The Study of Racialism

BY J.D.B. DE BOW QUOTING J.C. NOTT, 1850:
[Front Cover:]
THE INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES, ETC., OF THE SOUTHERN AND WESTERN STATES: EMBRACING A VIEW OF THEIR COMMERCE, AGRICULTURE, MANUFACTURES, INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS, SLAVE AND FREE LABOR, SLAVERY INSTITUTIONS, PRODUCTS, ETC., OF THE SOUTH TOGETHER WITH HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL SKETCHES OF THE DIFFERENT STATES AND CITIES OF THE UNION --STATISTICS OF THE UNITED STATES COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURERS FROM THE EARLIERST PERIODS, COMPARED WITH OTHER LEADING POWERS --THE RESULTS OF THE DIFFERENT CENSUS RETURNS SINCE 1790, AND RETURNS OF THE CENSUS OF 1850, ON POPULATION, AGRICULTURE, AND GENERAL INSUSTRY, ETC.
WITH AN APPENDIX.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

BY J. D. B. DE BOW PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, ETC.,
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LOUISIANA. PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF DE BOWS'S REVIEW, MERCHANTS' EXCHANGE NEW ORLEANS; 79 JOHN STREET. NEW-YORK; AND EAST BAY AND BROAD STREETS, CHARLESTON . . . . 1852

INTERNET ACCESS LINKS: U. of Michigan O/L Library\ http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/tex ... 1.0002.001

[Omitted pages, approx. 307.]

{Page 308 -> NEGRO--NATURE AND DESTINY OF THE.-- We are indebted to our friend, Dr. J. C. Nott for a copy of his most interesting and instructive address, delivered before the Southern Rights' Association of that city, on the "Natural History of Man in connection with Negro Slavery:"

Here we are in the year 1850, the owners of three millions of negro slaves, and without any agency of ours; the mother country and the original colonies bequeathed them to us. When the constitution was formed, this instition was recognized, and slave states entered the confederacy as equals, with constitutional guarantees for their property, and would have formed the copartnership on no other terms. All experience proves that the negroes cannot be emancipated without bringing want, misery, and barbarism upon them. It is clear, too, that these negroes cannot be liberated without destroying the prosperity, happiness, and political power of the southern states; and yet we are scoffed at and insulted, as outside barbarians, for perpetuating this institution though no one has ever proposed a scheme by which these slaves can be emancipated with safety to the whites, and with benefit to them. Such conduct is unjust --is insulting, and not to be tolerated by men worthy of liberty.

Few persons realize the fact taught by history, that it is infinitely more difficult to destroy, or alter, great political or social institutions, than to create them. The time of deliverance for the negro slaves if a better destiny awaits them, has not yet come; nor will the Lord call forth a Moses from the ranks of the Sewards and George Thompsons. His chosen people were afflicted with much longer and more cruel bondage than have been our blacks, and had to abide the fulness of time.

Let us, on the other hand, take a glance at the history of African races. The population of that continent is estimated at a little short of one hundred millions, of which fifty-five millions are negro races; and yet, except in the Barbary States, Egypt, Abyssinia, Nubia, &c., which are populated by other races, not a monument, nor record, nor even a tradition exists, to mark the birth or death of civilization. This whole continent, south of the great Desert of Sahara, is a perfect blank in the world's history. The negro race were in close commercial intimacy with ancient Egypt and Carthage, in their palmiest days; they have continued their intercourse with Egypt and the Barbary States, down to the present day; they have had missionaries sent to them for centuries, and colonies established among them; in short, they have had every facility and every temptation held out which a people could ask, and still the first step towards civilization is not made. No negro race has ever yet invented an alphabet, however rude, or possessed the semblance of literature. What does all this mean? Can any rational being believe that any time or efforts can civilize a people embracing so many millions, and who have resisted all external impulses for more than two thousand years!

A capital error --which has been received without reflection or investigation, and which has misled many of the most enlightened and zealous philanthropists of the past and present --is the idea that cultivation, through a series of generations, can expand the defective brains, develop the intellectual faculties of the negro races, and thus raise them, by degrees, to the full standard of excellence which belongs to the Caucasian races; that they can, in a word, be fully civilized, and fitted for self-government, in its highest and most complicated forms; that a black king, lords and commons could wield the mighty machinery of the British Empire! A greater delusion never entered the mind of a sane man; and bow it ever got into vogue, with all history, all science, and all common sense against it, would be difficult to divine. Absurd religious opinions alone can explain.

