencion, aun en esta pais de todas las personas despreocupadas y buenas."

        Without attempting to enumerate all the Negroes who have written poems, it may be mentioned that Blumenbach possessed English, Dutch, and Latin poetry, by different Coloured persons.

        In Thomas Jenkins, the son of an African King, we have an extraordinary specimen of Negro intellect. Through accidental circumstances, he became placed in a situation more favourable to improvement than falls to the lot of many of his race. He acquainted himself tolerably well

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with Latin and Greek, and initiated himself in the study of mathematics, &c.*

        Francis Williams studied at Cambridge, and made considerable progress in mathematics, and other branches of science.**

        Jasmin Thoumazeau was originally a Slave of St. Domingo; the Philadelphia Society, and the Agricultural Society of Paris, both decreed medals to him.***

        Paul Cuffe presents us with an example of great energy of mind in the more common affairs of life. Born under peculiar disadvantages, notwithstanding the pressure of many difficulties, he qualified himself for any station of life. A sound understanding, united with indomitable energy and perseverance, mingled with a fervent but unaffected piety and benevolence, were the prominent features of his character. Religion, influencing his mind by its secret guidance, and silent reflection, added, in advancing manhood, to the brightness of his character, and confirmed his disposition to practical good. His exertions to promote the happiness of his fellow-men, and to relieve their sufferings, confer more honours upon him, than ever marble statue or monumental trophy could do.****

        Who is there that is not acquainted with the history of the gallant, yet unfortunate Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Negro Chief of St. Domingo, so intimately connected with the history of Hayti, the remembrance of whose name will ever be cherished by the friends of suffering humanity? Among the individuals of the African race who have distinguished themselves by intellectual achievement, he is preeminent: and while society at large is waiting for evidence of what the Negro race can do and become, it is rational to build high hopes upon such a character as that of the man, who, as a Dictator and a General, was the model upon which Napoleon formed himself;***** who was as inclined to
* Chambers' Tracts.

** Mott's Biogr. Sketches.

*** Idem.

**** Memoir of Paul Cuffe.

***** See "Biographie Universelle," art. Toussaint.

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peace as he was renowned in war; and who will ever be regarded in history, as one of the most remarkable men of an age teeming with social wonders. The author of "Brief Notices of Hayti," describes Toussaint L'Ouverture as "one of the ablest generals of his age." Here, then, we have a man, in all respects worthy of the name of man. Here is a man of a jet black complexion, who exhibited a genius which would have been considered eminent in civilized European society, and who, in true goodness and wisdom, affords an incontrovertible demonstration that there is no incompatibility between Negro organization and high intellectual power. He was altogether African,--a perfect Negro in his conformation, yet a fully endowed and well accomplished man. In no respect does his nature appear to have been unequal; there was no feebleness in one direction, as a consequence of unusual vigour in another. He had strength of body, strength of understanding, strength of belief, and, consequently, of purpose; strength of affection, of imagination, and of will. He was, emphatically, a great man: and what one of his race has been, others may equally attain to.

        Blumenbach observes, "that entire and large provinces of Europe might be named, in which it would be difficult to meet with such good writers, poets, philosophers, and correspondents of the French Academy; and that, moreover, there is no savage people, who have distinguished themselves by such examples of perfectibility and capacity for scientific cultivation; and consequently, that none can approach more nearly to the polished nations of the globe than the Negro.* Both in their native country, and in places where they exist as Slaves, or as freed men, they exhibit intellectual and moral characteristics of considerable promise. They not only show a perfect capability of acquiring the more delicate manual arts, but in the United States of America, where many of them have existed for
* P. 118.

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some time as free citizens, in the midst of White people, they exhibit a high development of the intellectual character, several acting as ministers of religion, and doctors of medicine.

        I may also refer to what has been effected, within a few short years in the British West Indies, so recently numbered among "the dark places of the earth, full of the habitations of cruelty." The moral character of the Coloured people in those Islands, many of whom are intelligent, well educated, and possessed of property, has presented a visible and cheering improvement, in spite of the demoralizing effect naturally resulting from that most unchristian and impolitic prejudice indulged against them on account of their colour, by the Whites generally, and their being considered as a degraded class.

        At this moment, too, in the little colony of Liberia, upon the western coast of Africa, formed by free Blacks from the United States, we have, if recent accounts can be relied upon, a community as purely moral and as remarkable for prudent and skilful management as any perhaps in the world. The history of the missions among the Hottentots speaks to the same purpose. Those sent from Holland, in 1792, who founded the establishment at Gnadenthal, were told that they never would be able even to fix the attention of this primitive people. On the contrary, their instructions in school, and their discourses on Christianity, were eagerly taken advantage of. Multitudes flocked from a distance to live at the settlement, for the benefit of the ministrations of the missionaries. It consequently became a populous and thriving town. The Dutch boors at first opposed the mission, thinking that the Hottentots might become reluctant to serve them; but they soon came to see that the people who had become Christianized under the instruction of the missionaries, were far more useful and trustworthy servants than the sensual and degraded Pagans whom they had previously been

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obliged to employ. They were astonished to find the natives, under this system, become quite a different people. "Perhaps nothing in this account is more remarkable than the fact, that so strong a sensation was produced throughout the whole Hottentot nation, and even among the neighbouring tribes of different people, by the improved and happy condition of the Christian Hottentots, as to excite a general desire for similar advantages. Whole families of Hottentots, and even of Bushmen [a degraded and impoverished branch of the same people], set out for the borders of Caffraria, and performed journeys of many weeks in order to settle in Gnadenthal. It is a singular fact in the history of barbarous races of men, that the savage Bushmen, of their own accord, solicited from the colonial government, when negotiations were opened with them with the view of putting an end to a long and bloody contest, that teachers might be sent amongst them, such as those at Gnadenthal."*

        The circumstances already recorded afford abundant ground to hope that an improvement on a very extensive scale, might, with little difficulty be effected, both as regards the moral and intellectual condition of the Negro. Notwithstanding the baneful influences of Slavery, and its concomitant evil the Slave Trade, subjecting them to hardships the most cruel and degrading; and notwithstanding the manifold disadvantages against which this unfortunate race have still to contend;--thanks be to God, we have living witnesses not a few, who demonstrate in themselves that the question of Negro capability is no longer a theoretical one, but established by facts the most unequivocal. Come forth, then, ye living monuments, array yourselves before a guilty world, and demand, each one of you, "Am I not a man and a brother?"

        I have inserted in the present volume, some brief sketches of persons of Colour,--Africans, or of African descent,
* Prichard, I., 185.

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now living, which fully justify these remarks. Such are Jan Tzatzoe, the Christian chief of the Amakosæ tribe, in South Africa. This intelligent African, along with Andries Stoffles, a pious and enlightened Hottentot, came over to England some years ago with Dr. Philip, and moved in the first circles of society in Great Britain. They were examined before a committee of the House of Commons, and also addressed a large audience in Exeter Hall. Extracts from the report of the committee, &c., &c., will be found in the succeeding pages. The engraving placed opposite to the title page of the present volume represents these Africans giving evidence before the committee; Dr. Philip is seated in the foreground, and Jame Read, sen. and jun., Missionaries from South Africa, are standing, the latter acting as interpreter.

        Amongst other living witnesses, may be mentioned James W. C. Pennington, a minister of the Gospel in the United States, highly esteemed and respected by all who are acquainted with him, and who was born a Slave. He visited Great Britain a few years ago, when his company was much sought after, and be moved in the best circles of society. In 1841, he published "A Text Book of the Origin and History, &c., &c., of the Coloured People," a duodecimo of nearly 100 pages, including a mass of facts and arguments on the subject.

        Frederick Douglass, a fugitive Slave, so well-known, is one of this class; his eloquence and thrilling accents speak for themselves. "I am inclined," says Thomas Harvey, "to regard Douglass as raised up by Divine Providence to disprove the notion of the natural inferiority of the Coloured race. He was born and trained in Slavery; --made his escape in early manhood;--supported himself two or three years by hard labour, and then suddenly appeared on the stage of public affairs, as an accomplished public speaker, displaying not merely native talent, but such results of cultivation as could have been obtained only

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under such circumstances by very uncommon genius, and a quickness of perception approaching to intuition. His refinement of mind and manners, the great sensitiveness of his feelings, and his general high toned character, together with his genius and force of mind, constitute him (when viewed in relation to his origin, and the influences amidst which he was born and nurtured) a moral and intellectual phenomenon, well deserving the notice of the philosopher, as well as the philanthropist."

        C. A. Bissette, is an intelligent man of Colour; his labours in the Anti-Slavery cause have been great; and his zeal in that good cause untiring.

        Nor should I forget to mention Charles L. Remond, endowed as he assuredly is, with intellectual attainments of the highest order, and possessing powers of eloquence rarely surpassed but,--


                         "I would not praise thee, Remond--thou hast gifts
                         Bestowed upon thee for a noble end;
                         And, for the use of which, account must be
                         Returned to Him who lent them. May this thought
                         Preserve thee in his fear; and may the praise
                         Be given only to His Mighty name."

        Dr. Madden speaks highly of a Negro minister, at Kingston, Jamaica. He first went to hear him, he says, from motives of curiosity, not unmixed with feelings of contempt; yet, he adds, there was an influence in the ministry of this man, which induced the White Man, "who came to scoff," "to remain to pray."*

        "There is a Coloured female," says Lewis Tappan, living in New York, with whom I am well acquainted, who established the first Sunday school in it. She established that school, by her personal efforts, for the education of children, both White and Coloured; and it was the foundation of all the Sunday schools that exist in and adorn that city. She has also taken out of the almshouses forty
* Dr. Madden's West Indies.

