REMARKS.

“Do these things mean nothing? What the tender and poetic youth dreams to-day and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is to-morrow the vociferated result of public opinion, and the day after is the charter of nations.”—Phillips.

THE stars of the tropics are the guiding stars of the age. The sympathy of the world is with the South, and the tendencies of things are southward. The controlling influence of the great commercial staple of our Southern States, the growing demand for the productions of the tropics, the discovery of gold toward the torrid zone, and a consequent want of labor in that direction, indicate firmly the force of these assertions. Other causes, apparently indirect or yet apparently opposed, such as the disappearance of slavery from Maine to Maryland, and the rapidity with which the slavesare hurried further south, might be cited on the one hand; and on the other the filibustering propensities of Southern fire-eaters as the unerring and immutable laws of destiny, guided by an all-wise and overruling Providence. “The coral zoöphite does not know that while it builds itself a house it also creates an island for the world;” and the master, as he pays the passage of his slave from the more Northern slave States to New Mexico, is but the rude agent of a superior power, urging him to more inviting fields for enterprise, and for his higher and more responsible duties as a freeman.

Reforms do not go backwards, nor filibustering northwards, and “nothing is more certain than that the slaves are to be free;” but the problem as to what position they are to sustain as freemen is but little thought of, and, of course, less understood. It is true some suggestions have been offered on this subject, foremost among which stands that of Mr. Helper, as the most absurd and ridiculous. It did not occur to Mr. Helper, when he suggested the broad idea of chartering all the vessels lying around loose for the huddling together of the blacks after emancipation and shipping them off to Africa,—it did not occur to him that they were men, and might not wish to go; at least it did not occur tohim that they weremen. So I make the suggestion for his benefit, and for the benefit of those who may come after him, this being a question not to be settled by arbitrary means, but by means which shall meet the approbation of all parties concerned, nor yet forgetting that at the head of these parties stands Him whose name is not to be mentioned without reverence.

Whence comes the colored people’s instinctive horror of colonization in Africa? Colonizationists say they can not account for it, since Africa is their fatherland. But if this were any argument, I could account for it by the simple affirmation that it is not their fatherland. The truth is, “Time has shown that the causes which have produced races never to improve Africa, but to abandon it, and give their vigor and derive their strength from other climes, is not to be reversed by the best efforts of the best men.” Besides this, charity begins at home. Allowing that the colonizationists, by sending a few handfuls of colored men to Africa, may plant the germ of civilization there, that the seed may spread or the fire may flame until the whole continent becomes illuminated with Christian love, and her sons stand forth regenerated and redeemed from the dark superstition that enthralled them. Then what?It is a great deal, and a great deal more than we can hope for, and a hero is he who will sacrifice his life in making the attempt to bring about such a magnificent result; but in doing this very little will be accomplished for the millions who remain, increasing, on this continent.

Nevertheless, there is a growing disposition among colored men of thought to abandon that policy which teaches them to cling to the skirts of the white people for support, and to emigrate to Africa, Hayti, or wherever else they may expect to better their condition; and it is encouraging to know that the time is at hand when men can speak their convictions on this subject without being made the victims of illiterate abuse and indiscriminate denunciation, all of which is the natural result of more general information, and which will lead to the discovery at last of what is to be the final purpose of American slavery—the destiny of the colored race after slavery shall be abolished.

The history of Hayti and Jamaica, and of the American tropics generally, indicates the propagation of the colored race, exclusive of whites or blacks. (This is simply calling things by their right names, for which the compiler of these facts expects to be made the most popular writer of theage, of being highly flattered, infinitely abused, feared, hated, and all that attends the discovery of truth generally.) Throughout the West Indies, with the single exception of Cuba, the whites have been unable to keep up their numbers, and in that instance only by a recent flood of immigration on a large scale from Europe. The colored race, on the contrary, is perfectly well adapted to this region, and luxuriates in it; and it is only through their agency that some small portion of the torrid zone has been brought within the circle of civilized industry. I have said their history would prove this.