Some of the aboriginal tribes of America, as the Toltecans, while isolated from all external aids, have achieved a semi-civilization. The Mongols, Hindoos, &c., under similar circumstances, have gone a step further; but the negroes, when left to themselves, have risen but little above the beasts of the field. No pure-blooded negro has ever risen above the grade of mediocrity in the whites. The notorious Toussaint Louverture, of Hayti, is the most remarkable negro in history; and though showing extraordinary powers for a negro, would have left no name as a white man, and was a brute in morals. He was unquestionably dark, but I have not been able to get any accurate information about his pedigree and precise race.

If, then, the negro races stand at the lowest point in the scale of human beings, and we know of no moral or physical agencies which can redeem them from their degradation, it is clear that they are incapable of self-government, and that any attempt to improve their condition is warring against an immutable law of nature.

This brings us to the great practical questions, What is to be the fate of the three millions of negro slaves now in our southern states? And what is to be our destiny, which is indissolubly linked with theirs? Here we have stood, with our arms folded, year after year, suffering aggression after aggression from the north, till the cordon is now drawn around us, and looking calmly at the growth of evils which ere long must inevitably end in bloodshed. There are appalling issues before us which must be met, and the results of which no human wisdom can foretell. The slaves double by natural increase every thirty years, and this ratio would give us fifty millions in little more than a century; a rapidity of in- {Page 309 -> NEGRO--NATURE AND DESTINY OF THE. crease which no scheme of philanthropy ever yet proposed by emancipationists could keep pace with. The northern abolitionists are acting under the influence of ignorance and fanaticism, and there may, therefore, be some palliation for their offenses; but for us at the south, who are familiar with the black races, and know how impracticable all proposed schemes of emancipation are, there can be no excuse for our supineness. We could not educate the millions of slaves amongst us, for they would be unfit for slavery, and dangerous to us, while they would still be unfit for liberty. And admitting that cultivation could improve their intelligence, a century would be but a beginning in the work of regeneration. Many centuries would elapse, admitting its possibility, before the work could be completed; and it is expecting too much of human nature, to suppose that one race will sacrifice itself during so many generations, for the sole benefit of another.

Well, suppose the slaves to be educated as far as practicable, and prepared for emancipation, what then could be done with them? The free states are passing laws every where to protect themselves against the influx of free negroes, and very soon the barrier around us will be complete. It is clear that the three millions of slaves now at the south could not be turned loose upon us. Would a single man in Alabama vote to turn loose the three hundred thousand negroes within her borders, upon any terms which could be proposed?

It is evident, then, that if the negroes in the slave states are permitted to exist at all on this continent, it can be no where but in slave states and no where but in slavery, with all their fearful increase. Can any one deny this assertion? The number which would escape to free states would be too small to affect materially the result; and the time is fast approaching when all free states will pass prohibitory laws against this population; for they know, as well as we do, that a large free negro population --which is an indolent, improvident, vicious, non-producing class --could not be tolerated. It is, therefore, evident, that we should have to provide for the evil at home, however incurable, or look to Liberia as a safety-valve.

It has been seriously suggested by some, and by Sir Charles Lyell amongst others, that the negroes should be gradually educated and emancipated at home, and allowed to amalgamate with the whites, and thus be absorbed, and become a part of our flesh and bone, and a part of our civilization. This proposition is not only insulting and revolting to us, but is overruled by other objections. There is no doubt that the intellectual grade of the negro races may be greatly improved by crossing them with the whites; but it must not be forgotten, on the other hand, that the white races would be dragged down by the adulteration, and their civilization destroyed. We see now how difficult it is for the purest races of the earth to maintain any thing like rational governments; and what would become of our institutions in the hands of mulattoes? A great aim of philanthropy should be, to keep the ruling races of the world as pure and as wise as possible, for it is only through them that the others can be made prosperous and happy. Look at Hayti, where the mulatto caste governed feebly for a time. Their movement was constantly retrograde, until, finally dragged down by the pure blacks, they were exterminated or driven away. That beautiful island is now plunged into a perfectly savage state; and I am credibly informed, by an eye witness, that he, on two occasions, saw the negroes roasting and eating Dominican prisoners on the roadside!

It being certain, then, (accumulating with the rapidity we have stated,) that the slaves of the southern states must have an outlet, at no very distant day, in some direction, let us revert to the proposed colonization in Africa This is a scheme which has occupied the serious attention, and met with the full approval, of all the leading men of the north, and not a few of those at the south; and though fully convinced of its impracticability, I shall be glad to see the experiment now making with the free negroes fairly carried out, as I am convinced it will serve to prove the correctness of the views I have advanced.