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children, and educated them at her own expense, a large number of them being White children. This woman is now living, a highly respectable and worthy member of the Church of Christ,--an honour to human nature, and to the city of New York, demonstrating the capacity of the Coloured people, and the moral excellency to which they may attain." "I must bear my testimony," adds Lewis Tappan, "in the most decided manner, not only to the excellency of the free people of Colour, whom I have had an opportunity of knowing in New York and the United States, but to their general good conduct, their religious character, and the equality of their capacity, in every point of view, with that of other men."*

        Mr. Athill, a Coloured gentleman, is Postmaster General of Antigua, one of the first merchants in St. John's, and was a member of the Assembly until the close of 1836, when, on account of his continued absence, he voluntarily resigned his seat. A high-born White Man, the Attorney General, now occupies the same chair which this Coloured member vacated.**

        At the annual commencement of the Oberlin Institute, the graduating class was composed of sixteen young men and seven young ladies. Of the former, one was a Coloured man of fine talents, named Wm. H. Day, of Northampton, Mass. His oration is spoken of in the Cleveland Herald as of a high character, both in respect to thought, language, and manner.***

        In a speech made in the Anti-Slavery Convention in 1843, Professor Walker, of the Oberlin Institute, related, that on one occasion, at the desire of the Dean and faculty, the students and people of the place, amounting to 1500, assembled in the chapel to engage in religious exercises, and to hear addresses from Coloured students exclusively. "The day," says Professor Walker, "passed off most admirably.
* Speech in A. S. Conv. 1843.

** Thome and Kimball's West Indies.

*** Burritt's Christian Citizen.

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The speakers showed themselves to be men of talent-- nature's orators, and I was astonished--confounded."*

        Henry H. Garnett, formerly a Slave, is said to be nearly equal in ability and eloquence to that extraordinary man Frederick Douglass.** Henry Bibb, once a Slave, is also a very intelligent and eloquent man.

        Dr. James M'Cune Smith, a Coloured gentleman in New York, being shut out of the American colleges by the prejudice against his complexion, took his degree in medicine at the University of Glasgow, and obtained one of the first, if not the first prize, among 500 students. He is a man of superior education, of considerable eloquence, and is highly esteemed and respected in Now York.***

        Alexander Crummell, the minister of a Coloured Episcopal church in New York, is a highly intellectual Negro. He visited London in 1848, and spoke at the annual meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society. He addressed a Coloured Convention at Troy, U.S., in 1847, at some length, in a speech, which, for beauty and chasteness of language, classic research, and its logical expression, commanded the close attention of a refined and intelligent audience. Many legal gentlemen, and others from the highest society in Troy, were present, and must have received a favourable opinion of what can be attained by Coloured men, crushed to the earth even though they are, by the combined influence of Church and State.

        Theodore S. Wright, is a Coloured Presbyterian minister in New York,--an amiable man, much and deservedly respected.

        Stephen Gloucester, who recently visited England, is also an esteemed minister in New York.

        Samuel R. Ward, of Cortland, State of New York, affords an example of high intellectual attainments in the despised race. He is the pastor of a White Congregational Church, and also edits a newspaper.


* Report of Convention.

** Anti-Slavery Reporter.

*** L. Tappan in Anti-Slavery Conv. 1843, &c.
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        Thomas Van Rensallaer, editor of the Ram's Horn, may likewise be adduced as evidence of considerable intellect existing in the Negro race; as also M. R. Delany, joint editor of the North Star.

        In the Anti-Slavery Convention of 1843, Dr. Lushington stated that Lord John Russell had appointed a Black Man to the office of Chief Judge at Sierra Leone.*

        The Wesleyan minister of Parham, in Antigua, (Edward Frazer, who has visited England,) is a man of Colour; he was born a Slave in Bermuda. His history is remarkable. He is not inferior either in education, qualifications, or usefulness, to any of his brethren in the ministry. **

        "I know a Coloured man," says Hiram Wilson, "in the State of New York, who has been employed by the Anti-Slavery Society as a public lecturer; and from information I have received, it appears that he was one of the most popular lecturers they had in the field. He is jet black--of unmixed African blood. I mention this, because it is sometimes said, that, by virtue of a little European blood flowing in their veins, they are brighter, and more talented. But this man is so distinguished, so renowned for his virtues, his intelligence, and his talents, that he has been installed as the pastor of a White congregation--a Presbyterian church in New York, for nearly three years."***

        George B. Vashon, a talented young Coloured gentleman was recently admitted, after due examination, as Attorney, Solicitor, and Counsellor of the Supreme Court of the State of New York. On his examination. he evinced a perfect knowledge of the rudiments of law, and a familiar acquaintance with Coke, Littleton, Blackstone, and Kent. This is not the first instance of Coloured persons being admitted to legal practice in the United States, for in the Old Bay State, two Coloured lawyers have been pursuing the even tenor of their way as recipients of its honours and
* Report of Convention, 1843.

** Sturge and Harvey's West Indies.

*** Speech in A. S. Conv. 1843.

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emoluments for the last two years. One of these, Robert Morris, jun., in addition to the excellence of his character, has acquired correct business habits. The other, Macon B. Allen, who successfully passed the ordeal of a rigid examination, now holds the office of Justice of the Peace for Middlesex county, United States.

        James Forten was an opulent man of Colour, whose long career was marked by a display of capacity and energy of no common kind. The history of his life is interesting and instructive, affording a practical demonstration of the absurdity as well as injustice of that prejudice, which would stamp the mark of intellectual inferiority on his complexion and race.*

        A speech of the Hon. H. Teage, of the Colony of Liberia, on the Coast of Africa, who is either a Black or Coloured gentleman, is inserted in the present volume as an evidence of the capacity and attainments of his race, and of one whose education and life from early boyhood, are Liberian.

        Symphor L' Instant, an intelligent native of Hayti, who has resided some time in Paris, was present and spoke at the Anti-Slavery Convention in London, in 1840.

        William Lynch, Esq., one of the stipendiary Magistrates in Dominica, is a man of Colour. He is justly valued by those who have the pleasure of his friendship, both in England and the West Indies, for his intelligence and piety.**

        Richard Hill, Esq., Secretary to the Governor and stipendiary Magistrate of Jamaica, is a Coloured man of uncommon endowments of mind, and of noble personal bearing. He is probably the ablest person in Jamaica, and was the mainspring of the government during the best parts of the administrations of Lord Sligo and Sir Lionel Smith.***

        Two Coloured gentlemen are proprietors of one of the largest book stores in Jamaica; and one of them is the
* Sturge's United States.

** Sturge and Harvey's West Indies.

*** Thomas Harvey.

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editor of the Watchman. Other newspapers in the West Indies are edited by Coloured persons, and many amongst this class exhibit great intelligence and refinement.

        I could produce a continuous catalogue of names sufficient in themselves to fill a volume, equally conclusive of Negro ability and intelligence as the foregoing. A few more are mentioned in the concluding chapter of the present volume, entitled "Living Witnesses," which also contains additional information respecting some of those already enumerated.

        Although in Brazil there are more than two millions of Slaves, some of the highest offices of State are filled by Black men. There are also Blacks and Mulattoes amongst the most distinguished officers in the Brazilian army. Coloured lawyers and physicians are found in all parts of that country, and, moreover, hundreds of the Roman Catholic clergy are Black and Coloured men, who minister to congregations made up indiscriminately of Blacks and Whites.

        "One evening, during my stay at Philadelphia," says Joseph Sturge, "I took tea with twelve or fifteen Coloured gentlemen, at the house of a Coloured family. The refined manners and great intelligence of many of them, would have done credit to any society. The Whites have a monopoly of prejudice, but not a monopoly of intellect; nor of education and accomplishments; nor even of those more trivial, yet fascinating graces, which throw the charm of elegance and refinement over social life."*

        Dr. Wright, a clergyman of the Church of England, who has resided many years in Africa, made the following statements before the Anti-Slavery Convention in 1843, with which conclusive evidence I shall close the present chapter. "I went out to Africa," says Dr. Wright, "originally as a missionary, under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. One of the first objects
* Sturge's United States.

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to which my attention was directed, was the education of the Negro. At that time he was oppressed, kept down, crushed, and cruelly treated; above all, every obstacle was thrown in the way of his moral improvement. One of the principal things that struck me on visiting the native schools, or establishing them where they had not before existed, was the equality in point of mind between the African and ourselves. I had the pleasure of witnessing while there, a great improvement in the condition of the Negro. I saw many of the restrictions under which they had been placed gradually removed. I saw the chains struck off from the liberated African, and I beheld that same individual rising in intellect and morals, and practising all the social virtues of the father, the husband, and the citizen, and that to such a degree, that he might be safely held up as an example in a civilized country. I saw a passion for literature gradually increasing. They subscribed for the journals, and were anxious for information upon general, political, and religious subjects. They founded churches, supported ministers, and were desirous of classical attainments. I am perfectly satisfied, from what I have both seen and heard, that the Black Man only wants the same opportunities which the White Man enjoys, in order to raise himself to the highest degree to which intellect can conduct him."*


* Proceedings of the A. S. Conv. 1843, p.212.
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CHAPTER XII.