When discovered by the Spaniards these islands were inhabited by a colored people not unlike our Indians. Their homes were invaded; they were reduced to a state of miserable vassalage, and the proud Caucasian stalked about, the conquerer of every spot of earth his avarice or cupidity desired. The natives, unable to endure the persecutions to which they were subjected, withered and fell like the autumn leaves, and Africa became the hunting-ground of the slave pirate for hardier and more enduring slaves.

Africa became their hunting-ground, and quiet villagers were startled in the dead of night to behold their huts in flames, and to hear the shrieks oftheir fellow-men and fellow-women, who were being torn away from their native homes as victims for the slave-ship, there to suffer all the tortures of the yoke and the branding-iron, and finally to be landed, if at all, on the American coast, with no other prospect than that of a life-bondage spread out before them. This state of wickedness continued, so far as England was concerned, until its glaring outrages challenged the attention of the British realm, and until the Parliament of England passed an act declaring all British subjects should be free;—“An act of legislation which, for justice and magnanimity, stands unrivalled in the annals of the world, and which will be the glory of England and the admiration of posterity when her proudest military and naval achievements shall have faded from the recollection of mankind;” an act of legislation which restored the liberties of eight hundred thousand of our fellow-men,and left them in possession of superior claims and circumstances to those from which they had been originally removed, (because, undoubtedly, the chances of any free man are better upon this continent than in Africa.)

Then came a series of American slanders: “Jamaica was ruined;” “the negro unfit for freedom;” and the downfall of prosperity and the loss of trade were everywhere said to be inevitable.

But the negro and his descendants are proof against slander and against the New York Herald, which terms are soon to be synonymous. Jamaica was not ruined: but, while these complaints were raised against her population, 40,000 land patents, varying from ten to one hundred acres each, were being taken up in a single year! Lands having been provided and schools introduced, happiness began to smile, prosperity reäppeared, and the whole country was redeemed from what had been a field of terror to what promises to become the very garden of the Western world.

This is said to be an axiom of political philosophy upon which it is safe to rely:For any people to maintain their rights, they must constitute an essential part of the ruling element of the country in which they live.The whites of the tropics are but few in number. They have heretofore sustained themselves by their superior wealth and intelligence. But, as fast as the colored people rise in this respect, their white rulers are pushed aside to make way for officers of their own race. This is perfectly natural. When a colony of Norwegians come over from Norway and settle a county in Wisconsin, do they elect a yankee to represent them? Norwegians elect Norwegians, Germans elect Germans,and colored men elect colored men, whenever they have the opportunity.

Even now a large majority of the subordinate officers of Jamaica, I understand, are colored men. The Parliament is about equally divided, and the Attorney-General and Emigration Agent-General are colored men; and it is fair to assume, within a few years of the date of this paper, there will not be a single white man throughout the West Indies occupying a position within the gift of the people.

A retired merchant of Philadelphia, a man of large thought and liberal views, having an experience of fifteen or twenty years’ residence in Hayti, in reply to certain letters asking for information and advice respecting the subject now under consideration, published a pamphlet in which he says: “There is a long view as well as a short view to be taken of every great question which bears upon human progress; but we are often unable or unwilling to take the former, until some time after a question is settled.

“‘Manifest destiny’ has been, for some years, a familiar and accepted phrase in the mouths of our politicians, and each class suggests a plan for carrying it out in accordance with its own specific interests, or some preconceived theory. The pro-slaveryadventurer may yet gain a footing in Central America, but it will not be to establish slavery. Slavery once abolished, has never been reëstablished in the same place, in America, except in one instance—that of the smaller French colonies, now again free. The vain effort to reënslave St. Domingo cost the French forty thousand men. The free negro, that nothing else can arouse, will fight against the replacement of the yoke which he has once thrown off; and the number of these in Central America is sufficient to prove a stumbling-block if not a barrier to its return. To reëstablish slavery permanently, where it has once been abolished, is to swim against the great moral current of the age.

“We can acknowledge to-day that the persecution of the Puritans by Laud and his predecessors, only intended, as it was, to produce conformity to the Church, really produced New England. And we can now see that the obstinacy of George the Third was as much a cause of the Declaration of Independence, at the time it was made, as the perseverance of John Adams,—the one being the necessary counterpart of the other, the two together forming the entire implement which clipped the tie. Now if we can make the above admissions in respectto these, the two greatest settled questions of modern times, without excusing either persecution or obstinacy in wrong, but keeping steadily in view that every man is responsible for the motives which govern his conduct, be the result of that conduct what it may, why should we not begin to look at this, the third great question of the same class, stillunsettled, from the same point of view?

