Your correspondent asks, "Do the slaves consume much sugar, or take rum in intoxicating quantities?"

They do not consume much sugar, but are occasionally supplied with molasses. Their diet consists principally of pickled pork and corn bread, rice, hominy, beans, peas, potatoes, yams, pumpkins and turnips. Soups, tea, coffee and slops, are seldom used by those in health, and they object to all such articles of diet, as making them weak. They prefer the fattest pork to the lean. In the Atlantic States salted fish is substituted for or alternated with pork—the shad, mackerel and herring, principally the latter. In Cuba pickled beef is used, but they prefer pork. Their diet is of the most nutritious kind, and they will not labor with much effect on any other than a strong, rich diet. With very few exceptions, they do not take rum or other intoxicating drinks, except as a medicine, or in holiday times. Something equivalent to the "Maine Liquor Law," (which you can explain to your correspondent,) has long been in practical operation on all well regulated Southern plantations. The experience of two centuries testifies to the advantages of restraining the black population, by arbitrary power, from the free use of intoxicating poisons. Man has no better natural right to poison himself or his neighbor, than to maim, wound or kill himself or his neighbor. In regard to intoxicating drinks, the negroes of the South are under wiser laws than any other people in the Union—those of Maine excepted. But these wise unwritten laws do not so well protect those negroes who reside in or near towns and villages, and are not under proper discipline. The Melanic race have a much stronger propensity to indulge in the intemperate use of ardent spirits than white people. They appear to have a natural fondness for alcoholic drinks and tobacco. They need no schooling, as the fair skin races do, to acquire a fondness for either. Nearly all chew tobacco or smoke, and are not sickened and disgusted with the taste of that weed as white men always are when they first begin to use it. As an instance of their natural love for ardent spirits, I was called to a number of negro children, who found a bottle of whisky under a bed, and drank it all without dilution, although it was the first they had ever tasted. It contained arsenic, and had been placed where they found it by the father of some of the children, with a view of poisoning a supposed enemy. But with that want of forethought, so characteristic of the negro race, he did not think of the greater probability of his own children finding and drinking the poison than the enemy he intended it for.

I am asked, "If I have determined by my own observation the facts in regard to the darker color of the secretions, the flesh, the membranes and the blood of the negro than the white man—or is the statement made on the authority of others?"

The statement is made on the authority of some of the most distinguished anatomists and physiologists of the last century, confirmed by my own repeated observations. The authorities to which I particularly refer are Malpighi, Stubner, Meckel, Pechlin, Albinus, Soemmering, Virey and Ebel. Almost every year of my professional life, except a few years when abroad, I have made post mortem examinations of negroes, who have died of various diseases, and I have invariably found the darker color pervading the flesh and the membranes to be very evident in all those who died of acute diseases. Chronic ailments have a tendency to destroy the coloring matter, and generally cause the mucous surfaces to be paler and whiter than in the white race.

I now come to the main and important question—the last of the series, and the most important of all, viz: "How is it ascertained that negroes consume less oxygen than white people?"

I answer, by the spirometer. I have delayed my reply to make some further experiments on this branch of the subject. The result is, that the expansibility of the lungs is considerably less in the black than the white race of similar size, age and habit. A white boy expelled from his lungs a larger volume of air than a negro half a head taller and three inches larger around the chest. The deficiency in the negro may be safely estimated at 20 per cent, according to a number of observations I have made at different times. Thus, 174 being the mean bulk of air receivable by the lungs of a white person of five feet in height, 140 cubic inches are given out by a negro of the same stature. It must be remembered, however, that great variations occur in the bulk of air which can be expelled from the chest, depending much upon the age, size, health and habits of each individual. But, as a general rule, it may be safely stated, that a white man, of the same age and size, who has been bred to labor, is, in comparison to the negro, extra capacious. To judge the negro by spirometrical observations made on the white man, would indicate, in the former a morbid condition when none existed. But I am free to confess that this is a subject open to further observations. My estimate may be under or over the exact difference of the capacity of the two races for the consumption of oxygen.

The question is also answered anatomically, by the comparatively larger size of the liver, and the smaller size of the lungs; and physiologically, by the roule the liver performs in the negro's economy being greater, and that of the lungs and kidneys less, than in the white man. But I have not the honor to be the first to call attention to the difference in the pulmonary apparatus of the negro and the white man, and to the fact of the deficiency in the renal secretion. The honor is due to Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. In his Notes on Virginia, Mr. Jefferson suggested that there was a difference in the pulmonary apparatus of negroes, and that they do not extricate as much caloric from the air by respiration, and consesequently consume less oxygen. He also called attention to the fact of the defective action of the kidneys. He remarks, "To our reproach be it said, that although the negro race has been under our eye for a century and a half, it has not been considered as a subject of natural history." Another half century has passed away, and nothing has yet been done to acquire a knowledge of the diseases and physical peculiarities of a people, constituting nearly a moiety of the population of fifteen States of the American confederacy, and whose labor, in cultivating a single plant, which no other operatives but themselves can cultivate without sacrificing ease, comfort, health and life, affords a cheap material, in sufficient abundance, to clothe the naked of the whole world. Even the little scientific knowledge heretofore acquired concerning them, has been so far forgotten, that when I enumerated a few of their anatomical and physical peculiarities, well known to the medical men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I was supposed by some of my cotemporaries in the South to be broaching novelties and advancing speculations wild and crude. But I would not be understood as underrating the editors of the Charleston Medical Journal and some other Southern writers, for mistaking anatomical facts for wild speculations, and condemning them as such in their editorial apologies for not publishing the same. The fault lies not with them, but in that system of education which seems intended to keep physicians, divines, and all other classes of men in Egyptian darkness of every thing pertaining to the philosophy of the negro constitution. It is only the country and village practitioners of the Southern States (among professional men,) who appear to know any thing at all about the peculiar nature of negroes—having derived their knowledge, not from books or schools, but in the field of experience. It is the latter class of medical men, by far the most numerous in the South, who have with great unanimity sustained my feeble efforts to make the negro's peculiar nature known, and the important fact that he consumes less oxygen than the white man. Until his defective haematosis be made an element in calculating the best means for improving the negro's condition, our Northern people ought not to wonder at finding their colored population, born to freedom by the side of the church and school-house door, in a lower species of degradation, after trying for half a century or more to elevate them, than an equal number of slaves any where to be found in the South. "Will not a lover of natural history," says Mr. Jefferson, "one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those of the department of man as distinct as nature formed them?" But no effort has since been made to draw the distinctions between the black and the white races by the knife of the anatomist, but much false logic has been introduced into our books and schools, to argue down the distinctions which nature has made. It is to anatomy and physiology we should look, when vindicating the liberty of human nature, to see that its dignity and best interest be preserved. "Among the Romans," says Mr. Jefferson, "emancipation required but one effort, but with us a second is necessary, unknown to history." This second belongs properly to natural history; the difference in the last not being artificial, as among the Romans, or the present Britons, requiring only an act of legislation or a revolution to efface forever, but natural, which no human laws or governmental changes can ever obliterate. The framers of our Constitution were aware of these facts, and built the Constitution upon the basis of natural distinctions or physical differences in the two races composing the American population. A very important difference between the two will be found in the fact of the greater amount of oxygen consumed by the one than the other. If the Constitution be worth defending, surely the great truths of natural history, on which it rests as a basis, are worth being made known and regarded by our statesmen. That negroes consume less oxygen than the white race, is proved by their motions being proverbially much slower, and their want of muscular and mental activity. But to comprehend fully the weight of this proof of their defective haematosis, it is necessary to bear in mind one of the great leading truths disclosed by comparative anatomy. Cuvier was the first to demonstrate beyond a doubt that muscular energy and activity are in direct proportion to the development and activity of the pulmonary organs. In his 29th lesson, vol. vii, p. 17, D'Anatomie Comparee, he says, "Dans les animaux vertebres cette quantite de respiration fait connaitre presque par un calcul mathematique la nature particuliere de chaque class." In the preceding page he says,—"That the relations observed in the different animals, between the quantity of their respiration and the energy of their motive force, is one of the finest demonstrations that comparative anatomy can furnish to physiology, and at the same time one of the best applications of comparative anatomy to natural history." The slower motions of the owl prove to the natural historian that it consumes less oxygen than the eagle. By the same physiological principle he can tell that the herring is the most active among fish, and the flounder the slowest, by merely seeing the gills of each: those of the herring being very large, prove that it consumes much oxygen and is very active; while the flounder, with its small gills, consumes but little, and is very slow in its motions as a necessary consequence. Hence the habitual slower motions of the negro than the white man, is a positive proof that he consumes less oxygen. The slow gait of the negro is an important element to be taken into consideration in studying his nature. I have the authority of one of the very best observers of mankind, that this element in the negro's economy is particularly worthy of being studied. It is no less an authority than the father of his country, the first President of the United States, the illustrious Washington. Washington knew better, perhaps, than any other man what the white man could do; his power of endurance and strength of wind under a given speed of motion. Yet he found that all his observations on the white race were inapplicable to negroes. To know what they could do, and to ascertain their power of endurance and strength of wind, new observations had to be made, and he made them accordingly. He made them on his own negroes. He saw they did not move like the soldiers he had been accustomed to command. Their motions were much slower, and they performed their tasks in a more dilatory manner; the amount of labor they could perform in a given time, with ease and comfort to themselves, could not be told by his knowledge of what white men could do. He therefore noted the gait or movements natural to negroes, and made observations himself of how much they could effect in a given time, under the slow motions or gait natural to them. He did this to enable him to judge of what would be a reasonable service to expect from them, and to know when they loitered and when they performed their duty. Those persons unacquainted with the important truth that negroes are naturally slower in their motions than white people, judging the former by the latter, often attempt to drive them into the same brisk motions. But a day's experience ought to be enough to teach them that every attempt to drive negroes to the performance of tasks equal to what the white laborer would voluntarily impose upon himself, is an actual loss to the master; who, instead of getting more service out of them, actually gets less, and soon none, if such a course be persisted in; because they become disabled in body and indisposed in mind to perform any service at all. Every master or overseer, although he may know nothing of the law above mentioned, discovered by Cuvier, may soon learn from experience the important fact, that there is no other alternative than to let their negroes assume, by their own instincts, the natural gait or movement peculiar to them, and then, like Washington, observe what can be effected in a given time by that given gait or movement, and to ask for nor expect more. In vol. ii, pages 511 to 512, (Washington's Writings, published by Jared Sparks) are recorded a few of the observations made by the father of his country on his own slaves, as an illustration of the preceding remarks. It is to be regretted that Mr. Sparks, out of deference to a modern species of idolatry (all fanaticism is idolatry,) which has taken deep root in Great Britain and despotic Europe, and has from thence been transplanted into our republic, particularly in the Northern portion of it, should have suppressed so much of the valuable observations of Washington on the negro race, as only to publish a small fragment of the extensive knowledge his comprehensive mind had stored up on this important subject, well known to his neighbors. The fragment informs us, that on a certain day he visited his plantations, and found that certain negro slaves there mentioned, by the names of George, Tom and Mike, had only hewed a certain number of feet—whereupon Washington sat down and observed their motions, letting them proceed their own way," and ascertained how many feet each hewed in one hour and a quarter. He also made observations on his sawyers at the same time and in the same manner. From the data thus acquired he ascertained, in the short space of an hour and a quarter, how many feet would be a day's work for hewing, and how many for sawing, under their usual slow gait or movement. This hewing and sawing were of poplar. "What may be the difference, therefore," says Washington, "between the working of this wood and other, some future observations must make known." But Mr. Sparks, out of deference to the new school of idolatry, having its head quarters in Exeter Hall, omitted, almost entirely, the publication of any more observations on the subject. It is no less idolatry to set up an anti-scriptural dogma and to make it a rule of action, than to worship a block or a graven image in the place of the true God. The true God has said in the Pentateuch, the most authentic books of the Bible, "And of the heathen shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids [slaves] and your children shall inherit them after you, and they shall be your bondmen [slaves] forever." Leviticus, chap. xxv, verses 44, 45, 46. But the Dogma or Negro god of Exeter Hall says that "negro slavery is sin," and that it is contrary to the moral sense or conscience. Medicine was anciently called the divine art; to be entitled to hold that appellation, ought it not to lend its aid to arrest in this happy republic the progress of idolatry, which is only another name for fanaticism? And will your learned correspondent help to arrest it in England? Or will he, like Prichard, Todd, and others, make science bow to the policy of his government?—To build up India at the expense of our Union? The subject of his investigations, tubercular disease, if properly studied, leads directly to that species of knowledge, enabling him to determine on physiological principles, which is the best system of ethics, that taught in the Bible, to enslave the Canaanite, or that taught in Exeter Hall, to set him free? It will lead him to the discovery, that the negro, or Canaanitish race, consume less oxygen than the white, and that as a necessary consequence of the deficient aeration of the blood in the lungs, a hebetude of mind and body is the inevitable physiological effect; thus making it a mercy and a blessing to negroes to have persons in authority set over them, to provide for and take care of them. Under the dogma or new commandment to free the Canaanite, practically exercised in Van Dieman's Land and at the Cape of Good Hope, the poor negro race have become nearly annihilated. Whereas under that system of ethics taught in the Bible and made a rule of action in the Southern States, the descendants of Canaan are more rapidly increasing in numbers, and have more of the comforts and pleasures of life, and more morality and Christianity among them than any others of the same race on any other portion of the globe. They are daily bought and sold, and inherited as property, as the Scriptures said they should be. Whereas in all those countries and places in which they are set free, in obedience to the dogma that "slavery is sin," they rapidly degenerate into barbarism, as they are doing in the West Indies, or become extinct as in Van Dieman's Land. The physiological fact that negroes consume less oxygen indicates the superior wisdom of the precepts taught in the Bible regarding those people, to any promulgated from Exeter Hall. Experience also proves the former to be the best. You hear of the poor negroes, or colored people, as you call them, being beaten with many stripes by their masters and overseers. But owing to the fact that they consume less oxygen than white people, and the other physical differences founded on difference of structure, they beat one another, when free from the white man's authority, with ten stripes where they would get one from him. They are as much in slavery in Boston as in New Orleans. They suffer more from corporeal or other punishments in the cellars and dark lanes and alleys of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, by the cruel tyranny practiced by the strong over the weak and helpless, than an equal number in Southern slavery. In slavery the stripes fall upon the evil disposed, vicious, buck negro fellows. But when removed from the white man's authority, the latter make them fall on helpless women and children, the weak and the infirm. Good conduct, so far from being a protection, invites aggression.