The foregoing facts afford unquestionable evidence of the capabilities of the Negro--Their desire for improvement--Obstacles to this--Invidious distinctions--Effects of Slavery--The improvidence, indolence, &c., ascribed to the Negro, considered--Testimony of Dr. Lloyd--Similar charges brought against the ancient Britons--Russians a century ago--Admitting everything in favour of distinct races, all are capable of great improvement--This applies equally to the Negro race--The superiority of those favourably circumstanced--Events in St. Domingo--Improvement in Negroes brought to Europe--Comparisons--Effects of Education, &c.--Fact related by Dr. Horn--White races liable to relapse into barbarism --Instances of retrogression in Whites--The Greeks and Romans --Case of Charlotte Stanley--Civilization a vague and indefinite term-- Remarkable instance of retrogression in America--Progression in the Negro defended on the same ground--Time required--Accelerated in proportion as impediments are removed.

        The facts recorded in the two preceding chapters, afford unquestionable evidence, that the Negro race is possessed of capabilities of improvement equal to those of any other people; that they are equally susceptible and desirous of rising in civilization, and also in the scale of intelligent existence. But, until those invidious and Anti-Christian distinctions of caste which now exist are removed, they cannot be otherwise than a degraded and inferior people. The want of principle, the absence of moral, and even of decent manners, and the practice of crime among the Negroes, have been the constant topics of complaint, especially amongst those connected with them as property. But the vices of the Slaves are the vices of their condition; and they are not only generated, but perpetuated, by the very system which is pleaded as necessary for their cure.

        "That Slavery should be most unpropitious to the Slave as a moral being," observes Dr. Channing, "will be further apparent if we consider that his condition is throughout, a wrong, and that consequently, it must lead to unsettle all his notions of duty. The injury to the character from

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living in an atmosphere of wrong we can all understand. To live in a state of society of which injustice is the chief and all-pervading element, is too severe a trial for human nature, especially when no means are used to counteract its influence. Coloured delinquency is mostly left to ripen into crime, with little interference from public or private philanthropy. As might have been expected, Coloured are more numerous than White criminals, in proportion to relative population; and this is appealed to as a proof of their naturally vicious and inferior character, when, in fact, society at large is chargeable with their degradation. The most common distinctions of morality are faintly apprehended by the Slave. Respect for property--that fundamental law of civil society--can hardly be instilled into him. His dishonesty is proverbial. Theft from his master passes with him for no crime. A system of force is generally found to drive to fraud. How necessarily will this be the result of a relation in which force is used to extort from a man his labour, his natural property, without any attempt to win his consent! Can we wonder that the uneducated conscience of the man who is daily wronged should allow him in reprisals to the extent of his power? Thus the primary social virtue, justice, is undermined in the Slave."

        "That the Slave should yield himself to intemperance, licentiousness, and in general, to sensual excess, we must also expect. Doomed to live for the physical indulgences of others, unused to any pleasures but those of sense, stripped of self-respect, and having nothing to gain in life, how can he be expected to govern himself? How naturally --I had almost said necessarily--does he become the creature of sensation, of passion, of the present moment! What aid does the future give him in withstanding desire? The better condition, for which other men postpone the cravings of appetite, never opens before him. The sense of character, the power of opinion, another restraint on the

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free, can do little or nothing to rescue so abject a class from excess and debasement. In truth, power over himself is the last virtue we should expect in the Slave, when we think of him as subjected to absolute power, and made to move passively from the impulse of a foreign will. He is trained to cowardice, and cowardice links itself naturally with low vices. Idleness, to his apprehension, is paradise, for he works without hope of reward. Thus Slavery robs him of moral force, and prepares him to fall a prey to appetite and passion.

        "That the Slave finds in his condition little nutriment for the social virtues we shall easily understand, if we consider that his chief relations are to in absolute master, and to the companions of his degrading bondage; that is, to a being who wrongs him, and to associates whom he cannot honour, whom he sees debased. His dependence on his owner loosens his ties to all other beings. He has no country to love, no family to call his own, no objects of public utility to espouse, no impulse to generous exertion. The relations, dependencies, and responsibilities, by which Providence forms the soul to a deep, disinterested love, are almost struck out of his lot. An arbitrary rule, a foreign, irresistible will, taking him out of his own hands, and placing him beyond the natural influence of society, extinguishes in a great degree the sense of what is due to himself, and to the human family around him.

        "The effects of Slavery on the character are so various that this part of the discussion might be greatly extended; but I will touch only on one other topic. Let us turn, for a moment, to the great motive by which the Slave is made to labour. Labour, in one form or another, is appointed by God for man's improvement and happiness, and absorbs the chief part of human life, so that the motive which excites to it has immense influence on character. It determines very much, whether life shall serve or fail of its end. The man who works from honourable motives, from

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domestic affections, from desire of a condition which will open to him greater happiness and usefulness, finds in labour an exercise and invigoration of virtue. The day labourer, who earns with horny hand and the sweat of his face, coarse food for a wife and children whom he loves, is raised, by this generous motive, to true dignity; and, though wanting the refinements of life, is a nobler being than those who think themselves absolved by wealth from serving others. Now the Slave's labour brings no dignity, is an exercise of no virtue, but throughout, a degradation; so that one of God's chief provisions for human improvement becomes a curse. The motive from which he acts debases him. It is the whip. It is corporal punishment. It is physical pain inflicted by a fellow-creature. Undoubtedly labour is mitigated to the Slave, as to all men, by habit. But this is not the motive. Take away the whip, and he would be idle. His labour brings no new comforts to wife or child. The motive which spurs him is one by which it is base to be swayed. Stripes are, indeed, resorted to by civil government, when no other consideration will deter from crime; but he who is deterred from wrong-doing by the whipping-post is among the most fallen of his race. To work in sight of the whip, under menace of blows, is to be exposed to perpetual insult and degrading influences. Every motion of the limbs, which such a menace urges, is a wound to the soul. How hard must it be for a man, who lives under the lash to respect himself! When this motive is substituted for all the nobler ones which God ordains, is it not almost necessarily death to the better and higher sentiments of our nature? It is the part of a man to despise pain in comparison with disgrace, to meet it fearlessly in well-doing, to perform the work of life from other impulses. It is the part of a brute to be governed by the whip. Even the brute is seen to act from more generous incitements. The horse of a noble breed will not endure the lash. Shall we sink man below the horse?"

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        It is often asserted that Negroes are by nature improvident and without ambition. To account for this, if it really be a fact that it is so, we are not to look to any physical peculiarity in their natural constitution, but to the circumstances under which they are usually placed. They are said to be a stupid, indolent, and filthy race, but this, as has already been stated, is not true. They may, under oppression, lose their stimulus to industry. When a people are oppressed and miserably poor, they are invariably a degraded people; and indolence and filth are the inseparable attendants of dejection. Negroes, generally speaking, have no motives to industry; the lawful fruits of their labour are not secured to them; they are robbed, cheated, and oppressed in every possible way; and the filthiness of their huts and persons, are no more than the natural consequences arising from the state of mental depression in which they are held. Cheerfulness and cleanliness are much more nearly allied than is generally imagined.

        Man is naturally indolent, and there are but two ways of overcoming his inherent aversion to labour,--fear, or hope; the first arises from the apprehension of punishment, and is the motive of the Slave; the second is the more powerful, being most agreeable to nature, and cannot exist, except the labourer has a fair compensation secured to him, as a remuneration for his exertion. Give the Negro a motive, and he is active and industrious enough. Dr. Lloyd, who visited the West Indies about ten years ago, in company with some other philanthropists, observes, "We had some opportunity of observing the Negro's character, and we saw nothing to warrant the assertion, that he is idle and lazy, and requires cruelty and compulsion to make him labour."* The same writer (or Dr. Madden) asserts, "The Negro is not the indolent, slothful being he is everywhere considered;" and adds, in another place, " I am well persuaded, in respect to industry, physical strength, and activity,--
* Letters from the West Indies.

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the Egyptian fellah, the Maltese labourer, and the Italian peasant, are far inferior to the Negro."

        Although vices the most notorious that can disgrace human nature have been ascribed to the African race, similar charges have been made against the ancient Britons, and many other nations of the civilized world, and, perhaps with equal justice. For the sake of demonstration, we need only compare the general circumstances of any European nation whatever, and the individual character of its inhabitants both for talents and virtues, at two distant epochs of its history, and we must at once acknowledge how remarkable is the contrast in each particular point. Need we be reminded again of Cicero's remark, that the "ugliest and most stupid Slaves in Rome came from England?" Here we have demonstrated in ourselves what stupid and degraded Slaves, such as Cicero writes of, are capable of advancing to. The same race, who, in the age of Tacitus, dwelt in solitary dens, amid morasses, have built St. Petersburgh and Moscow; and the posterity of cannibals now feed on wheaten bread. Little more than a century ago, Russia was covered with hordes of barbarians; cheating, drinking, brutal lust, and the most ferocious excesses of rage, were as well known, and as little blamed, among the better classes of the nobles who frequented the Czar's court, as the more polished and mitigated forms of the same vices, are, at this day in St. Petersburgh; literature had never once appeared among its inhabitants in a form to be recognized; and you might travel over tracts of several days' journey, without meeting a man, even among the higher classes, whose mind contained the materials of one moment's rational conversation. Although the various circumstances of external improvement will certainly not disguise, even at this day, and among the individuals of the first classes, the "vestigia ruris," still, no one can presume to dispute that the materials of which Russians are made have been greatly and fundamentally ameliorated; that

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their capacities are rapidly unfolding, and their virtues improving, as their habits have become changed, and their communication with the rest of mankind extended. A century ago, it would have been just as miraculous to read a tolerable Russian composition, as it would be, at this day, to find the same phenomenon at Houssa or Timbuctoo; and speculators who argue about races, and despise the effect of circumstances, would have had the same right to decide upon the fate of all the Russians, from an inspection of the Calmuc skulls, as they imagine they now have to condemn all Africa to everlasting barbarism, from the heads, the colour, and the wool of its inhabitants.