“If, then, I were asked what was probably the final purpose of negro slavery, I should answer—To furnish the basis of a free population for the tropics of America.

“I believe that the Anglo-Americans, with the Africans, whom a part of the former now hold in bondage, will one day unite to form this race for the tropics, with or without combination with the races already there. But whether the African quota of it shall be transferred thither by convulsive or organized movements—or be gradually thinned out from their present abode, as from a great nursery, by directed but spontaneous transition—or retire, by degrees, with the ‘poor whites,’ before the peaceful encroachments of robust Northern labor, it would be useless now to conjecture. It is enough now to know that labor, like capital, goes in the end to the place where it is most wanted; and thatlabor, free from the destructive element of caste, has been, and still is, the great desideratum of the tropics, as it is of all other places which do not already possess it. I have already spoken of the presumed ability of the Southern States to spare this kind of labor. Should there, however, prove to be any part of the Union where the climate or the culture really requires the labor of the black man, then there he will remain, and eventually be absorbed by the dominant race; and from that point the complexion of our population will begin to shade off into that of the dark belt of Anglo-Africans, which will then extend across the northern tropics.

“I know that most of our Northern people, while they demand, in the strongest terms, all the rights of man for the negro or mulatto, are unable to eradicate from their minds a deeply-grounded prejudice against his person. In spite of themselves, they shrink from the thought of an amalgamation such as the foregoing observations imply. But these friends are not aware how quickly this prejudice begins to melt away as soon as one has entered any part of the tropics where the African race is in the ascendant, or where people of colored blood have attained to such social consideration asto make themselves respected. I suppose no Northern man ever forgets the occasion when, for the first time, he arrives at such a place, and the colored merchant to whom he is addressed comes forward, with the self-possession which attends self-respect, and offers him his hand. He begins to be healed of his prejudice from that hour.”

I am also aware that the notion prevails generally in the United States that the mulatto has no vitality of race; that after three or four generations he dies out. This idea, I believe, finds its strongest advocates among the slaveholders and the readers of De Bow’s “Review,” and possibly it may be correct when applied to the colder latitudes; but I have no reason to think it is so in or near the tropics. Moreau de St. Mery, in his minute “Description of the French part of St. Domingo,” says, with respect to the vitality of the mulatto, which term includes all persons of color, however slight, of mixed European and African descent: “Of all the combinations of white and black, the mulatto unites the most physical advantages. It is he who derives the strongest constitution from these crossings of race, and who is the best suited to the climate of St. Domingo. To the strength and soberness of the negro he adds the grace of form and intelligenceof the whites, and of all the human beings of St. Domingo he is the longest lived.... I have already said they are well made and very intelligent; but they are as much given to idleness and love of repose as the negro.”

Hermann Burmeister, Professor of Zoölogy in the University of Halle, who spent fourteen months, in 1850-51, in studying at Brazil the “Comparative Anatomy and Physiology of the American Negro,” speaks thus of the Brazilian mulatto: “The greatest number of the colored inhabitants of Brazil are of the negro and European races, called mulattoes. It may be asserted that the inferior classes of the free population are composed of such. If ever there should be a republic, such as exists in the United States of America, as it is the aim of a numerous party in Brazil to establish, the whole class of artisans would doubtless consist of a colored population. * * * Already in every village and town the mulattoes are in the ascendant, and the traveller comes in contact with more of them than of whites.” There is nothing in these extracts, or in the essay from which they are taken, to indicate that the Brazilian mulatto is dying out. These are the observations of a patient investigator and man of science, and they have the more value, inasmuchas they were not set down to support any particular theory. The Professor speaks elsewhere in high but qualified terms of the moral and intellectual qualities of the mulatto, coming to conclusions similar to those of Moreau de St. Mery, except that he does not accuse them of indolence.