But what connection have these observations, you may say, with the subject of Dr. Hall's inquiries, and what light do they throw on tubercular disease? They show that there exists an intimate connection between the amount of oxygen consumed in the lungs and the phenomena of body and mind. They point to a people whose respiratory apparatus is so defective, that they have not sufficient industry and mental energy to provide for themselves, or resolution sufficiently strong to prevent them, when in freedom, from being subjected to the arbitrary, capricious will of the drunken and vicious of their own color, who may happen to have greater physical strength and more cunning; they show that Phthisis is a disease of the master race, and not of the slave race—that it is the bane of that master race of men, known by an active haematosis; by the brain receiving a larger quantity of aerated blood than it is entitled to; by the strong development of the circulating system; by the energy of intellect; by the strength and activity of the muscular system; the vivid imagination; the irritable, mobile, ardent and inflammatory temperament, and the indomitable will and love of freedom. Whereas the negro constitution, being the opposite of all this, is not subject to Phthisis, although it partakes of what is called the scrofulous diathesis. In the negro constitution, as the Frenchman would say, "l'arbre arteriel cede sa prominance a l'arbre veineuse," spreading coldness, languor and want of energy over the entire system. The white fluids, or lymphatic temperament, predominating, they are not so liable as the fair race, to inflammatory diseases of the lungs, or any other organ; but from the superabundant viscidities and mucosities of their mucous surfaces, they are more liable to engorgements and pulmonary congestions than any other race of men. In proof of which I beg leave to refer your correspondent to a standard work entitled "Observations sur les Maladies des Negres, par M. Dazille. Paris, 1776."

Pneumonia, without subjective symptoms, is very common among them. Diphtheretic affections, so common among white children, are very rare among negroes. Intercurrent Pneumonia is more common among them than any other class of people. It is met with in Typhoid fevers, Rheumatism and hepatic derangements, to which they are very liable in the cold season. The local malady requires a different treatment, to correspond with the general disorder. Bad, vicious, ungovernable negroes are subject, to what might properly be termed, Scorbutic Pneumonia—a blood disease, requiring anti-scorbutics. Scorbutic negroes are always vicious or worthless. A course of anti-scorbutics will reform their morals, and make good negroes out of worthless ones. They are liable to suffocative orthopnoea after measles, and die unless bled and purged. But purgatives are injurious in almost all their other affections involving the respiratory organs, except such as act especially on the liver. They check expectoration, says Dazille, and lay the foundations of those effusions and depots of matter so often mistaken for genuine Phthisis. Auscultation cannot well be made available with them. The nose pleads to the eye and touch to form the diagnosis, without calling into requisition the ear. A single examination by auscultation, in persons abounding with so much phlegm, is not sufficient to arrive at a correct diagnosis. Repeated examinations in various postures are too tedious in execution, and too offensive to the auscultator, to come into general use in diagnosing the diseases of the Melanic race. This valuable mode of exploration, so useful in many cases, as practiced by experts, has of late years been carried to a ridiculous extreme, in being made to deceive and delude more practitioners than it enlightens, from the haste and inexperience of those who practice it. With negroes it is unnecessary, except in some rare instances. Their diseases, like their passions, have each its peculiar expression stamped in the countenance. They are like young children in this respect. They cannot disguise their countenance like white people. An intelligent and observant observer can tell from their countenance when they are plotting mischief, or have committed some crime; when they are satisfied or dissatisfied; when in pleasure or in pain; when troubled or disturbed in mind; or when telling a falsehood instead of the truth. An observant physician has only to bring the old science of prosoposcopia, so much used by Hippocrates in forming his diagnosis, to bear upon negroes, to be able, by a little experience, to ascertain the most of them at a glance by the expression of their countenance.