        If it still be maintained that there will always be a sensible difference between the Negro and the European, what reason is there to suppose, that this disparity will be greater than the difference between the Sclavonian and Gothic nations? Admitting every thing that can be urged in favour of the distinction of races, no one has yet denied, with any proof of the assertion, that all the families of mankind are capable of great improvement. And though, after all, some tribes might, as it is asserted, remain inferior to others, it would be ridiculous to deduce from thence either an argument against the possibility of greatly civilizing, even the most untoward generation, or an inference against the importance, even of the least considerable advances which it may be capable of making towards perfection.

        We need only cast our eyes upon a few unquestionable facts, and compare the achievements of Negroes in several situations, to be convinced that the general proposition applies to them as well as the rest of mankind. The superiority of those in the interior of Africa to those on the Slave Coast, is a matter of fact. The enemies of the Slave Trade reasonably impute the degeneracy of the maritime tribes to that baneful commerce. Its friends have on the other hand, deduced from thence an argument against the Negro character, which, they say, is not improved by

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intercourse with civilized nations. But the fact is admitted. To see it exemplified, we have only to consult the travels of Mungo Park; and the same observation has been made by Barrow, as applicable to the tribes south of the line, who increase in civilization as you leave the Slave Coast. Compare the accounts given by these travellers, as well as some of those previously cited, of the skill, the industry, the excellent moral qualities of the Africans in Houssa, Timbuctoo, &c., with the pictures that have been drawn of the same race, living in all the barbarity which the supply of our Slave ships requires, and we must be convinced that the Negro is as much improved by a change of circumstances as the White.*

        It has been remarked, that some of the most sandy and desert parts of Africa are covered with the greatest variety of flowers; and as civilization advances, may not the blossoms of literature, of science, and of religion, yet be spread as profusely over the whole of that vast continent?

        The state of Slavery, as has already been observed, is in none of its modifications favourable to improvement; yet even in that condition the Negro has sometimes made considerable advances in this respect. Compare the Creole Negro with the imported Slave, and you will find, that even amongst the most debasing, the most brutifying form of servitude, the pitiless drudgery of the field and whip, though it must necessarily eradicate most of the moral qualities of the African, has not prevented him from profiting in his intellectual faculties by intercourse with more civilized men.** The events of the war in St. Domingo read us a lesson on this point; of Negroes organizing large armies; laying plans of campaigns and sieges, which, if not scientific, have at least been to a certain degree successful
* Edinbro' Review.

** Facts are only recorded here, as such, without commending the practice of war, which I believe to be utterly repugnant to the spirit and precepts of our benign religion, inculcating "love and good-will to men."

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against the finest European troops; arranging forms of government, and even proceeding some length in executing the most difficult of human enterprises; entering into commercial relations with foreigners, and conceiving the idea of contracting alliances; acquiring something like a maritime force; and, at any rate, navigating vessels in the tropical seas, with as much skill and foresight as that complicated operation requires.

        This is certainly a spectacle which ought to teach us the effects of circumstances in developing the human faculties, and to prescribe bounds to that presumptuous arrogance, which would confine to one race the characteristic privilege of the species, and exclude the other as irremediably barbarous. We have torn these men from their country, under the vain and wicked pretence that their nature is radically inferior to our own. We have treated them so as to stunt the natural growth of their virtues and their reason. Yet their ingenuity has flourished apace, even under all disadvantages, and the Negro species is already much improved. All the arguments in the brains of a thousand metaphysicians will never explain away these facts. We maybe told that brute force and adaptation to a West Indian climate are the only faculties which the Negroes possess, but something more than this must concur to form and subsist armies, and to distribute civil powers in a state. The Negroes, who, in Africa it is said cannot count ten, and bequeath the same portion of arithmetic to their children, must have improved, both individually, and as a species, before they could use the mariner's compass, and rig square-sailed vessels, and cultivate whole districts of cotton for their own profit in the Caribbee Islands.

        The very ordinary circumstance of the improvement visible in the Negroes brought over to Europe as domestics, and their striking superiority to the generality of their countrymen, either in Africa or the New World, may perhaps illustrate the doctrine now maintained, even to those

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whom the more general views of the case have failed in convincing. It is certainly not assuming too much, to suppose that there is a wider difference between one of those Black servants and a native of the Slave Coast, than between a London waterman and a subject of the Irish kings who flourished a few centuries ago. Nor is there any doubt that the fidelity, courage, and other good qualities generally remarkable in Free Negroes, distinguish them as much from Slaves, of whose cowardice and treachery such pictures have been drawn, as the various feats of valour recorded in the history of the Welsh, place them above those wretched Britons who resisted their Saxon oppressors only with groans.*

        There are still regions in Europe, to which, if some of our philosophers were to furnish maps depicting the illumination of the human mind in different countries, they would have to give a colouring of dark grey. Man may be said to be, in a great measure, his own creator. We are all born savages, whether we are brought into the world in the populous city or the lonely desert. It is the discipline of education, and the circumstances under which we are placed, which create the difference between the rude barbarian and the polished citizen--the listless savage and the man of commercial enterprize--the man of the woods and the literary recluse. The mind of man, like a garden, requires culture; like the rough-hewn stone from the quarry, so it remains until the hand of the sculptor has formed it into its proper mould, or the polisher has exerted his magic influence in bringing to light all its latent beauties and intrinsic excellencies, which before lay concealed and lost in its rough mass!

        Dr. Horn, in his travels through Germany, mentions seeing at Salzburg but a few years ago, a girl twenty-two years of age, by no means ugly, who had been brought up in a hog-sty among the hogs, and who had sat there for many
* Westminster Review.

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years with her legs crossed. One of these had become quite crooked; she grunted like a hog; and her gestures were brutishly unseemly in a human dress. Many instances might be adduced of individuals of the White races existing in a state of wildness and barbarism, where the advantages of education and civilization have been withheld. Such are Kaspar Hauser; Peter the Wild Boy;* the girl described by Condamine;** a man found in the Pyrennees;*** and the young savage of Aveyron, met with near that place, and brought to Paris soon after the Revolution, &c.****

        There can be no doubt, that if the discipline of education and the influences of civilized society were withdrawn, the White races would be liable to relapse into a state of barbarism equal to that which is in any case instanced amongst nations of a more sable skin. We have examples of degeneration from physical and moral causes in the Greeks and Romans, and in the modern inhabitants of the Caucasus.

        A singular instance of the propensity to relapse into a wild and uncivilized state is presented in the history of Charlotte Stanley, the gipsy girl, which is, I believe, a well-attested circumstance. A lady of rank and fortune, who had no children, took so great a liking to a beautiful gipsy girl, that she took her home had her educated, and at length adopted her as her daughter. She was named Charlotte Stanley, received the education of a young English lady of rank, and grew up to be a beautiful, well-informed and accomplished girl. In the course of time a young man of good family became attached to her, and wished to marry her. The nearer, however, this plan approached the period of its execution, the more melancholy became the young bride; and one day, to the terror of
* Described by Blumenbach in his Beyträge zur Naturgeschicte.

** Histoire d' une jeune Fille Sauvage, Paris, 1761.

*** Leroy Exploitation de la Nature dans les Pyrennees, p. 8.

**** Historical Account of the young Savage of Aveyron.

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her foster-mother and her betrothed husband, she was found to have disappeared. It was known there had been gipsies in the neighbourhood; a search was set on foot, and Charlotte Stanley was discovered in the arms of a gipsy, the chief of the band. She declared she was his wife, that no one had a right to take her away from him, and the benefactress and the bridegroom returned inconsolable. Charlotte afterwards came to visit them, and related that as she grew up, she had felt more and more her confinement within the walls of the castle, and an irresistible longing had at length seized her to return to her wild gipsy life; nor could she, although suffering many cruelties from her gipsy husband, ever be induced to abandon the roving life to which she had returned. The portrait of Charlotte Stanley was preserved by the friend of her youth. Her story is a kind of inversion to that of Preciosa, and might make an interesting romance.*


                         "They wiled me from my green-wood home,
                         They won me from the tent,
                         And slightingly they spake of scenes,
                         Where my young days were spent.


                         They dazzled me with halls of light,
                         But tears would sometimes start,
                         They thought 'twas but to charm the eye
                         And they might win the heart.


                         They gave me gems to bind my hair,
                         I long'd the while for flowers
                         Fresh gather'd by my gipsy freres,
                         From Nature's wildest bowers.


                         They gave me books,--I lov'd alone
                         To read the starry skies;
                         They taught me songs,--the songs I lov'd
                         Were Nature's melodies.


                         I never heard a captive bird,
                         But, panting to be free,
                         I long'd to burst the prison door,
                         And share his liberty.
* Kohl's England.

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                         'Twas kindly meant, and kindly hearts
                         Were theirs who bade me roam,
                         From Nature and her forests free,
                         To share her city's home.


                         The woods are green, the hedges white,
                         With leaves and blossoms fair,
                         There's music in the forest now,
                         And I too must be there.


                         O do not chide the gipsy girl,
                         O call me not unkind;
                         I ne'er shall meet so dear a friend,
                         As her I leave behind.


                         Yet I must to the green-wood go,
                         My heart has long been there,
                         And nothing but the green-wood now,
                         Can save me from despair."