The author of “Remarks on Hayti and the Mulatto,” whose experience as a merchant I have mentioned, further says:

“This race, if on the white side it derives its blood from either the English or French stock, possesses within itself a combination of all the mental and physical qualities necessary to form a civilized and progressive population for the tropics,and it is the only race yet found of which this can be said.”

“I have no desire to undervalue the blacks of Hayti. I have found many shrewd, worthy, and intelligent men among them; and the country, it is well known, has produced several black men of a high order of talent; but these have been exceptional cases, like the King Philips, Hendricks, Tecumsehs, and Red Jackets, of our North American Indians. As a race, they do not get on.The same may be said of every other original race.The blacks form no exception to the well-known law, that culture and advancement in man are the result of a combination of races.”

I have no desire to retain, by the republishing of the above extracts, the appellation of “Defender of the Mulattoes;” but have inserted them here, that they may not be misunderstood. All I have to say is, that I believe it would be actually more proper, numerically speaking, to call at least the free persons of African descent in America,coloredor mulattoes, rather than negroes. Yet, how often do we hear respectable men of all parties, talk of “Negro nationalities,” and regarding the two races as “two negative poles mutually repelling each other,” leaving no middle ground for the great mass of the colored people or mulattoes, whom, as some say, “God did not make.” Instead of such impiety, and in place of sending one-half of the colored people to establish black nationalities in Africa, leaving the other half to be absorbed by the whites, I think it is much more liberal to regard them as one people, the political destiny of whom is unknown, or at best but begun to be discerned. To divide the colored people at this late day by any such process, would seem to melike splitting a child in twain, in order to give one half to its mother and the other to its father.I go for a colored nationality, that shall divide thecontinent with the whites, and the two empires being known respectively as Anglo-American and Anglo-African.

In conclusion, I desire to return my thanks for the complimentary manner in which the preceding communications have been received; and I would fain hope they might be as favorably regarded now that they are presented in this present form.

How proudly will the colored race honor that day, when, abandoning a policy which teaches them to cling to the skirts of the white people for support, they shall set themselves zealously at work to create a position of their own—an empire which shall challenge the admiration of the world, rivalling the glory of their historic ancestors, whose undying fame was chronicled by the everlasting pyramids at the dawn of civilization upon mankind.

“Hope of the world!the rising raceMay heaven with fostering love embrace;And, turning to a whiter page,Commence with thema better age;An age of light and joy, which we,Alas! in prospect only see.”

“My proposition is simply to provide for the peaceful emigration of all those free colored persons of African descent who may desire so to emigrate to some place in Central or South America.... I believe the time has ripened for the execution of the plan originated by Jefferson in his day, agreed in by Madison and Monroe and all the earlier and better statesmen of the Republic, both North and South.”—Speech of Senator Doolittle.

“Instead, therefore, of being an expense to the nation, the foundation of such a colony would be the grandest commercial enterprise of the age....

“Are the young merchants of Boston and of America indifferent to an enterprise which would give to our commerce, without a rival, such an empire as that to which I have pointed?—an empire not to be won by cruelty and conquest, but by peaceful and benignant means, and by imparting to others the inestimable blessings of liberty which we enjoy, and removing from our midst the only cause which threatens the prosperity and stability of the Union....”—Speech of Hon. F. P. Blair, Boston.

“It is my intention to use every effort to give practical effect to the propositions submitted to Congress, and I believe that the colored people themselves can give very efficient aid in the matter. If they will only let it be known that they approve, and are themselves willing to act upon the proposition, it will give it a great impulse.”—Hon. F. P. Blair—Letter to J. D. Harris.

“The only mode in which we can relieve our country, relieve the blacks and whites, and provide separate homes forthem, is by some schemewhich will meet the approbation of both—one which the parties themselves will execute.”—Hon. Preston King.

“Among all feasible things, there is nothing that in my judgment would so much promote a peaceful abolition of slavery as your son’s plan.”—Hon. Gerrit Smith to F. P. Blair, Sen.

“The feeling of the free blacks in relation to African colonization is no criterion by which to judge of the success of American intertropical emigration.... I am confident that with proper inducements to be held out before them in regard to security of liberty and property, and prospects for well-doing, I could muster two hundred emigrant families or about one thousand colored persons annually for the next five years, of the very best class for colonial settlement and industry, from various parts of the United States and Canada, who would gladly embark for homes in our American tropics.”—Rev. J. T. Holly.