They are very subject to fevers, attended with an obstructed circulation of air and blood in the pulmonary organs. Their abundant mucosities often prevent the ingress of air into the air cells, bloating their lips and cheeks, which are coated with a tenacious saliva. A cessation of digestion from too full a meal, or some hepatic or other derangement, is soon attended with such a copious exudation of mucosities, filling the air cells and tracheal passages, as to cause apoplexy, which with them is only another name for asphyxia. The head has nothing to do with it. So abundant are the mucosities in negroes, that those in the best health have a whitish, pasty mucus, of considerable thickness on the tongue, leading a physician not acquainted with them to suppose that they were dyspeptic, or otherwise indisposed. The lungs of the white man are the main outlets for the elimination of carbonic acid formed in the tissues. Negroes, however, by an instinctive habit of covering their mouth, nose, head and face with a blanket, or some other covering, when they sleep, throw upon the liver an additional duty to perform, in the excretion of carbonic acid. Any cause, obstructing the action of the liver, quickly produces with them a grave malady, the retention of carbonic acid in the blood soon poisoning them.

Hence with white people a moderate degree of hepatic obstruction, by a residence in swampy districts, is often found beneficial in diminishing the exalted sensibility and irritability of phthisical patients. Viscous engorgements of the lungs destroy more negroes than all other diseases combined. They are distinguished from inflammatory affections by the pyrexial symptoms not being strongly marked, or marked at all—by the puffy or bloated appearance of the face and lips—by the slavering mouth—the highly charged tongue—and by the torpor of mind and body. In a word, all the symptoms point to a deficient aeration of the blood, or a kind of half way asphyxia. A torpid state of the system, listlessness and inactivity almost approaching to asphyxia from the diminished quantity of oxygen consumed by the lungs of the negro, form a striking contrast with the energetic, active, restless, persevering Anglo-Saxon, with a tendency to phlogosis and phthisis pulmonalis, from the surplus quantity of oxygen consumed by his lungs. Blistering the nape of the neck, so irritating in nearly all of the diseases of the Saxon race, is almost a sovereign remedy or specific for a large proportion of the complaints that negroes are subject to; because most of them arise from defective respiratory action. Hence whipping the lungs to increased action by the application of blisters over the origin of the respiratory nerves, a remedy so inexpedient and so often contra-indicated in most of the maladies of the white man, has a magic charm about it in the treatment of those of the negro. The magic effect of a blister to that part of the Ethiopian's body, in a large class of his ailments, although well known to most of the planters and overseers of the Southern States, is scarcely known at all to the medical profession beyond those boundaries. Even here, where that portion of the profession who have had much experience in the treatment of their diseases, and are aware of the simple fact itself, do not profit by it in many cases where it is indicated; because they do not perceive the indication clearly, so long as the rationale of the remedy remains unexplained.

Your asking for the proofs of my assertion, "that the negro consumes less oxygen than the white man," has led me into a new, extensive and unexplored field of science, where the rationale of that and many other important facts may be found springing up spontaneously. We have medical schools in abundance teaching the art of curing the ailments, and even the most insignificant sores, incident to the half-starved, oppressed pauper population of Europe—a population we have not got, never had and never can have, so long as we have negro slaves to work in the cane, cotton and rice fields, where the white man, from the physiological laws governing his economy, can not labor and live: but where the negro thrives, luxuriates and enjoys existence more than any laboring peasantry to be found on the continent of Europe; yet we have no schools or any chair in our numerous institutions of medical learning to teach the art of curing and preventing the diseases peculiar to our immense population of negro slaves, or to make them more efficient and valuable, docile and manageable; comfortable, happy and contented by still further improving their condition, which can only be done by studying their nature, and not by the North and South bandying epithets—not by the quackery which prescribes the same remedy, the liberty elixir, for all constitutions. The two races, the Anglo-Saxon and the negro, have antipodal constitutions. The former abounds with red blood, even penetrating the capillaries and the veins, flushing the face and illuminating the countenance; the skin white; lips thin; nose high; hair auburn, flaxen, red or black; beard thick and heavy; eyes brilliant; will strong and unconquerable; mind and muscles full of energy and activity. The latter, with molasses blood sluggishly circulating and scarcely penetrating the capillaries; skin ebony, and the mucous membranes and muscles partaking of the darker hue pervading the blood and the cutis; lips thick and protuberant; nose broad and flat; scalp covered with a coarse, crispy wool in thick naps; beard wanting or consisting of a few scattering woolly naps, in the "bucks," provincially so called; mind and body dull and slothful; will weak, wanting or subdued. The study of such opposite organizations, the one prone to Phthisis and the other not, can not fail to throw some light on tubercular disease, the subject of your correspondent, Dr. Hall's present investigation. In contrasting the typical white man, having an excess of red blood and a liability to inflammatory and tuberculous complaints and disorders of the digestive system, with the typical negro, deficient aerated blood, and abounding in mucosites, having an active liver and a strong digestion, and a proclivity strongly marked to fall into congestions, or cold humid engorgements approaching asphyxia, I hope he will be able to find in this unpolished communication something useful.

I have the honor to be, with great respect, SAML. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D.

New Orleans, July 19th, 1852.



APPENDIX.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PROGNATHOUS SPECIES OF MANKIND.

It is not intended by the use of the term Prognathous to call in question the black man's humanity or the unity of the human races as a genus, but to prove that the species of the genus homo are not a unity, but a plurality, each essentially different from the others—one of them being so unlike the other two—the oval-headed Caucasian and the pyramidal-headed Mongolian—as to be actually prognathous, like the brute creation; not that the negro is a brute, or half man and half brute, but a genuine human being, anatomically constructed, about the head and face, more like the monkey tribes and the lower order of animals than any other species of the genus man. Prognathous is a technical term derived from pro, before, and gnathos, the jaws, indicating that the muzzle or mouth is anterior to the brain. The lower animals, according to Cuvier, are distinguished from the European and Mongol man by the mouth and face projecting further forward in the profile than the brain. He expresses the rule thus: face anterior, cranium posterior. The typical negroes of adult age, when tried by this rule, are proved to belong to a different species from the man of Europe or Asia, because the head and face are anatomically constructed more after the fashion of the simiadiae and the brute creation than the Caucasian and Mongolian species of mankind, their mouth and jaws projecting beyond the forehead containing the anterior lobes of the brain. Moreover, their faces are proportionally larger than their crania, instead of smaller, as in the other two species of the genus man. Young monkeys and young negroes, however, are not prognathous like their parents, but become so as they grow older. The head of the infant ourang outang is like that of a well formed Caucasian child in the projection and hight of the forehead and the convexity of the vertea. The brain appears to be larger than it really is, because the face, at birth, has not attained its proportional size. The face of the Caucasian infant is a little under its proportional size when compared with the cranium. In the infant negro and ourang outang it is greatly so. Although so much smaller in infancy than the cranium, the face of the young monkey ultimately outgrows the cranium; so, also, does the face of the young negro, whereas in the Caucasian, the face always continues to be smaller than the cranium. The superfices of the face at puberty exceeds that of the hairy scalp both in the negro and the monkey, while it is always less in the white man. Young monkeys and young negroes are superior to white children of the same age in memory and other intellectual faculties. The white infant comes into the world with its brain inclosed by fifteen disunited bony plates—the occipital bone being divided into four parts, the sphenoid into three, the frontal into two, each of the two temporals into two, which, with the two parietals, make fifteen plates in all—the vomer and ethmoid not being ossified at birth. The bones of the head are not only disunited, but are more or less overlapped at birth, in consequence of the largeness of the Caucasian child's head and the smallness of its mother's pelvis, giving the head an elongated form, and an irregular, knotty feel to the touch. The negro infant, however, is born with a small, hard, smooth, round head like a gourd. Instead of the frontal and temporal bones being divided into six plates, as in the white child, they form but one bone in the negro infant. The head is not only smaller than that of the white child, but the pelvis of the negress is wider than that of the white woman—its greater obliquity also favors parturition and prevents miscarriage.

Negro children and white children are alike at birth in one remarkable particular—they are both born white, and so much alike, as far as color is concerned, as scarcely to be distinguished from each other. In a very short time, however, the skin of the negro infant begins to darken and continues to grow darker until it becomes of a shining black color, provided the child be healthy. The skin will become black whether exposed to the air and light or not. The blackness is not of as deep a shade during the first years of life, as afterward. The black color is not so deep in the female as in the male, nor in the feeble, sickly negro as in the robust and healthy. Blackness is a characteristic of the prognathous species of the genus homo, but all the varieties of all the prognathous species are not equally black. Nor are the individuals of the same family or variety equally so. The lighter shades of color, when not derived from admixture with Mongolian or Caucasian blood, indicate degeneration in the prognathous species. The Hottentots, Bushmen and aborigines of Australia are inferior in mind and body to the typical African of Guinea and the Niger.