        The meaning attached by many to the term civilization is extremely vague and indefinite, and it is certainly an intangible thing, which vanishes when individuals become isolated in a new region, where it does not exist. The liability to retrogression into a state of barbarism, in individuals of the White races, when placed away from all the advantages and restraints of civilized life, is strikingly exemplified in a remarkable occurrence, related in a letter published in the "North American," in 1839.

        At Wilkesbarre, in Pennsylvania, lived a family named Slocum. During a time of warfare, in 1778, one day the house was surrounded by Indians. There were in it a mother, a daughter about nine years of age, a son aged thirteen, another daughter aged five, and a little boy aged two and a half. The eldest sister took up the little boy and ran out of the back door. The Indians then took young Slocum, aged thirteen, and little Frances, aged five, and prepared to depart. But finding young Slocum lame, at the earnest entreaties of the mother, they set him down and left him, but kept the little girl. The mother's heart swelled unutterably, and for years she could not describe the scene without tears. She saw an Indian throw her

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child over his shoulder, and immediately turn into the bushes. What were the conversations, the conjectures, the hopes, and the fears respecting the fate of the child, I will not attempt to describe, but this was the last she saw of her little Frances.

        As the boys grew up and became men, they were very anxious to know the fate of their fair-haired sister. They wrote letters, they sent inquiries, they made journeys through all the West and into the Canadas. Four of these journeys were made in vain. A silence, deep as the forest through which they wandered, hung over her fate during sixty years.

        The reader will now pass over fifty-eight years, and suppose himself far in the wilderness of Indiana. A very respectable agent of the United States, the Hon. George W. Ewing, travelled there, and weary and belated, with a tired horse, stopped in an Indian wigwam for the night. He could speak the Indian language. The family were rich for Indians, and had horses and skins in abundance. In the course of the evening, he noticed that the hair of the woman was light, and that her skin under her dress was white. This led to conversation. She told him she was a White child, but had been carried away when a very little girl. She could only remember that her name was Slocum, that she lived in a small house on the banks of the Susquehanna, and how many there were in her father's family, and the order of their ages! But the name of the town she could not remember. On reaching his home, the agent wrote out an account of what had been elicited, which he got printed. In a while, it fell into the hands of Mr. Slocum of Wilkesbarre, who was the little boy aged two years and a half when Frances was taken. In a few days he was off to seek his sister, taking with him his older sister, (the one who aided him to escape,) writing to a brother in Ohio, (born after the captivity,) to meet him to go with him.

        The two brothers and sister now travelled on their way

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to seek little Frances, just sixty years after her captivity. They reached the country of the Miami Indians and found the wigwam. "I shall know my sister," said the civilized sister, "because she lost the nail of her first finger. You, brother, hammered it off in the blacksmiths' shop, when she was four years old." They went into the cabin, and found an Indian woman having the appearance of seventy-five, painted and jewelled off, and dressed like the Indians in all respects. Nothing but her hair and covered skin indicated her origin. They got an interpreter, and began to converse. She told them where she was born, her name, &c., with the order of her father's family. "How came your nail gone?" said the oldest sister. "My brother pounded it off when I was a little child in the shop!" In a word, they were satisfied that this was Frances, their long lost sister. They asked her what her Christian name was. She could not remember. Was it Frances? she smiled, and said "Yes." It was the first time she had heard it pronounced for sixty years! Here, then, they were met--two brothers and two sisters! They were all satisfied that they were brothers and sisters. But what a contrast! The brothers were walking the cabin, unable to speak; the oldest sister was weeping, but the poor Indian sister sat motionless and passionless, as indifferent as a spectator. There was no throbbing, no fine chords in her bosom to be touched.

        When Mr. Slocum was relating this history, he was asked, "But could she not speak English?" "Not a word." "Did she know her age?" "No--had no idea of it." "But was she entirely ignorant?" "Sir, she did'nt know when Sunday comes!" This was indeed the consummation of all ignorance in a descendant of the Puritans!

        But what a picture for a painter would the inside of that cabin have afforded? Here, were the children of civilization, respectable, temperate, intelligent, and wealthy, able to overcome mountains to recover their sister. There, was

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the child of the forest, not able to tell the day of the week, whose views and feelings were all confined to that cabin. Her whole history might be told in a word. She lived with the Delawares who carried her off till grown up, and then married a Delaware. He either died or ran away, and she then married a Miami Indian, a chief, I believe. She had two daughters, both of whom were married, and who lived in all the glory of an Indian cabin, deerskin clothes, and cowskin head dresses. No one of the family could speak a word of English. They had horses in abundance, and when the Indian sister wanted to accompany her new relatives, she whipped out, bridled her horse, and then, a la Turc, mounted astride, and was off. At night she could throw a blanket around her, down upon the floor, and at once be asleep.

        The brothers and sister tried to persuade their lost sister to return with them, and, if she desired it, bring her children. They would transplant her again to the banks of the Susquehanna, and of their wealth make her home happy. But no: she had always lived with the Indians; they had always been kind to her, and she had promised her late husband on his death-bed, that she would never leave the Indians. And there they left her and hers, wild and darkened heathen, though sprung from a pious race.*

        The strong disinclination and determination against returning to civilized life, are strikingly evinced in the ease of this offspring of the Saxon race, captured in infancy. But no one will urge that such a circumstance proves that race less capable of civilization than another. No more so in the case of the Negro, who having known something of civilized life, may, like the gipsy girl, feel an irresistible longing to return again to a roving state of existence. Yet owing to a single circumstance of this kind on record, the South Africans have been represented by some travellers as incapable of being civilized. The case I allude to is
* Hist. Collect. of the State of Pennsylvania.

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that of Pegu, a Hottentot youth, whom Governor Van Der Stell educated. He learnt the Dutch, Portuguese, and other languages, which he could speak with fluency. In 1685, he went to India with Commissioner Van Rheedé, and continued with him till his death. He then returned to the Cape, but would no longer remain in civilized life; he went to his tribe, and returned no more, becoming a Chief amongst them.


                         " 'Ah! why,' he cried, 'did I forsake
                         My native fields for pent-up halls,
                         The roaring stream, the wild-bird's lake,
                         For silent books and prison walls?


                         A little will my wants supply,
                         And what can wealth itself do more?
                         The sylvan wilds will not deny
                         The humble fare they gave before.


                         Where Nature's wild resources grow,
                         And out-door pleasure never fades,
                         My heart is fixed;--and I will go
                         And die among my native shades.'


                         He spoke--and to the eastern springs
                         (His gown forthwith to pieces rent,
                         His blanket tied with leathern strings)
                         This hunter of the mountains went."

        It is worthy of remark, as the historian relates, that it is to be feared the young African was disgusted with many of the professing Christians with whom he came in contact; "and not being aware that some 'have a name to live who are dead,' he forsook them altogether, and united again with his own people."

        On the same grounds, under propitious circumstances, the progress of man in civilization and refinement, is equal in ratio to that in which he is liable to relapse, when more unfavourably circumstanced; and we may rest assured there is nothing in the physical or moral constitution of the Negro, which renders him an exception to the general character of species, or which prevents him from improving in all the

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estimable qualities of our nature, when placed in a situation conducive to his advancement.

        It would be absurd to expect that a statue or a painting should become perfect at once, or to find fault with the work of an artist before he has had time to complete it. The husbandman does not expect a crop immediately after he has sown his seed; he must wait for it. The father does not expect that his son will be a scholar when he first goes to school; nor does he, when he has finished the term of his education, allege that he has acquired nothing, because he has not attained the greatest heights in literature, or because he may not be able to solve the most difficult problems in science. Time has been required to make the White races what they now are, and the general improvement of the African will likewise probably be a work of some time; yet we have every reason to believe, that by cultivation, he may attain to an equal point of civilization and intelligence with that of any other people. Nay, under all possible disadvantages, we find evident proofs of the progress he is capable of making, whether insulated by the deserts of Africa from communication with other nations, or surrounded by the Slave factories of Europeans, or groaning under the cruelties of the driver's whip. This progress would be accelerated, in proportion as these grand impediments are removed. While, on the one hand, Africa is civilized by the establishment of a legitimate commerce between its fertile and populous regions and the more polished nations of the world, those Negroes who are already freed from their grievous thraldom in the New World, would rapidly improve in all the best faculties of the mind.

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CHAPTER XIII.

Slavery defended on the plea of coercion being necessary for the Negro-- Refutation of this charge--Palliated by representing him as deficient in the finer feelings--This also refuted--Testimony of Capt. Rainsford-- Remarks of Dr. Philip--All arguments failing, the supporters of Slavery assert the Negro to be under a Divine anathema--Observations of Richard Watson on this subject--Refuted on Christian grounds--All tribes stretching out their hands unto God--He is sending his messengers into the African field--The results of missionary labours very satisfactory and conclusive--Encouraging facts evincing the progress of the Negro in virtue and religion--Instances illustrative of the highest religious susceptibilities--Gustavus Vassa--Solomon Bayley--Belinda Lucas--Lucy Cardwell--Simeon Wilhelm--Paul Cuffe--Cornelius--J. W. C. Pennington--Jan Tzatzoe--Andries Stoffles, &c., &c.--Testimony of Barnabas Shaw, a Wesleyan Missionary in South Africa--Such evidences very conclusive--Beautiful remarks by Richard Watson.