It is utterly inconceivable to my mind how so many men of intelligence could be led to favor a scheme so impracticable, with the history of the two races open before them. There Africa stands with her fifty millions of blacks, and there she has stood for the last five thousand years, with this people occupying the same countries, without one step towards civilization; and all the experiments in the United States, the West Indies, &c., have failed. The boon has been presented to them in every possible shape, and they have never been able to grasp it. Is not the delusion the more extraordinary, when we see sensible men in this country and Europe fostering, with confident hopes, the republic of Liberia --while they laugh at the absurdity of the French nation, one of the most intellectual in the world, in attempting to make a republican, or any other rational form of government?

It is far from my feelings or design to misrepresent the facts connected with this scheme of colonization, for it has been approved by many of the wisest and best men of our country; but still I fear we have been grossly deceived, not only by bad, but by well-meaning men, at home, as well as in Africa. Letters and statements are published from Liberia; speeches are made before the Colonization Society in Washington, and published in the National Intelligencer, giving the most poetic {Page 310 -> NEGRO SLAVERY--NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN. accounts of the intelligence, morality and refinement of the black colonists, and the rapid progress of civilization in Liberia. I have good reason to believe that these statements are utterly untrue, and a moment's reflection would bring any thinking man to the same conclusion. Can any one believe that such a change would come over four or five thousand ignorant, stupid, and, for the most part, vicious free negroes, in a few years? "The first settlement was made by free negroes from the United States, under the auspices of the American Colonization Society, in the year 1820," and this class there is the same as we see it around us here, every day; and we know full well the nature of the material on which these mighty changes are to be wrought. Some of them have made their way back to the United States in disgust, and contradict the statements given. A lamented friend who died in Mobile a few years ago, (Dr. Mechlin,) and who lived in Liberia five years --a part of which time he was governor of that colony --told me that he regarded the experiment as a failure, and that he saw no hope of ever rendering the negro race fit for self-government; and no one who knew this gentleman ever doubted his honesty or intelligence.

The colony, so far, has only been held together by the fostering care of the Colonization Society, and support of foreign governments. It is governed too directly by the white agents of the society, and by the white blood coursing through the veins of the mulatto leaders amongst the colonists. President Roberts, who was once a blacksmith in Petersburg, Virginia, I am informed by those who knew him well, is three-fourths white blood with florid complexion, red hair, and disagreeable expression of countenance. He is represented as "a keen, shrewd, designing fellow who is turning matters in Liberia to his own account." Most of the other leading men are also mulattoes. The colonists have had many difficulties to contend with, but if the history of races teaches any thing, the delusion will probably not last much longer.

Slavery is already virtually abolished in the District of Columbia. In consequence of the incessant agitation in Congress, and the growth of the abolition party, this species of property has become insecure; and the slaveowners, from prudential motives, have been ridding themselves of their slaves, who are now reduced to but a handful. Even in Baltimore, by the census of 1840, out of twenty thousand negroes, there were but three thousand slaves, and this drain is going on in all the frontier slave states, while the slaves are emptied into the gulf states. Few realize the rapidity with which this process is going on. In Alabama, there were in 1820 but forty-one thousand slaves; in 1830, they had increased to one hundred and seventeen thousand; in 1840, the number had reached two hundred and fifty-three thousand! and it remains to see what the census of 1850 will show. How long will it be before Alabama must pass and enforce laws against the further introduction of slaves! The slaves double in thirty years, by natural increase, and, with the immigration, our children will see around them in this short period at least one million. All the cotton and sugar states will be in the same crowded condition, and each will be passing laws for its own protection. Kentucky is already agitating the question of abolition within her own borders, and it requires no prophet's eye to see that emancipation is inevitable in all the farming states where white labor can be advantageously used. These reflections afford ample field for sober consideration. What disposition God, in his providence, will eventually make of these blacks, cannot be foretold; but it is our duty to provide for our own happiness and theirs, as long as we can. In dealing with this question, it will not do to be guided by abstract notions of liberty and slavery. We can only judge the future by the past; and as experience proves that the negro is better off in slavery at the south than in freedom elsewhere, it is the part of philanthropy to keep him here, as we keep our children in subjection for their own good.

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[Omitted pages.]

It has been asserted by writers that when the grade of Quinteroom is arrived at, all trace of black blood is lost and they cannot be distinguished from the whites. Now if this be true, most of the mulattoes must cease to be prolific, before this point of mixture is arrived at -- for though I have passed most of my life in places where the two races have been mingling for 8 or 9 generations, I have rarely ever met an individual tainted with negro blood, in whom I could not detect it without difficulty -- these higher grades should be extremely common, if the chain was not broken by death and sterility -- how else can that be accounted for?