The typical negroes themselves are more or less superior or inferior to one another precisely as they approximate to or recede from the typical standard in color and form, due allowance being made for age and sex. The standard is an oily, shining black, and as far as the conformation of the head and face is concerned and the relative proportion of nervous matter outside of the cranium to the quantity of cerebral matter within it, is found between the simiadiae[257] and the Caucasian. Thus, in the typical negro, a perpendicular line, let fall from the forehead, cuts off a large portion of the face, throwing the mouth, the thick lips, and the projecting teeth anterior to the cranium, but not the entire face, as in the lower animals and monkey tribes. When all, or a greater part of the face is thrown anterior to the line, the negro approximates the monkey anatomically more than he does the true Caucasian; and when little or none of the face is anterior to the line, he approximates that mythical being of Dr. Van Evrie, a black white man, and almost ceases to be a negro. The black man occasionally seen in Africa, called the Bature Dutu, with high nose, thin lips, and long straight hair, is not a negro at all, but a Moor tanned by the climate—because his children, not exposed to the sun, do not become black like himself. The typical negro's nervous system is modeled a little different from the Caucasian and somewhat like the ourang outang. The medullary spinal cord is larger and more developed than in the white man, but less so than in the monkey tribes. The occipital foramen, giving exit to the spinal cord, is a third longer, says Cuvier, in proportion to its breadth, than in the Caucasian, and is so oblique as to form an angle of 30 deg. with the horizon, yet not so oblique as in the simiadae, but sufficiently so to throw the head somewhat backward and the face upward in the erect position. Hence, from the obliquity of the head and the pelvis, the negro walks steadier with a weight on his head, as a pail of water for instance, than without it; whereas, the white man, with a weight on his head, has great difficulty in maintaining his centre of gravity, owing to the occipital foramen forming no angle with the cranium, the pelvis, the spine, or the thighs—all forming a straight line from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot without any of the obliquities seen in the negro's knees, thighs, pelvis and head—and still more evident in the ourang outang.

The nerves of organic life are larger in the prognathous species of mankind than in the Caucasian species, but not so well developed as in the simiadiae. The brain is about a tenth smaller in the prognathous man than in the Frenchman, as proved by actual measurement of skulls by the French savans, Palisot and Virey. Hence, from the small brain and the larger nerves, the digestion of the prognathous species is better than that of the Caucasian, and its animal appetites stronger, approaching the simiadiae but stopping short of their beastiality. The nostrils of the prognathous species of mankind open higher up than they do in the white or olive species, but not so high up as in the monkey tribes. In the gibbon, for instance, they open between the orbits. Although the typical negro's nostrils open high up, yet owing to the nasal bones being short and flat, there is no projection or prominence formed between his orbits by the bones of the nose, as in the Caucasian species. The nostrils, however, are much wider, about as wide from wing to wing, as the white man's mouth from corner to corner, and the internal bones, called the turbinated, on which the olfactory nerves are spread, are larger and project nearer to the opening of the nostrils than in the white man. Hence the negro approximates the lower animals in his sense of smell, and can detect snakes by that sense alone. All the senses are more acute, but less delicate and discriminating, than the white man's. He has a good ear for melody but not for harmony, a keen taste and relish for food but less discriminating between the different kinds of esculent substances than the Caucasian. His lips are immensely thicker than any of the white race, his nose broader and flatter, his chin smaller and more retreating, his foot flatter, broader, larger, and the heel longer, while he has scarcely any calves at all to his legs when compared to an equally healthy and muscular white man. He does not walk flat on his feet but on the outer sides, in consequence of the sole of the foot having a direction inwards, from the legs and thighs being arched outwards and the knees bent. The verb, from which his Hebrew name is derived, points out this flexed position of the knees, and also clearly expresses the servile type of his mind. Ham, the father of Canaan, when translated into plain English, reads that a black man was the father of the slave or knee-bending species of mankind.

The blackness of the prognathous race, known in the world's history as Canaanites, Cushites, Ethiopians, black men or negroes, is not confined to the skin, but pervades, in a greater or less degree, the whole inward man down to the bones themselves, giving the flesh and the blood, the membranes and every organ and part of the body, except the bones, a darker hue than in the white race. Who knows but what Canaan's mother may have been a genuine Cushite, as black inside as out, and that Cush, which means blackness, was the mark put upon Cain? Whatever may have been the mark set upon Cain, the negro, in all ages of the world, has carried with him a mark equally efficient in preventing him from being slain—the mark of blackness. The wild Arabs and hostile American Indians invariably catch the black wanderer and make a slave of him instead of killing him, as they do the white man.

Nich. Pechlin, in a work written last century entitled "De cute Athiopum," Albinus, in another work, entitled "De sede et causa coloris Athiop," as also the great German anatomists, Meiners, Ebel, and Soemmering, all bear witness to the fact that the muscles, blood, membranes, and all the internal organs of the body, (the bones alone excepted,) are of a darker hue in the negro than in the white man. They estimate the difference in color to be equal to that which exists between the hare and the rabbit. Who ever doubts the fact, or has none of those old and impartial authorities at hand—impartial because they were written before England adopted the policy of pressing religion and science in her service to place white American republican freemen and Guinea negroes upon the same platform—has only to look into the mouth of the first healthy typical negro he meets to be convinced of the truth, that the entire membraneous lining of the inside of the cheeks, lips and gums is of a much darker color than in the white man.

The negro, however, must be healthy and in good condition—sickness, hard usage and chronic ailments, particularly that cachexia, improperly called consumption, speedily extracts the coloring matter out of the mucous membranes, leaving them paler and whiter than in the Caucasian. The bleaching process of bad health or degeneration begins in the blood, membranes and muscles, and finally extracts so much of the coloring pigment out of the skin, as to give it a dull ashy appearance, sometimes extracting the whole of it, converting the negro into the albino. Albinoism or cucosis does not necessarily imply hybridism. It occurs among the pure Africans from any cause producing a degeneration of the species. Hybridism, however, is the most prolific source of that degeneration. Sometimes the degeneration shows itself by white spots, like the petals of flowers, covering different parts of the skin. The Mexicans are subject to a similar degeneration, only that the spots and stripes are black instead of white. It is called the pinto with them. Even the pigment of the iris and the coloring matter of the albino's hair is absorbed, giving it a silvery white appearance, and converting him into a clairvoyant at night. According to Professors Brown, Seidy and Gibbs, the negro's hair is not tubular, like the white man's, but it is eccentrically elliptical, with flattened edges, the coloring matter residing in the epidermis, and not in tubes. In the place of a tube, the shaft of each hair is surrounded with a scaly covering like sheep's wool, and, like wool, is capable of being felted. True hair does not possess that property. The degeneration called albinoism has a remarkable influence upon the hair, destroying its coarse, nappy, wooly appearance, and converting it into fine, long, soft, silky, curly threads. Often, the whole external skin, so remarkably void of hair in the healthy negro, becomes covered with a very fine, silky down, scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, when transformed into the albino.

Mr. Bowen, the celebrated Baptist missionary, [see his work entitled Central Africa and Missionary Labors from 1849 to 1856, by T. J. Bowen, Charleston, Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1857,] met with a great many cases of leucosis in Soudan or Negroland, back of Liberia, and erroneously concluded that these people had very little, if any negro blood in them, and would be better subjects for missionary labors than the blacks of the same country. They are, however, nothing but white black men, a degeneration of the negro proper, and are even less capable of perpetuating themselves than the hybrids or mulattoes. Mr. Bowen is at a loss to account for the depopulation, which he verifies has been going on in Soudan the last fifty years, threatening to leave the country, at no distant time, bare of inhabitants, unless roads be constructed by the Christians of the Southern States for commercial intercourse, and double exertions made to civilize and Christianize the waning population of Central Africa before it entirely disappears. The good missionary, though sent out from Georgia, was evidently taught in that British school which assumes that there is only a single species in the genus homo, in opposition to the Bible, that clearly designates three. That school quotes the references in the sacred volume, implying unity in the genus—a unity which no one denies—to disprove the existence of distinct species, and upon this fallacy builds the theory that negro, Indian and white men are beings exactly alike, because they are human beings. Ergo, the liberty so beneficial to the white man, would be equally so to the negro—disregarding as a fable those words of the Bible expressly declaring that the latter shall be servant of servants to the former—words which would not have been there if that kind of subordination called slavery was not the normal condition of the race of Ham. To expect to civilize or Christianize the negro without the intervention of slavery is to expect an impossibility.

Mr. Bowen's experience and natural good sense occasionally got the better of his theoretical views. Thus, at page 90, we find him confessing that "the native African negroes ought to have masters in obedience to the demands of natural justice." At page 149 he lets us into the secret of the depopulating process which has been going on in Central Africa the last fifty years. While standing among some negroes in Ikata, a town in Central Africa, a capricious mulatto chief sent some officers among the company, who singled out a poor fellow who had offended the chief by saying that as he let a white man into town, he might let in a Dahomey man also, and presented him with an empty bag with the message: "The king says you must send me your head." The Rev. missionary, who was present at the beheading, made no comment further than to state the fact. But he might have added that the blood of that negro, and millions of others, will be required at the hands of Victoria Regina and the United States for having officiously destroyed the value of negro property in Africa by breaking up the only trade that ever protected the native Africans against the butcheries, cruelties and oppressions of their mulatto, Moorish and Mahommedan tyrants. It is these butcheries and cruelties, and the little care taken of the black man in Africa, the last fifty years, since he became valueless through British and American philanthropy, that lie at the root of the depopulating process which is going on in the dark land of the Niger. Empty bags are now filled with heads instead of cowries. Mr. Bowen was surprised to see so few black men in Soudan, where, half a century ago, he says they were so numerous. But he rather regards it as a fortunate circumstance, as he has no hope of Christianizing the typical negro, except through slavery to Christian masters—and that idea is abhorrent to the school in which he was taught; but he has more hope from the mixed races, and these, he confesses, can not be effectually Christianized until civilized. He deplores the bad example of the black race, among them, their polygamy, etc., as greatly in the way of civilizing the mulattoes. But he has overlooked the important fact, as many do, that the existence of the hybrids themselves depends upon the existence of the typical Africans. The extinction of the latter must, of necessity, be soon followed by the extinction of the former, as they can not, for any length of time, propagate among themselves.