        Among the numerous reasons assigned for the rigorous treatment to which the Negro race is subjected, it is asserted, as observed in a previous chapter, that nothing but a state of extreme coercion is sufficient to keep them in any kind of order or control. That they should quietly submit to the insults and cruelties which are so coolly dealt out to them, would be contrary to human nature. When human beings are forcibly torn from their homes, and separated from all that is near and dear to them, and deprived of every liberty they enjoy, can we be surprised if they should evince some indignance, or manifest some signs of unwillingness to submit to the cruel yoke imposed upon them, and an occasional inclination to revolt? Negroes have sometimes exhibited a spirit of despondency, which has led them to commit suicide; they have sometimes shown themselves irreconcileable to a state of Slavery, and have frequently been driven to self-destruction by a spirit of unyielding independence. In one of the small Danish islands, where they were in open rebellion, finding

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themselves closely pressed, but determined not to submit, they rushed in a body to the edge of a cliff overhanging the sea, and plunged at once into the waves.*

        But so far from the general character of the Negro being so savage and untractable as to require strong coercion, their patience and submissiveness, unless provoked by acts of wanton cruelty, has been illustrated in their general conduct in the degraded capacity to which they have been doomed. With spirits more resentful, the Negro tribes would not have been for ages an easy prey to every plunderer and hunter of men. "Their shores would have bristled with spears, and their arrows have darkened the heavens; nor would the experiment of man-stealing have been twice repeated. The same character distinguishes the Negroes in their state of bondage. It has not required a violent hand to keep them down; their story is not that of surly submission, interrupted by frequent and convulsive efforts to break their chains; and the history of Slavery nowhere, and in no age, presents an example of so much resignation and quietness, under similar circumstances, where the bondage has been so absolute, and the proportion of the dominant part of society so small."

        Another plea which has been urged as a palliation of the sin of Slavery, is the alleged fact of the deficiency in the victims of oppression of the finer feelings of our nature, their want of affection for their offspring and kindred ties. But this is as false in fact, as it is opposed to sound principles of philosophy. Captain Rainsford observes, "The most animated and attractive examples of pure and ardent love to the husbands of their hearts, and the fathers of their offspring, are as strikingly exhibited under the roofs of various Negro huts, as are anywhere displayed in the families of the White races. In the laudable duties of married life, and the maternal offices to the precious pledges of connubial intercourse, the transported and enslaved
* Jamaica: Enslaved and Free.

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matrons of Africa, are not to be surpassed by the enlightened and free females of the freest land."

        The passions and instincts necessary for the preservation of the human species are little dependent upon the reasonings and refinements of men, and are often more strongly evinced in the lowest than in the highest grades of society. Can we suppose, for a moment, that the Author of our nature, who has imparted to the most timid brutes, an attachment to their young, which makes them boldly risk their lives in their defence, should leave any portion of our race, in their more hopeless condition, without a provision for them affording an equal security? It is, on the contrary, natural to suppose that the oppressions of the parents should rather increase than lessen their attachment to their children; and, in point of fact, Negroes in general are remarkable for an excess of affection for their offspring. "The separations of parents and children," says Dr. Philip, "have, indeed, furnished the most heart-rending scenes that I have witnessed in South Africa; and in a letter now before me, from a respectable individual in the colony, on this very subject, the writer states, 'heart-rending, indeed, are the woeful lamentations I often hear from Hottentot mothers about the loss of their children.' "

        Let it not be said that the sable African has not the sensibilities of other men. Even the brute has the yearnings of parental love. If, then, the conjugal and parental ties of the Slave may be severed without a pang, what a curse must Slavery be, if it can thus blight the heart with worse than brutal insensibility, if it can sink the human mother below the polar she-bear, which "howls and dies for her sundered cub!" But it does not and cannot turn the Slave to stone; though it does much to quench the natural affections, it leaves sufficient of that feeling, which the Negro originally possesses in an equal extent to any other class of men, to make the domestic wrongs to which he is subjected, occasions of frequent and deep suffering.

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        All arguments failing those who coin dollars out of the sweat and tears of the African, they would fain have the world to believe, as a last resource, that these anomalous beings have had a mark put upon them by the Almighty, that they might be at once detested, avoided, and treated only as beasts of the field. To this unfortunate race has been applied the prophetic malediction of Noah, "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brethren," the descendants of Shem and Japheth; and the dark garment of the former is pointed out as indicating the fulfilment of their earthly fate. It is not enough that they should be stultified in intellect, and brutalized beyond correction in morals; they must be represented as under a Divine anathema, as a part of an accursed race; thus are they not only denied the honours of humanity, but are even excluded from the compassions of God. And, because they have been represented as under the ban of the Almighty, it has been concluded, that every kind of injury, may with impunity, be inflicted upon them by his creatures.

        "Nothing," says Watson, "is more repulsive than to see men resorting to the inspired writings for an excuse or a palliative for the injuries which they are incited to inflict on others by their own pride and avarice; going up profanely to the very judgment-seat of an equal God, to plead his sanction for their injustice; establishing an alliance between their own passions and their imperfections; and attempting to convert the fountain of his mercy into waters of bitterness. But the case they adduce will not serve them. The malediction of Noah (if we allow it to be one, and not a simple prediction) fell not upon the Negro races; it fell chiefly on Asia, and only to a very limited extent upon Africa; it fell, as the terms of the prophecy explicitly declare, upon Canaan; that is, in Scripture style, upon his descendants, the Canaanites, who were destroyed, or made subjects by the Israelites; and perhaps upon the Carthaginians, who were subverted by the Romans. Here was

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its range and its limit; the curse never expanded so as to encompass a single Negro tribe; and, Africa, with all thy just complaints against the practices of Christian states, thou hast none against the doctrines of the Christian's Bible! That is not a book, as some have interpreted it, written, as to thee, 'within and without,' in 'lamentation, and mourning, and woe;' it registers against thee no curse; but, on the contrary, exhibits to thee its fulness of blessings; establishes thy right to its covenant of mercy, in common with all mankind; and crowds into the joyous prospect which it opens into the future, the spectacle of all the various tribes 'stretching out their hands unto God,' acknowledging him, and receiving his blessing!

        "But, if the prediction of Noah were an anathema, and if that malediction were directed against the Negro races; yet, let it be remarked, it belongs not to the gospel age. Here the anathemas of former dispensations are arrested and repealed; for no nation can remain accursed under the full establishment of the dominion of Christ, since 'all the families of the earth' are to be 'blessed in Him.' The deleterious stream which withers the verdure of its banks, and spreads sterility through the soils it touches in its course, is at length absorbed and purified in the ocean, ascends from thence in cooling vapours, and comes down upon the earth in fruitful showers. Thus Christianity turns all curses into benedictions. Its office is to bless, and to bless all nations; it is light after darkness, and quiet after agitation. The restoring and the healing character is that in which all the prophets array our Saviour; and if partiality is ascribed to Him at all, it is partiality in favour of the most despised, and friendless, and wretched of our kind. The scythe has gone before, and, in all ages, has swept down the fairest vegetation, and left it to wither, or to be trodden under foot; but 'He,' it is emphatically declared, 'shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, like showers that water the earth:' 'all nations shall be

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blessed in Him,' and 'all people,' in grateful return, 'shall call Him blessed.' "

        Blessed for ever, then, be His holy name, whose compassions fail not, whose mercies are now every morning, for he hath already arisen in His strength, and said "the oppressor shall no more oppress;" I will send forth my messengers into all the dark places of the earth; light shall spring forth; their mourning shall be turned into rejoicing, and I will yet lead them beside the still waters. Marvellous indeed is the loving-kindness of Him, whose prerogative alone it is, to send forth labourers into the harvest, in conducting the steps of so many into the African field; infusing into the hearts of good men from year to year, a special compassion for this race. The memory of those who have chosen danger and toil to ease and luxury at home, and who have now ceased from their labours, is blessed. Their "reward is on high," and their "work with God." Those who now endure the cross and glory in it, whether they labour under the suns of the West Indies, or breathe the pestilential air of Western Africa, or in the southern parts of that continent, toil over hills and through deserts, "to seek and to save that which is lost,"--they know that God is with them[.] What gold could purchase such instruments? What education could form them? What implanted principles of human action, where wealth, and honour, and ease, are all absent, could send them forth? Are they not the instruments of Heaven, indicating by the very nature of their preparation, the peculiar work to which they are called, the special use to which they are to apply themselves? "They are indeed the agents to carry forth our charities to the Heathen, to bear our light into the misery over which we sigh. Without them we should sigh in vain, and our sympathies would terminate in ourselves; by then, we reach and relieve the cases of destitute millions, and transmit the blessedness of which we are anxious that all should partake. Thus, man is made a saviour of his

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fellow, and the creature of a day the instrument of conveying blessings which have no bound but a limitless eternity itself!"

        Let us appeal to the results of the labours of these devoted men, and see how far they warrant us in concluding, that the Negro race is capable with ourselves of receiving, and fully appreciating the great truths of our religion. These results are altogether most satisfactory and conclusive.

        About the year 1824, a Jamaica missionary writes:-- "Not only has religion found its way into almost every town and village of importance in the island, but in a greater or less degree, into the majority of the estates, and other larger properties. As soon as its sacred influence begins to be felt on a property, or in a now township, the first work of the converts is, to add to their cluster of cottages a house for God. There they are heard, often before the dawn of day, and at the latest hour preceding their repose, pouring out their earnest and artless supplications at the throne of grace, for strength to enable them to maintain their Christian course."*

        "The numbers of our hearers," writes brother Lang, "is on the increase, and the preaching of the gospel evinces its power on the hearts of the Negroes, which also appears in their moral conduct. Some walk in true fellowship of spirit with our Saviour, and have received the assurance of the forgiveness of their sins: others are mourning on account of sin, and seeking salvation in Jesus. One Sabbath lately, a Negro, from an, estate about fifteen miles from Carmel (Jamaica), brought me a stick marked with seven notches, each denoting ten Negroes, informing me that there were so many Negroes on that estate engaged in praying to the Lord. The awakening spreads, and we entertain hopes that our Saviour will now gather a rich harvest in Jamaica."**


* Jamaica: Enslaved and Free.