To the above might be added the views and opinions of many of the most eminent men in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Maryland, and other States, among them the Hon. Mr. Bates, and Sam’l T. Glover, Esq., of St. Louis. But none seem more appropriate to close this volume than the following from the Rev. Dr. Duffield, of Detroit.

Detroit, Feb. 18, 1860.Dear Bro. Kendall:—Allow me to commend to your attention the object in which Mr. Harris has embarked. I think very favorably of it on various grounds, but regard it as especially indicative of God’s providential designs in relation to the introduction of the gospel into that portion of our American continent whichhas attracted our attention, and which led yourself with me to memorialize the General Assembly on the subject of commencing a system of missions in Mexico, Central and Southern America. I had intended writing to you on the subject with a view to the prosecution of the matter of our memorial next spring, when the Assembly meets at Pittsburg. I know not, nor can I learn, what has been done in pursuance of the action of the last General Assembly. The whole matter as reported I failed to understand, and have since had no light shed upon the subject. May not this movement prove an occasion, if not of connection to the mission, of bespeaking a deeper interest in behalf of our benighted populations of Central and Southern America than has yet been felt by and in our country....Truly Yours,Geo. Duffield.Rev. Dr. Kendall, of Pittsburg, Pa.

Detroit, Feb. 18, 1860.

Dear Bro. Kendall:—

Allow me to commend to your attention the object in which Mr. Harris has embarked. I think very favorably of it on various grounds, but regard it as especially indicative of God’s providential designs in relation to the introduction of the gospel into that portion of our American continent whichhas attracted our attention, and which led yourself with me to memorialize the General Assembly on the subject of commencing a system of missions in Mexico, Central and Southern America. I had intended writing to you on the subject with a view to the prosecution of the matter of our memorial next spring, when the Assembly meets at Pittsburg. I know not, nor can I learn, what has been done in pursuance of the action of the last General Assembly. The whole matter as reported I failed to understand, and have since had no light shed upon the subject. May not this movement prove an occasion, if not of connection to the mission, of bespeaking a deeper interest in behalf of our benighted populations of Central and Southern America than has yet been felt by and in our country....

Truly Yours,

Geo. Duffield.

Rev. Dr. Kendall, of Pittsburg, Pa.

FOOTNOTES:[A]SeeAppendix.[B]When the island was discovered by Columbus, it received from him the name of Hispaniola—“Little Spain.” It was afterwards called Santo Domingo; but the original name given it by the natives, and revived by Dessalines, is said to be Hayti. The Haytien territory, however, is but about two-fifths of the island, the greater part being owned by the Dominicans.[C]Within fifteen days a disaffection has been discovered near the Haytien frontiers, supposed to be the work of Solouque. Solouque is an imitator of Napoleon I. Napoleon went to Elba—Solouque to the island of Jamaica.[D]Published by A. P. Norton, New York.[E]For a beautiful description of this affecting scene, see Whittier’s “Toussaint L’Ouverture.”[F]Rainsford.[G]Rainsford.[H]Anthony Trollope’s West Indies and Spanish Main. Harper and Brothers.

FOOTNOTES:

[A]SeeAppendix.

[B]When the island was discovered by Columbus, it received from him the name of Hispaniola—“Little Spain.” It was afterwards called Santo Domingo; but the original name given it by the natives, and revived by Dessalines, is said to be Hayti. The Haytien territory, however, is but about two-fifths of the island, the greater part being owned by the Dominicans.

[C]Within fifteen days a disaffection has been discovered near the Haytien frontiers, supposed to be the work of Solouque. Solouque is an imitator of Napoleon I. Napoleon went to Elba—Solouque to the island of Jamaica.

[D]Published by A. P. Norton, New York.

[E]For a beautiful description of this affecting scene, see Whittier’s “Toussaint L’Ouverture.”

[F]Rainsford.

[G]Rainsford.

[H]Anthony Trollope’s West Indies and Spanish Main. Harper and Brothers.

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