Mr. Bowen inferred that the negroes of Central Africa, although diminishing in numbers, are rising higher in the scale of humanity, from the very small circumstance that they do not emit from their bodies so strong and so offensive an odor as the negro slaves of Georgia and the Carolinas do, nor are their skins of so deep a black. This is a good illustration of the important truth, that all the danger of the slavery question lies in the ignorance of Scripture and the natural history of the negro. A little acquaintance with the negro's natural history would prove to Mr. Bowen that the strong odor emitted by the negro, like the deep pigment of the skin, is an indication of high health, happiness, and good treatment, while its deficiency is a sure sign of unhappiness, disease, bad treatment, or degeneration. The skin of a happy, healthy negro is not only blacker and more oily than an unhappy, unhealthy one, but emits the strongest odor when the body is warmed by exercise and the soul is filled with the most pleasurable emotions. In the dance called patting juber, the odor emitted from the men, intoxicated with pleasure, is often so powerful as to throw the negro women into paroxysms of unconsciousness, vulgo hysterics. On another point of much importance there is no practical difference between the Rev. missionary and that clear-headed, bold, and eccentric old Methodist, Dr. McFarlane. Both believe that the Bible can do ignorant, sensual savages no good; both believe that nothing but compulsatory power can restrain uncivilized barbarians from polygamy, inebriety, and other sinful practices.

The good missionary, however, believes in the possibility of civilizing the inferior races by the money and means of the Christian nations lavishly bestowed, after which he thinks it will be no difficult matter to convert them to Christianity. Whereas the venerable Methodist believes in the impossibility of civilizing them, and therefore concludes that the Written Word was not intended for those inferior races who can not read it. When the philosophy of the prognathous species of mankind is better understood, it will be seen how they, the lowest of the human species, can be made partakers, equally with the highest, in the blessings and benefits of the Written Word of God. The plantation laws against polygamy, intoxicating drinks, and other besetting sins of the negro race in the savage state, are gradually and silently converting the African barbarian into a moral, rational, and civilized being, thereby rendering the heart a fit tabernacle for the reception of Gospel truths. The prejudices of many, perhaps the majority of the Southern people, against educating the negroes they hold in subjection, arise from some vague and indefinite fears of its consequences, suggested by the abolition and British theories built on the false assumption that the negro is a white man with a black skin. If such an assumption had the smallest degree of truth in it, the more profound the ignorance and the deeper sunk in barbarism the slaves were kept, the better it would be for them and their masters. But experience proves that masters and overseers have nothing at all to fear from civilized and intelligent negroes, and no trouble whatever in managing them—that all the trouble, insubordination and danger arise from the uncivilized, immoral, rude, and grossly ignorant portion of the servile race. It is not the ignorant semi-barbarian that the master or overseer intrusts with his keys, his money, his horse or his gun, but the most intelligent of the plantation—one whose intellect and morals have undergone the best training. An educated negro, one whose intellect and morals have been cultivated, is worth double the price of the wild, uncultivated, black barbarian of Cuba and will do twice as much work, do it better and with less trouble.

The prejudice against educating the negroes may also be traced to the neglect of American divines in making themselves acquainted with Hebrew literature. What little the most of them know of the meaning of the untranslated terms occurring in the Bible, and the signification of the verbs from which they are derived, is mostly gathered from British commentators and glossary-makers, who have blinked the facts that disprove the Exeter Hall dogma, that negro slavery is sin against God. Hence, even in the South, the important Biblical truth, that the white man derives his authority to govern the negro from the Great Jehovah, is seldom proclaimed from the pulpit. If it were proclaimed, the master race would see deeper into their responsibilities, and look closer into the duties they owe to the people whom God has given them as an inheritance, and their children after them, so long as time shall last. That man has no faith in the Scriptures who believes that education could defeat God's purposes, in subjecting the black man to the government of the white. On the contrary, experience proves its advantages, to both parties. Aside and apart from Scripture authority, natural history reveals most of the same facts, in regard to the negro that the Bible does. It proves the existence of at least three distinct species of the genus man, differing in their instincts, form, habits and color. The white species having qualities denied to the black—one with a free and the other with a servile mind—one a thinking and reflective being, the other a creature of feeling and imitation, almost void of reflective faculties, and consequently unable to provide for and take care of himself. The relation of master and slave would naturally spring up between two such different species of men, even if there was no Scripture authority to support it. The relation thus established, being natural, would be drawn closer together, instead of severed, by the inferior imitating the superior in all his ways, or in other words, acquiring an education.

FOOTNOTE:

[257] Monkey tribes.—Editor.



ON THE CAUCASIANS AND THE AFRICANS.

SEVERAL years ago we published some original and ingenious views of Dr. Cartwright, of New Orleans, upon the subject of negroes and their characteristics. The matter is more elaborately treated by him in the following paper:—De Bows Review.

THE Nilotic monuments furnish numerous portraits of the negro races, represented as slaves, sixteen hundred years before the Christian era. Although repeatedly drawn from their native barbarism and carried among civilized nations, they soon forget what they learn and relapse into barbarism. If the inherent potency of the prognathous type of mankind had been greater than it actually is, sufficiently great to give it the independence of character that the American Indian possesses, the world would have been in a great measure deprived of cotton and sugar. The red man is unavailable as a laborer in the cane or cotton field, or any where else, owing to the unalterable ethnical laws of his character. The white man can not endure toil under the burning sun of the cane and cotton field, and live to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The African will starve rather than engage in a regular system of agricultural labor, unless impelled by the stronger will of the white man. When thus impelled, experience proves that he is much happier, during the hours of labor in the sunny fields, than when dozing in his native woods and jungles. He is also eminently qualified for a number of employments, which the instincts of the white man regard as degrading. If the white man be forced by necessity into employments abhorrent to his instincts, it tends to weaken or destroy that sentiment or principle of honor or duty, which is the mainspring of heroic actions, from the beginning of historical times to the present, and is the basis of every thing great and noble in all grades of white society.

The importance of having these particular employments, regarded as servile and degrading by the white man, attended to by the black race, whose instincts are not repugnant to them, will be at once apparent to all those who deem the sentiment of honor or duty as worth cultivating in the human breast. It is utterly unknown to the prognathous race of mankind, and has no place in their language. When the language is given to them they can not comprehend its meaning, or form a conception of what is meant by it. Every white man, who has not been degraded, had rather be engaged in the most laborious employments, than to serve as a lacquey or body servant to another white man or being like himself. Whereas, there is no office which the negro or mulatto covets more than that of being a body servant to a real gentleman. There is no office which gives him such a high opinion of himself, and it is utterly impossible for him to attach the idea of degradation to it. Those identical offices which the white man instinctively abhors, are the most greedily sought for by negroes and mulattoes, whether slave or free, in preference to all other employments. North or South, free or slave, they are ever at the elbow, behind the table, in hotels and steamboats; ever ready, with brush in hand, to brush the coat or black the shoes, or to perform any menial service which may be required, and to hold out the open palm for the dime. The innate love to act as body servant or lacquey is too strongly developed in the negro race to be concealed. It admirably qualifies them for waiters and house servants, as their strong muscles, hardy frames, and the positive pleasure that labor in a hot sun confers on them, abundantly qualify them for agricultural employment in a hot climate.

Hence, the primordial cell germ of the Nigritians has no more potency than what is sufficient to form a being with physical power, when its dynamism becomes exhausted, dropping the creature in the wilderness with the mental organization too imperfect to enable him to extricate himself from barbarism. If Nature had intended the prognathous race for barbarism as the end and object of their creation, they would have been like lions and tigers, fierce and untamable. So far from being like ferocious beasts, they are endowed with a will so weak, passions so easily subdued, and dispositions so gentle and affectionate, as readily to fall under subjection to the wild Arab, or any other race of men. Hence they are led about in gangs of an hundred or more by a single individual, even by an old man, or a cripple, if he be of the white race and possessed of a strong will. The Nigritian has such little command over his own muscles, from the weakness of his will, as almost to starve, when a little exertion and forethought would procure him an abundance. Although he has exaggerated appetites and exaggerated senses, calling loudly for their gratification, his will is too weak to command his muscles to engage in such kinds of labor as would readily procure the fruits to gratify them. Like an animal in a state of hibernation, waiting for the external aid of spring to warm it into life and power, so does the negro continue to doze out a vegeto-animal existence in the wilderness, unable to extricate himself therefrom—his own will being too feeble to call forth the requisite muscular exertion. His muscles not being exercised, the respiration is imperfect, and the blood is imperfectly vitalized. Torpidity of body and hebetude of mind are the effects thereof, which disappear under bodily labor, because that expands the lungs, vitalizes the blood, and wakes him up to a sense of pleasure and happiness unknown to him in the vegeto-animal or hibernating state. Nothing but will is wanting to transform the torpid, unhappy tenant of the wilderness into a rational and happy thing—the happiest being on earth, as far as sensual pleasures are concerned.