** Idem.
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        Another Jamaica missionary writes, "It is also worthy of observation, that instead of singing their old Negro songs in the field, they now sing our hymns; and I was much pleased one night, when passing the Negro houses, to hear them engaged fervently in prayer."*

        Another missionary writes, "However debased by vice the Negro Slaves were in the days of their ignorance, they are now sober, chaste, industrious, and upright in all their dealings. Nor is this all; they are eager, punctual, and persevering in all the services of devotion. Their domestic circle is distinguished by the daily exercises of prayer and praise; and the Sabbath is called 'a delight, the holy of the Lord,' and spent in the solemnities of His sacred worship. This indeed is wonderful! In a country where the Sabbath is devoted to public traffic; where, comparatively speaking, marriage is not so much as thought of; and, where it is common to indulge in the most debauched inclinations, without the least restraint,--to see them keeping the Sabbath-day holy, renouncing all their criminal connections, and standing forth as examples of purity and religion, is manifestly the Lord's doing; for nothing short of the power of God could obtain a victory like this over habit, example, and such corruption of the human heart."**

        The missionaries have elucidated how far the African race are susceptible of religious impressions; "they have dived," says Watson, "into that mine from which we were often told no valuable ore or precious stone could be extracted; and they have brought up the gems of an immortal spirit, flashing with the light of intellect, and glowing with the hues of Christian graces. The true God has now been revealed to the minds of the African races, in the splendour of his own revelations; the heavens have been taught to declare to them his glory, and the firmament to show forth his handywork; they know him now as their 'Father in Heaven,' and have learned that his watchful providence
* Jamaica: Enslaved and Free.

** Quoted in Watson's Sermons.

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extends to them. Rising suns, and smiling fields, and rolling thunders, and sweeping hurricanes, all speak of Him to Negro hearts; and Negro voices mingle with our own in giving to Him the praises 'due unto His name.' The history of the incarnate God, and the scenes of Calvary have been unfolded to their gaze; they hear 'the word of reconciliation,' are invited to a 'throne of grace,' and there 'find mercy, and grace to help in time of need.' They have the Sabbath with its sanctities; and houses of prayer, raised by the liberality of their friends, receive their willing, pressing crowds. One to another they now say, 'Come and let us go up to the house of the Lord;' and tens of thousands of them now, in every religious service, join us in those everlasting anthems of the universal church, 'We praise thee, O God! we acknowledge thee to be the Lord!' "

        Instances might be multiplied, almost without end, illustrative of the races of Africa being universally endowed with religious susceptibilities equal to those of any other people on the face of the earth; and many are the examples of purity, and of advancement in religious experience and attainments, which might be brought forward as witnesses to its truth. I will only mention the names of Gustavus Vassa, Solomon Bayley, Belinda Lucas, Lucy Cardwell, Simeon Wilhelm, Paul Cuffe, L. C. Michells, Richard Cooper, Africaner, Cornelius, Jan Tzatzoe, Andries Stoffles, J. W. C. Pennington, John Williams, Eva Bartells, respecting each of whom information is given in the sequel of this work. In Stoffles, we have exhibited a noble example of the Christian character. At an early period, the truths of religion exerted a decisive and salutary influence over his mind, leading him to profess himself a disciple of the Saviour, and enabling him, under many disadvantages and temptations, to maintain his Christian profession unsullied till the close of life.

        I cannot forbear relating another interesting fact, from Shaw's Memorials of South Africa, which he beautifully

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records in the following words:--"The pious natives of Khamies Berg, in South Africa, continued to improve both in temporal and spiritual matters, and were as a city set on a hill which cannot be hid: their light shone in worshipping God in their families. Often have I heard them engaged in prayer before the sun had gilded the tops of the mountains; nor were their evening devotions neglected. As I have stood by the mission-house, with the curtains of night drawn around us, I could hear them uniting in singing their beautiful evening hymn. Then falling around their family altar, though in a smoky hut, they felt the presence of the Most High, and the fulfilment of his promise, 'The habitation of the just shall be blessed.' "

        On another occasion, writes the Missionary Shaw;-- "It was nearly midnight, when, on awaking, I heard the sound of singing at a distance. I repaired to the window to listen, when all nature seemed to favour the song. The moon shone resplendently, and the stars glittered in their spheres. There was no bleating of sheep, or lowing of oxen; no howling of wolves; the night birds were still: nor did a dog move his tongue. The midnight music was so sweet, that, at the time, I supposed I had never heard anything to equal it. The singers were going from hut to hut, uniting in the praises of God, who had brought them 'out of darkness into marvellous light;' and as they approached the mission-house, I could distinguish the subject of their song. It was a hymn of praise to the Saviour of men, one verse of which, according to their custom, was often repeated. The nightly fires brightened up as the singers went onward, and they called on the head of each family to engage in prayer. In their state of ignorance they had often danced to the sound of the rommel-pot, while the moon was walking in brightness; but by means of the Gospel, they had learnt a new song, which reminded me of the words of Isaiah, 'Let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains.' Several children who had

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been attentive to the Gospel began to show an extraordinary attachment to the house of God, they bowed before the Lord their Maker, and sung joyful Hosannas to the Son of David."

        With such evidences as these, we need no laborious and critical investigation to determine whether "Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God;" no prying into the mystic counsels of heaven, to ascertain whether the "time to favour her, yea, the set time be come." Go to the free colonies, ye that doubt; scarcely is there one of them in which there have not been reared for the Negro, sacred buildings for worship and instruction devoted to their own use, and which they regard as peculiarly their own. "In crowded congregations, in those spacious edifices, Ethiopia already stretches out her hands unto God, and, led by the light which creates our Sabbath, meets us at the same throne of grace, and receives, with us, the benedictions of the common Father and the common Saviour. And the prophetic promise is dawning upon parent Africa also. Hottentots, Kafirs, Bechuanahs, Foulahs, and Mandingoes in the west, some of all the tribes, are already in the fold, and hear and love the voice of the great Shepherd. We hail you as brethren!--the front ranks of all those swarthy tribes which are deeply buried in the vast interior of an unexplored continent, you, stretch out your hands unto God, as a signal for the tribes beyond you; and the signal shall be followed, and every hand of thy millions, Africa! shall raise itself in devotion to thy pitying Saviour, and every lip shall ere long modulate accents of plateful praise to thy long concealed, but faithful God!"*


* Richard Watson.
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CHAPTER XIV.

Slavery considered--A violation of the rights of Man--Remarks of Milton--Condemned by Pope Leo X.--Remarks of Bishop Warburton--How can Christians continue to be its upholders?--Guilt of Britons and Americans--Expiation of our sin by a noble sacrifice--We can never repay the debt we owe to Africa--White Man instilling into those he calls"savages" a despicable opinion of human nature--We practise what we should exclaim against--No tangible plea for Slavery--Criminal to remain silent spectators of its crimes--We cannot plead ignorance as an excuse for silence or inactivity--Seven millions of human beings now in Slavery--Four hundred thousand annually torn from Africa--Slavery a monstrous crime--A robbery perpetrated on the very sanctuary of man's rational nature--A sin against God--America's foul blot--Slaves represented as happy!--Remarks on this.

        Although the consideration of the subject of Slavery is not altogether within the province of this work, I shall not feel satisfied without making some allusion to it in a few words; seriously putting the question to all those who are concerned in the system, directly or indirectly, whether, in the face of what has already been cited, they can still, with an easy conscience, look down with an eye of scorn upon their fellow-creatures of a darker hue, or continue to hold them in unwilling bondage, or depress them as they do, with the iron hand of Slavery.

        Claims to personal liberty are the birthright of every human being, irrespective of clime or of colour;--claims which God has conferred, and which man cannot destroy without sacrilege, nor infringe without sin. They have claims which are anterior to all human laws, and which are superior to all political institutions,--immutable in their nature. Thus writes our great poet Milton:--


                         "O execrable man, so to aspire
                         Above his brethren, to himself assuming
                         Authority usurpt, from God not given;
                         He gave us only over beast, fish, fowl,
                         Dominion absolute, that right we hold

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                         By his donation; but man over men
                         He made not lord, such title to himself
                         Reserving, human left from human free."

        Many condemnations against the system of one class of men oppressing another might be adduced. Pope Leo X., when the question was referred to him, declared "That not only the Christian religion, but nature herself cried out against Slavery." The continuance of the unmerited and brutish servitude of the Negro, is undoubtedly nothing short of a criminal and outrageous violation of the natural rights of man.--"Gracious God!" exclaims Bishop Warburton, "to talk of men as of herds of cattle, of property in rational creatures, creatures endowed with all our faculties, possessing all our qualities but that of colour, our brethren both by nature and by grace, shocks all the feelings of humanity, and the dictates of common sense! Nothing is more certain in itself and apparent to all, the infamous traffic in Slaves directly infringes both divine and human law. Nature created man free, and grace invites him to assert his freedom."