The white man has an exaggerated will, more than he has use for; because it frequently drives his own muscles beyond their physical capacity of endurance. The will is not a faculty confined within the periphery of the body. It can not, like the imagination, travel to immeasurable distances from the body, and in an instant of time go and return from Aldabran, or beyond the boundaries of the solar system. Its flight is confined to the world and to limits more or less restricted—the less restricted in some than in others. The will has two powers—direct and indirect. It is the direct motive power of the muscular system. It indirectly exerts a dynamic force upon surrounding objects when associated with knowledge. It gives to knowledge its power. Every thing that is made was made by the Infinite Will associated with infinite knowledge. The will of man is but a spark of the Infinite Will, and its power is only circumscribed by his knowledge. A man possessing a knowledge of the negro character can govern an hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand of the prognathous race by his will alone, easier than one ignorant of that character can govern a single individual of that race by the whip or a club. However disinclined to labor the negroes may be, they can not help themselves; they are obliged to move and to exercise their muscles when the white man, acquainted with their character, wills that they should do so. They can not resist that will, so far as labor of body is concerned. If they resist, it is from some other cause than that connected with their daily labor. They have an instinctive feeling of obedience to the stronger will of the white man, requiring nothing more than moderate labor. So far, their instincts compel obedience to will as one of his rights. Beyond that, they will resist his will and be refractory, if he encroaches on what they regard as their rights, viz: the right to hold property in him as he does in them, and to disburse that property to them in the shape of meat, bread and vegetables, clothing, fuel and house-room, and attention to their comforts when sick, old, infirm, and unable to labor; to hold property in him as a conservator of the peace among themselves, and a protector against trespassers from abroad, whether black or white; to hold property in him as impartial judge and an honest jury to try them for offenses, and a merciful executioner to punish them for violations of the usages of the plantation or locality.

With those rights acceded to them, no other compulsion is necessary to make them perform their daily tasks than his will be done. It is not the whip, as many suppose, which calls forth those muscular exertions, the result of which is sugar, cotton, breadstuffs, rice, and tobacco. These are products of the white man's will, acting through the muscles of the prognathous race in our Southern States. If that will were withdrawn, and the plantations handed over as a gracious gift to the laborers, agricultural labor would cease for the want of that spiritual power called the will, to move those machines—the muscles. They would cease to move here, as they have in Hayti. If the prognathous race were expelled the land, and their place supplied with double their number of white men, agricultural labor in the South would also cease, as far as sugar and cotton are concerned, for the want of muscles that could endure exercise in the smothering heat of a cane or cotton field. Half the white laborers of Illinois are prostrated with fevers from a few days' work in stripping blades in a Northern corn field, owing to the confinement of the air by the close proximity of the plants. Cane and cotton plants form a denser foliage than corn—a thick jungle, where the white man pants for breath, and is overpowered by the heat of the sun at one time of day, and chilled by the dews and moisture of the plants at another. Negroes glory in a close, hot atmosphere; they instinctively cover their head and faces with a blanket at night, and prefer laying with their heads to the fire, instead of their feet. This ethnical peculiarity is in harmony with their efficiency as laborers in hot, damp, close, suffocating atmosphere—where instead of suffering and dying, as the white man would, they are healthier, happier, and more prolific than in their native Africa—producing, under the white man's will, a great variety of agricultural products, besides upward of three millions of bales of cotton, and three hundred thousand hogsheads of sugar. Thus proving that subjection to his will is normal to them, because, under the influence of his will, they enjoy life more than in any other condition, rapidly increase in numbers, and steadily rise in the scale of humanity.

The power of a stronger will over a weaker, or the power of one living creature to act on and influence another, is an ordinance of nature, which has its parallel in the inorganic kingdom, where ponderous bodies, widely separated in space, influence one another so much as to keep up a constant interplay of action and reaction throughout nature's vast realms. The same ordinance which keeps the spheres in their orbits and holds the satellites in subordination to the planets, is the ordinance that subjects the negro race to the empire of the white man's will. From that ordinance the snake derives its power to charm the bird, and the magician his power to amuse the curious, to astonish the vulgar, and to confound the wisdom of the wise. Under that ordinance, our four millions of negroes are as unalterably bound to obey the white man's will, as the four satellites of Jupiter the superior magnetism of that planet. If individual masters, by releasing individual negroes from the power of their will, can not make them free or release them from subordination to the instinctive public sentiment or will of the aggregate white population, which as rigidly excludes them, in the so-called free States, from the drawing room and parlor as it does pots and kettles and other kinds of kitchen furniture. The subjugation of equals by artifice or force is tyrrany or slavery; but there is no such thing in the United States, because equals are on a perfect equality here. The subordination of the Nigritian to the Caucasian would never have been imagined to be a condition similar to European slavery, if any regard had been paid to ethnology. Subordination of the inferior race to the superior is a normal, and not a forced condition. Chains and standing armies are the implements used to force the obedience of equals to equals—of one white man to another. Whereas, the obedience of the Nigritian to the Caucasian is spontaneous because it is normal for the weaker will to yield obedience to the stronger. The ordinance which subjects the negro to the empire of the white man's will, was plainly written on the heavens during our Revolutionary war. It was then that the power of the united will of the American people rose to its highest degree of intensity.

Every colony was a slaveholding colony excepting one; yet the people, particularly that portion of them residing in districts where the black population was greatest, hastened to meet in the battle-field the powerful British armies in front of them, and the interminable hosts of Indian warriors in the wilderness behind them, leaving their wives and children, their old men and cripples, for seven long years, to their negroes to take care of. Did the slaves, many of whom were savages recently imported from Africa, butcher them, as white or Indian slaves surely would have done, and fly to the enemy's standard for the liberty, land, money, rum, savage luxuries and ample protection so abundantly promised and secured to all who would desert their master's families? History answers that not one in a thousand joined their masters' enemies; but, on the contrary, they continued quietly their daily labors, even in those districts where they outnumbered the white population ten to one. They not only produced sufficient breadstuffs to supply the families of their masters, but a surplus of flour, pork, and beef was sent up from the slaveholding districts of Virginia to Washington's starving army in Pennsylvania. [See Botta's History.] These agricultural products were created by savages, naturally so indolent in their native Africa, as to prefer to live on ant eggs and caterpillars rather than labor for a subsistence; but for years in succession they continued to labor in the midst of their masters' enemies—dropping their hoes when they saw the red coats, running to tell their mistress, and to conduct her and the children through by-paths to avoid the British troopers, and when the enemy were out of sight returning to their work again. The sole cause of their industry and fidelity is due to the spiritual influence of the white race over the black.

The empire of the white man's will over the prognathous race is not absolute, however. It can not force exercise beyond a certain speed; neither the will nor physical force can drive negroes, for a number of days in succession, beyond a very moderate daily labor—about one-third less than the white man voluntarily imposes on himself. If force be used to make them do more, they invariably do less and less, until they fall into a state of impassivity, in which they are more plague than profit—worthless as laborers, insensible and indifferent to punishment, or even to life; or, in other words, they fall into the disease which I have named Dysesthaesia Ethiopica, characterized by hebetude of mind and insensibility of body, caused by over working and bad treatment. Some knowledge of the ethnology of the prognathous race is absolutely necessary for the prevention and cure of this malady in all its various forms and stages. Dirt eating, or Cachexia Africana, is another disease, like Dysesthaesia Ethiopica, growing out of ethnical elements peculiar to the prognathous race. The ethnical elements assimilating the negro to the mule, although giving rise to the last named disease, are of vast importance to the prognathous race, because they guarantee to that race an ample protection against the abuses of arbitrary power. A white man, like a blooded horse, can be worked to death. Not so the negro, whose ethnical elements, like the mule, restricts the limits of arbitrary power over him.

Among the four millions of the prognathous race in the United States, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find a single individual negro, whom the white man, armed with arbitrary power, has ever been able to make hurt himself at work. It is beyond the power of the white man to drive the negro into this long continued and excessive muscular exertions such as the white laborers of Europe often impose upon themselves to satisfy a greedy boss, under fear of losing their places, and thereby starving themselves and families. Throughout England, nothing is more common than decrepitude, premature old age, and a frightful list of diseases, caused by long continued and excessive muscular exertion. Whereas, all America can scarcely furnish an example of the kind among the prognathous race. The white men of America have performed many prodigies, but they have never yet been able to make a negro overwork himself.

There are other elements peculiar to the Nigritian, on which the disease, called negro consumption, or Cachexia Africana, depends. But these belong to that class which subject the negro to the white man's spiritual empire over him. When that spiritual empire is not maintained in all its entirety, or in other words, when the negro is badly governed, he is apt to fall under the spiritual influence of the artful and designing of his own color, and Cachexia Africana, or consumption, is the consequence. Better throw medicine to the dogs, than give it to a negro patient impressed with the belief that he has walked over poison specially laid for him, or been in some other way tricked or conjured. He will surely die, unless treated in accordance with his ethnological peculiarities, and the hallucination expelled.

There never has been an insurrection of the prognathous race against their masters; and from the nature of the ethnical elements of that race, there never can be. Hayti is no exception, it will be seen, when the true history of the so-called insurrection of that island is written. There have been neighborhood disturbances and bloodshed, caused by fanaticism, and by mischievous white men getting among them and infusing their will into them, or mesmerizing them. But, fortunately, there is an ethnological law of their nature which estops the evil influence of such characters by limiting their influence strictly to personal acquaintances. The prognathous tribes in every place and country are jealous and suspicious of all strangers, black or white, and have ever been so.