        How can Christian professors,--professors of a religion breathing love and good will to man, continue to be the undisguised and guilty supporters and advocates of the atrocious system of Slavery? themselves the owners, and the dealers in these "human chattels;" who, as if in mockery of the sacred name of liberty, are exposed for sale within the very precincts of those


                         "Council Halls,
                         Where freedom's praise is loud and long,
                         While close beneath the outward walls
                         The driver plies his reeking thong--
                         The hammer of the man-thief falls!"

        It makes one's very blood to boil, it makes one tremble to think, that we Britons and our American descendants, with all their boastful cry of "Liberty," are so guilty; but it is some consolation to reflect that we at least, have made

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a greater sacrifice than was ever made by any nation to expiate our sin. "On the page of history," it has been said, "one deed shall stand out in whole relief--one consenting voice pronounce--that the greatest honour England ever attained, was when, with her Sovereign at her head, she proclaimed,--the Slave is Free!"--Yes, "in the pages of history," says the estimable Hugh Stowell, "this act will stand out the gem in our diadem."

        Yet all the efforts we can make for the civil and religious welfare of the Negro family will never repay the debt we owe to the whole race of Africa for having robbed her of her children, under every aggravated form of cruelty, to increase our own comforts, to augment our private wealth, and add to our public revenues, by toils which imposed a daily stretch upon their sinews; a task which had no termination, but with their lives.

        The White Man may boast of his superior intellect, and the peculiar advantages he enjoys, of a written revelation of his duty from heaven, of which he has deprived the victims of his oppression; yet with all his vaunted superiority, he is instilling into the minds of those whom he chooses to call savages and barbarians, the very reverse of that which the Divine law inculcates, the most despicable opinion of human nature. To the utmost of our power do we weaken and dissolve the universal tie that should bind and unite mankind. We practise what we should exclaim against as the greatest excess of cruelty and tyranny, if nations of the world, differing in colour from ourselves, were able to reduce us to a state of similar unmerited and brutish servitude. We sacrifice our reason, our humanity, our Christianity, to an unnatural sordid gain. We teach other nations to despise and trample under foot all the obligations of social virtue. We take the most effectual method to prevent the propagation of the Gospel, by representing it as a scheme of power and barbarous oppression, and an enemy to the natural privileges and rights of man.

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        I assert, that there does not exist in nature, in religion, or in civil polity, a reason for robbing any man of his liberty; that there is neither truth, nor justice, nor humanity in the declaration, that Slavery is consonant with the condition of Negro-men. To devote one-fourth of the habitable globe to perpetual blood-shed and warfare--to give up the vast continent of Africa to the ravages of the man-robbers who deal in flesh and blood--the marauders who sack the towns and villages--the merchant-murderers who ply the odious trade, who separate the child from the mother, the husband from the wife, the father from the son, is a monstrous system of cruelty, which, in any of its forms is intolerable and unjust. "Cry aloud and spare not," was the language of one formerly; a language especially applicable at the present day on the question before us, in relation to which Benezet justly queries, "Can we be innocent, and yet silent spectators of this mighty infringement of every human and sacred right?"

        There are questions affecting the highest interests of society, on which it is criminal to be silent. There are crimes and conspiracies against Man, in his collective and individual capacity, which strip the guilty of all the respect due to the adventitious circumstances connected with rank and station; and to know that such combinations exist, and not to denounce them, is treason against the throne of Heaven, and the immutable principles of Truth and Justice.

        We cannot plead ignorance as an excuse either for silence or inactivity:--


                         "Behold the Negro!
                         --The curse of man his branded forehead bears,
                         His bosom with the scorching iron sear'd,
                         His fettered limbs defiled with streams of gore!"


                         "Hark! from the West a voice of woe;
                         Ah! yes; it echoes o'er the wide Atlantic's wave;
                         We hear the knotted scourge, the dying cry;
                         Yonder the torturer's hands, the clanking chain;
                         Fly to the rescue! lingering loiterer fly!"

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        Behold them! men, women, and children, with tearful eyes, and with uplifted hands, with branded and bleeding bodies, with lacerated feet and clanking chains, supplicating, on bended knees, for the restoration of their rights!


                         "It is the voice of blood;--O think! O think!
                         Act--for the injured, dying Slave:
                         Nor let him linger longer--deeper sink--
                         But haste to help--to save.


                         Let not his injuries plead in vain,
                         Lest haply in thy dying day,
                         Thy soul should bear a guilty stain,
                         Which nought can wash away.


                         O help him, lest in hall and bower,
                         His crying blood thy joys molest;
                         Or, speaking through the midnight hour,
                         Chase like a ghost thy rest.


                         O help him--bless him--for ye can:
                         Hear Reason's--hear Religion's plea,
                         Declare to all--HE IS A MAN--
                         Therefore--HE SHALL BE FREE!"

        When we reflect that there are now in the world, upwards of SEVEN MILLIONS of human beings detained in Slavery; who are held as goods and chattels, the property of other human beings having similar passions with themselves; that they are liable to be sold and transferred from hand to hand, like the beasts that perish; that more than 400,000 are annually sold and removed from the land of their birth, to distant regions; and this not in families, the nearest connexions of life being frequently torn asunder; and when we further reflect, that in several, if not in most of the Slaveholding States, the Slaves are systematically excluded from the means of improving their minds--that in some, even teaching them to read is treated as a crime; and that all these things exist amongst a people loudly proclaiming the freedom and equality of their laws--a people professing subjection to the requirements of Christianity, whose lawgiver has taught us that he regards the injuries done to the least of

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his children as done to Himself; and has commanded us above all things to love one another, to do unto all men as we would that they should do unto us--well may we inquire, "Shall not the Lord visit for these things? Will not he be avenged for this grievous sin?"

        The monstrous crime of human Slavery does not merely affect the external property of man, but the inmost essence of his spiritual being; it is the iniquity of a murderous robbery perpetrated on the very sanctuary of man's rational nature. It is a deprivation of all the rights and privileges of the individual enslaved, which consist in the free exercise and expansion of his powers, "especially of his higher faculties; in the energy of his intellect, conscience, and good affections in sound judgment; in the acquisition of truth; in labouring honestly for himself and his family; in loving his Creator, and subjecting his own will to the Divine; in loving his fellow-creatures, and making cheerful sacrifices for their happiness; in friendship; in sensibility to the beautiful, whether in nature or art; in loyalty to his principles; in moral courage; in self-respect; in understanding and asserting his rights; and in the christian hope of immortality. Such is the good of the individual; a more sacred, exalted, enduring interest than any accessions of wealth or power to a State."*

        The deprivation of the inestimable benefits of external liberty, though in itself an irreparable injury, bears no comparison with the loss of his rational powers, a crime inflicted on the unhappy victim of Slavery, which entirely changes the course of his destiny. God has endowed us with intellectual powers that they should be cultivated; and a system which degrades them, and can only be upheld by their depression, opposes one of his most benevolent designs. Reason is God's image in man, and the capacity of acquiring truth is among his best inspirations. To call forth the intellect is a principal purpose of the circumstances in which
* Channing.

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we are placed, of the child's connection with the parent, and of the necessity laid on him in mature life to provide for himself and others. The education of the intellect is not confined to youth; but the various experience of later years does vastly more than books and schools to ripen and invigorate the faculties.

        Now the whole lot of the Slave is fitted to keep his mind in childhood and bondage. Though living in a land of light, few beams find their way to his benighted understanding. No parent feels the duty of instructing him. No teacher is provided for him but the driver, who breaks him almost in childhood, to the servile tasks which are to fill up his life. No book is opened to his youthful curiosity; as he advances in years, no now excitements supply the place of teachers. He is not cast on himself, made to depend on his own energies; nor do any stirring prizes awaken his dormant faculties. Fed and clothed by others like a child, directed in every step, doomed for life to a monotonous round of labour, he lives and dies without a spring to his powers, often brutally unconscious of his spiritual nature. Nor is this all. When benevolence would approach him with instruction it is repelled. He is not allowed to be taught. The light is jealously barred out. The voice which would speak to him as a man, is put to silence. He must not even be enabled to read the Holy Scriptures. His immortal spirit is systematically crushed.

        Slavery, then, is undoubtedly the most tremendous invasion of the natural, inalienable rights of man, and some of the noblest gifts of God, "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." What a spectacle do the United States present to the people of the earth? A land of professing Christian republicans, uniting their energies for the oppression and degradation of Three Millions of innocent human beings, the children of one common Father, who suffer the most grievous wrongs, and the utmost degradation, for no crime of their ancestors or their own! Slavery is a sin against God

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as well as against Man;--a daring usurpation of the prerogative and authority of the Most High! and until this foul blot be removed from America, she will never be the glorious country her free constitution designed her to be --never! so long as her soil is polluted by a single Slave!

        But how so?--We are told the Slave is happy; that he is gay; that he is not that wretched and miserable being he is mostly represented to be. After his toil, he sings, he dances, he gives no signs of an exhausted frame or gloomy spirits. "The Slave happy! Why, then, contend for rights? Why follow with beating hearts the struggles of the patriot for freedom? Why canonize the martyr to freedom? The Slave happy! Then happiness is to be found in giving up the distinctive attributes of a man; in darkening intellect and conscience; in quenching generous sentiments; in servility of spirit; in living under a whip; in having neither property nor rights; in holding wife and child at another's pleasure; in toiling without hope; in living without an end! The Slave, indeed, has his pleasures. His animal nature survives the injury to his rational and moral powers; and every animal has its enjoyments. The kindness of Providence allows no human being to be wholly divorced from good. The lamb frolics; the dog leaps for joy; the bird fills the air with cheerful harmony; and the Slave spends his holidays in laughter and the dance. Thanks to Him w