Prior to the emancipation act in the British West Indies, the famous Exeter Hall Junto sent out a number of emissaries of the East India Company to Jamaica, in the garb of missionaries. After remaining a year or two in the assumed character of Christian ministers, they began to preach insurrectionary doctrines, and caused a number of so-called insurrections to break out simultaneously in different parts of the island. The insurgents in every neighborhood were confined to the personal acquaintances of the Exeter Hall miscreants, who succeeded in infusing their will only into those who had listened to their incendiary harangues. This was proved upon them by the genuine missionaries, who had long been on the island, and had gathered into their various churches a vast number of converts. For, in no instance, did a single convert, or any other negro, join in the numerous insurrectionary movements who had not been personally addressed by the wolves in sheep's clothing. The Christian missionaries, particularly the Methodists, Baptist, Moravians, and Catholics, were very exact in collecting the evidence of this most important ethnological truth, in consequence of some of the planters, at the first outbreak, having confounded them with the Exeter Hall incendiaries.

The planters finally left the Christian missionaries and their flocks undisturbed, but proceeded to expel the false missionaries, to hang their converts, and to burn down their chapels. The event proved that they were wrong in not hanging the white incendiaries; because they went home to England, preached a crusade—traveling all over the United Kingdom—proclaiming, as they went, that they had left God's houses in flames throughout Jamaica, and God's people hanging like dogs from the trees in that sinful island. This so inflamed public sentiment in Great Britain against the planters, as to unite all parties in loud calls for the immediate passage of the emancipation act. There is good reason to believe that the English ministry, in view of the probable effect of that measure on the United States, and the encouragement it would afford to the culture of sugar and other tropical products in the East Indies and Mauritius, had previously determined to make negro freedom a leading measure in British policy, well knowing that its effect would be to Africanize the sugar and cotton growing regions of America. The ethnology of the prognathous race does not stop at proving that subordination to the white race is its normal condition. It goes further, and proves that social and political equality is abnormal to it, whether educated or not. Neither negroes nor mulattoes know how to use power when given to them. They always use it capriciously and tyrannically. Tschudi, a Swiss naturalist, [see Tschudi's Travels in Peru, London, 1848,] says, "that in Lima and Peru generally, the free negroes are a plague to society. Dishonesty seems to be a part of their very nature. Free born negroes, admitted into the houses of wealthy families, and have received, in early life, a good education, and treated with kindness and liberality, do not differ from their uneducated brother."

Tschudi is mistaken in supposing that dishonesty is too deeply rooted in the negro character to be removed. They are dishonest when in the abnormal condition without a master. They are also dishonest when in a state of subordination, called slavery, badly provided for and not properly disciplined and governed. But when properly disciplined, instructed, and governed, and their animal wants provided for, it would be difficult to find a more honest, faithful, and trustworthy people than they are. When made contented and happy, as they always should be, they reflect their master in their thoughts, morals, and religion, or at least they are desirous of being like him. They imitate him in every thing, as far as their imitative faculties, which are very strong, will carry them. They take a pride in his wealth, or in any thing which distinguishes him, as if they formed a part of himself, as they really do, being under the influence of his will, and in some measure assimilated, in their spiritual nature, to him—loving him with all the warm and devoted affection which children manifest to their parents. He is sure of their love and friendship, although all the world may forsake him. But to create and maintain this happy relation, he must govern them with strict reference to their ethnological peculiarities. He must treat them as inferiors, not as equals, as they are not satisfied with equality, and will despise a master who attempts to raise any one or more of them to an equality with himself; because they become jealous and suspicious that their master's favorites will exercise a sinister influence over him against them.

Impartiality of treatment in every particular, down to a hat or pair of shoes, is what they all regard as one of their dearest rights. Hence, any special favors or gifts to one, is an offense to all the rest. They also regard as a right, when punished, not to be punished in anger, but with cool deliberation. They will run from an angry or enraged master or overseer, armed with a gun or a pistol. They regard all overseers who come into the field armed with deadly weapons as cowards, and all cowards have great difficulty in governing them. It is not physical force which keeps them in subjection, but the spiritual force of the white man's will. One unarmed brave man can manage a thousand by the moral force of his will alone, much better than an hundred cowards with guns in their hands. They also require as a right when punished, to be punished with a switch or a whip, and not with a stick or the fist. In this particular the ethnical law of their nature is different from all other races of men. It is exactly the reverse of that of the American Indian. The Indian will murder any man who strikes him with a switch, a cowhide, or a whip, twenty years afterward, if he gets an opportunity; but readily forgets blows, however severe, inflicted on him with the fist, a cudgel, or a tomahawk. A remarkable ethnological peculiarity of the prognathous race is, that any deserved punishment, inflicted on them with a switch, cowhide, or whip, puts them into good humor with themselves and the executioner of the punishment, provided he manifest satisfaction by regarding the offense as atoned for.

The negro requires government in every thing, the most minute. The Indian, on the contrary, submits to government in nothing whatever. Mr. Jefferson was the first to notice this ethnical law of the red man. [See his letter to Gilmer, June 7, 1816, vol. iv, page 279, Jefferson's Correspondence.] "Every man with them," (the Indians,) says Mr. Jefferson, "is perfectly free to follow his own inclinations; but if, in doing this, he violates the rights of another, he is punished by the disesteem of society or tomahawked. Their leaders conduct them by the influence of their characters only; and they follow or not, as they please, him of whose character, for wisdom or war, they have the highest opinion, but, of all things, they least think of subjecting themselves to the will of one man." Whereas the black man requires government even in his meat and drink, his clothing, and hours of repose. Unless under the government of one man to prescribe rules of conduct to guide him, he will eat too much meat and not enough of bread and vegetables; he will not dress to suit the season, or kind of labor he is engaged in, nor retire to rest in due time to get sufficient sleep, but sit up and doze by the fire nearly all night. Nor will the women undress the children and put them regularly to bed. Nature is no law unto them. They let their children suffer and die, or unmercifully abuse them, unless the white man or woman prescribe rules in the nursery for them to go by. Whenever the white woman superintends the nursery, whether the climate be cold or hot, they increase faster than any other people on the globe; but on large plantations, remote from her influence, the negro population invariably diminishes, unless the overseer take upon himself those duties in the lying-in and nursery department, which on small estates are attended to by the mistress. She often sits up at night with sick children and administers to their wants, when their own mothers are nodding by them, and would be sound asleep if it were not for her presence. The care that white women bestow on the nursery, is one of the principal causes why three hundred thousand Africans, originally imported into the territory of the United States have increased to four millions, while in the British West Indies the number imported, exceeded, by several millions, the actual population. It is also the cause why the small proprietors of negro property in Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri are able to supply the loss on the large Southern plantations, which are cut off from the happy influence of the presiding genius over civilization, morality, and population—the white woman.

The prognathous race require government also in their religious exercises, or they degenerate into fanatical saturnalia. A discreet white man or woman should always be present to regulate their religious meetings.

Here the investigation into the ethnology of the prognathous race must close, at least, for the present, leaving the most interesting part, Fetichism, the indigenous religion of the African tribes, untouched. It is the key to the negro character, which is difficult to learn from mere experience. Those who are not accustomed to them have great trouble and difficulty in managing negroes; and in consequence thereof treat them badly. If their ethnology was better and more generally understood, their value would be greatly increased, and their condition, as a laboring class, would be more enviable, compared to the European peasants, than it already is.



SLAVERY

IN THE

LIGHT OF INTERNATIONAL LAW.

BY

E. N. ELLIOTT, L.L.D.,

OF MISSISSIPPI.



SLAVERY

IN THE

LIGHT OF INTERNATIONAL LAW.

THERE are some who deny the unity of the human race; with such we have no controversy, but it is a part of our religious belief, that "God made of one blood all nations that dwell on the face of the earth;" and on this we would base one of our arguments for the subordination of a part of the human family. It is not necessary to the vindication of our cause, or of truth, to deny the authority, or to fritter away the evident meaning of any part of the word of God, as is done by most of the abolitionists. It is sufficient for our purpose that we have shown that the negro is an inferior variety of the human race; that he is inferior in his physical structure, and in his mental and moral organization. This orgnization incapacitates him for emerging, by his own will and power, from barbarism, and achieving civilization and refinement. History teaches the same lesson. We find Africa to-day, just as it was three thousand years ago. When God created man he said to him, "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth on the face of the earth." And again, upon the re-creation after the flood, he repeated the command, in almost the same words, to Noah and his sons. This command shows that God had a purpose with regard to the physical world, in placing man upon it, and that man has a mission to fulfill in subduing it, and acquiring a control, not only over animate but also over inanimate nature. Indeed, the one is essential to the other. Man can not control and subdue the inferior animals, until he has acquired some control over the powers of nature. Place him in the forest naked and unarmed, and many of the animals are his superiors; but endow his mind with a knowledge of nature's laws, and thus enable him to make them subservient to his purposes, and he becomes irresistible; a god on earth. In fulfilling this command, man elevates his nature as he increases his knowledge, and thereby extends his powers. God requires that every part of the human family shall fulfill this great command, and contribute their part in rendering subservient to human use, all the faculties of nature. Nay, even where the one talent is misimproved, he takes it away and gives it to him, who has ten talents. It is on this principle that it is right and in accordance with the ordinance of God, to dispossess of their lands, mines, waterpowers, harbors, etc., a savage nation, possessing, but not improving them, and convert them to the uses of the world of mankind. This is the warrant for the conflict of civilization with barbarism. Not to go back to former times, it is this precept which has converted the former howling wilderness of this Western World, into an earthly paradise, affording an ample subsistence to happy millions of the most enlightened of the human family. It is this that causes effete dynasties and nations to disappear from the face of the world, and their places to be supplied by those full of life and energy. It is this that is rolling back and blotting out the mongrel races of the New World, to make room for the onward march of a higher civilization.

The manifest destiny men are not so far wrong after all; but instead of destiny, it is the purpose and ordinance of God. Upon this principle has England acted in reference to India, Australia, China, and in almost every region of the globe. It is upon this principle that Europe is now controlling the destinies of the Old World, as the United States, if they are true to themselves, will control the destinies of the New. This has governed us in requiring that Japan should open her ports to the commerce, and her coal mines to the navies of the world; that she should enrol herself in the brotherhood of nations, and perform her part in the great drama of life. It is upon this principle that England, France, and the United States, are requiring the same thing of China; and it is upon this principle that the vagrant is arrested in your streets and sent to the work-house.

These principles are clearly enunciated, and ably defended by J. Q. Adams in his celebrated speech on the Chinese question, delivered in 1841. It is true, that he applies them to the rights of commerce only; but by legitimate deduction, they are as applicable to the rights of labor, as to the rights of commerce. Although nations and races have always acted on these principles, yet at the time of the delivery of this speech, so startling were the positions assumed by Mr. Adams, that but few could be found who were prepared to defend them, yet none were able to controvert them. Their general adoption at the present day only shows what history has so long taught, that master minds are generally in advance of their age.

In the "Memoir of J. Q. Adams," by Josiah Quincy, we have a report of this speech. Speaking of the Chinese war, Mr. Adams says, "that by the law of nations is to be understood, not one code of laws, binding alike on all nations of the earth, but a system of rules, varying according to the condition and character of the nations concerned. There is a law of nations among Christian communities, which is the law recognized by the Constitution of the United States, as obligatory upon them in their intercourse with European States and colonies. But we have a different law of nations regulating our intercourse with the Indian tribes on this continent; another between us and the woolly-headed nations of Africa; another with the Barbary powers; another with the flowery land, or Celestial empire." Then, reasoning on the rights of property, established by labor, by occupation, by compact, he maintains "that the right of exchange, barter—in other words, of commerce—necessarily follows; that a state of nature among men is a state of peace; the pursuit of happiness, man's natural right; that is the duty of all men to contribute, as much as is in their power, to one another's happiness, and that there is no other way by which they can so well contribute to the comfort and well-being of one another, as by commerce, or the mutual exchange of equivalents." These views and principles he thus illustrates:

"The duty of commercial intercourse between nations, is laid down in terms sufficiently positive by Vattel, but he afterwards qualifies it by a restriction, which, unless itself restricted, annuls it altogether. He says that, although the general duty of commercial intercourse is incumbent upon nations, yet every nation may exclude any particular branch or article of trade, which it may deem injurious to its interests. This can not be denied. But then a nation may multiply these particular exclusions, until they become general, and equivalent to a total interdict of commerce; and this, time out of mind, has been the inflexible policy of the Chinese empire. So says Vattel, without affixing any note of censure upon it. Yet it is manifestly incompatible with the position which he had previously laid down, that commercial intercourse between nations is a moral obligation upon them all."

The same doctrine, with regard to the duties of individuals in a community, that is here advanced by Mr. Adams with regard to races and nations, is thus set forth in Blackstone's Commentaries, book iv, chap. xxxiii: "There is not a more necessary, or more certain maxim, in the frame and constitution of society, than that every individual must contribute his share, in order to the well-being of the community."

The first principle laid down by Mr. Adams is, that the same code of international law does not apply to all nations alike, but that it varies with the condition and character of the people; that one code of laws applies to the enlightened and Christian nations of Europe, but an entirely different one to the pagan, woolly-headed, barbarians of Africa. What would be just and right with regard to the African, would be eminently unjust towards the European. Though it would be a great wrong to reduce the European to a condition of servitude, it does not follow that it would be equally wrong to enslave the African. If all the human races were alike, one code of international laws would apply to the whole, but so long as the African continues to be an inferior race, they must be treated as such.

But again, Mr. Adams clearly lays down the principle that no nation or race can be permitted, in any way, to isolate itself from the community of nations, but is morally bound to contribute all in its power to the well-being of the whole race, at the same time that it secures its own. If it possesses territory which it occupies, but does not improve, it must yield it to the claims of civiilization. If it has productions valuable to the world, it is morally bound to exchange them. If it has ports, harbors, coal mines, or other facilities for commerce and manufactures, it must allow other nations to participate in its advantages. If it has a superabundant supply of labor, it must be rendered available. If, then, it is right that civilization and progress should appropriate the hunting grounds of the Indian race; if it is right that China and Japan should be required to open their ports to the commerce of the world, it must be equally right that the great store house of labor in Africa should be opened for the benefit of the human race. In the Western World, a vast continent of fertile land and propitious climate, was possessed, not improved, by a sparse hunter race; but the law of God and of nations required that the earth should be subdued and replenished, and now God has enlarged Japheth, and he dwells in these tents of Shem. China, Japan, and other regions of Asia, are inhabited by teeming millions, rich in the productions of art, yet scarcely able to obtain a meagre sustenance, and rigidly excluding all intercourse with the outer world, but at the demands of commerce the barriers are broken down, and they, in common with other nations, are benefited by the change. Africa has long possessed a superabundant population of indolent, degraded, pagan savages, useless to the world and to themselves. Numberless efforts have been made to elevate them in the scale of existence, in their own country, but all in vain. Even when partially civilized, under the control of the white man, they soon relapse into barbarism, if emancipated from this control. But a colony of them, some two hundred years since, were imported into the Western World, and placed subordinate to the white race; and now, if we are to believe the abolitionists, they have improved so rapidly as to have become equal, if not superior, to the white race. Certainly they are far superior to their ancestors, or their brethren in Africa. At the same time, they have conferred an equal benefit on the world. They supply a demand for labor which can not otherwise be met, and their products not only clothe the civilized world, but also are the life-blood of its commerce.

It is not necessary to the discussion of this topic, that we should show what are the laws of nations, applicable to the different races enumerated by Mr. Adams; though it is manifest to the most casual observer, that the laws applicable to them are radically different. What would be thought of a minister at the court of St. James, who should propose to carry out with Great Britain, the same course of policy we pursue towards the Indian tribes; or of the English minister at our capital, who would exact from us the concessions required of the rajahs of India, or the chiefs of Australia? The radical difference is this: among civilized and Christian nations, the law recognizes a perfect equality, and requires an entire reciprocity; but between an elevated and a degraded or inferior race, this inequality is recognized, and an influence and a superiority is accorded to the one, which is denied to the other. This is well illustrated by our present intercourse with Mexico, and should we establish a protectorate over that unhappy country, for their good and our own, it would be in strict accordance with these principles. With some nations we have diplomatic intercourse, on terms of perfect equality and reciprocity; others we treat as inferiors, and assume over them some degree of control, while we nevertheless recognize them as legitimate governments. But there are other nations or races, with whom we form no diplomatic relations, and whose governments we do not recognize. In this latter class are included most of the inhabitants of Africa, and of Hayti; or in other words, the negro race. The reason is, that those nations performing their duties to the human race, according to the ordinance of God, are to be recognized as not needing our assistance, or requiring our guardianship; those fulfilling only in part, should be considered in a state of tutelage, but those that fulfill none, or but few of these duties, require to be made subservient to the superior races, in order that they may fulfill the great ends of their existence. This subordination has existed in all times, among all nations, and with all races. But as soon as any race became so developed as no longer to require it, it ceased to exist. In this way, and in this alone,—except by the deportation of the slaves—has slavery ever ceased to exist, in any community; nor can it be otherwise in the future. Emancipation in name, is not always freedom in reality. The free blacks of our Northern States and the West Indies, are, as a mass, more abject slaves than any on our Southern plantations. Nor is it possible for them to acquire a more elevated position, until they shall have acquired the requisite qualifications for that position.

At the present time, with the exception of serfdom, peonage, and political slavery, this subordination is confined to the negro race. Why is this so? Manifestly because they have shown themselves incapable, in their own land, of emerging from barbarism, achieving civilization and refinement, performing their duties to the human race, and becoming entitled to a position as equals among the nations of the earth. Until such improvement takes place as shall entitle them to this exalted position, their own happiness and well-being, their duties to the human race, the claims of civilization, the progress of society, the law of nations, and the ordinance of God, require that they should be placed in a subordinate position to a superior race. Experience also shows us that this is their normal and natural position. In their native land they still are what they have always been, a pagan, savage, servile race, fulfilling their duties neither to themselves, to God, nor to the human race; but under the tutelage of a superior race, they are elevated in the scale of existence, improved mentally, morally, and physically, and are thus enabled to do their part in contributing to the well-being of the human race. But so far as our experience goes, this development is not permanent, but is liable to retrogression as soon as the influence of the superior race is removed. Like the electro-magnet, whose power is lost the moment it is insulated from the vivifying power of electricity, so the servile race loses its power when removed from the control of a superior intellect. The example of our own free blacks, those emancipated in the West Indies, Sierra Leone, and even Liberia, are conclusive on this point.