The problem of civilization is left mostly to the free will of men, and God blasts and crumbles into dust only those nations who have abused the gifts and privileges of nature, and who, when arriving at the height of prosperity and power, have disregarded and despised those principles of morality and religion which form the true base of all society. How all the noble aspirations may be crushed and the instincts perverted; how from a species of voluntary insanity, by our own fierce passions, and by a strangedesire of mutual destruction, men rush on to contest and to ruin, is well illustrated by the past of the slave faction.
XII.
It is evident that the black man has not deteriorated during his sojourn in these countries; on the contrary, he has improved in physique: the repulsive Congo type has changed, and the Circassian features appear. It is the result of the law of contact and example; it is the effect of civilization.
Has the white man gained in similar ratio? Go to the cotton fields and rice lands, and learn a lesson from the instructive contrast of the gaunt and apathetic white laborer, with the sturdy, well-developed, lively black. You will then observe that these vast alluvial lands, which rank in richness and fertility with the best on the globe, must be consigned to waste by reason of insalubrity, if not cultivated by races of men who are congenial to the soil and climate. There is no white race who can cultivate these lands, and enjoy life and establish society with any duration. Malaria would forbid, if other conditions were favorable.
The littoral lands of the lower tier of Slave States, which are composed of post tertiary and alluvial soils, tertiary sands and secondary chalk marls, can be tilled in safety and with economy and with gain only by the black man. Below the upper terraces and the slopes of the mountain ranges of the northern limits of these States, where we find the primary and metamorphic rocks and their debris, the white laborer cannot descend withoutcontending with the full force of his nature, with disease, degeneration, and premature death.
There are now in the States of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana thirty millions of acres of arable land yet belonging to the United States, unsold and unoccupied. In all England there are but seven million acres of uncultivated land.
XIII.
Malaria, that curse of the Circassian race, which is the chief source of the inefficiency and mortality of their efforts of colonizations in semi-tropical climes, exerts but little influence upon the negroes, and hence they are admirably qualified for the occupation of pestilential soils.
It appears from the statistics of the English that remittent and intermittent fevers, which prove the great source of inefficiency and mortality among the white troops in tropical climes, exert comparatively but little influence upon the blacks.
The writer has observed the fatal effects of the pernicious fevers upon the white inhabitants of the low coasts of Georgia and South Carolina, and has seen men perish in a single night from the deadly action of the miasms, whilst the negroes were unaffected.
During the English expedition up the Nile nearly all the whites were prostrated by fevers, and none of the native blacks were affected. After the French landed at Vera Cruz the yellow fever found great numbers of victims among the Europeans; but according to the report of the inspector-general, Regnaud, not one of the 600negro soldiers and sailors from the West Indies, though hard at work there, were attacked, or rather not one of them died. There are hundreds of similar examples to illustrate the theory.
We cannot escape the mephitism of the soil. So long as we respire the air, so long shall we receive into the system the deleterious vapors by the respiratory apparatus, which is the most perfect of the absorbing agents: the time of effect is determined only by the health, the strength, and vigor of our forces. The destroying elements may take effect at once, or they may be resisted for a long, though definite period of time. Malaria alone has a wide range among the causes of human misery, and it is believed to cause more than half of the mortality of the human families on the globe.
Its deadly action, in depopulating cities and provinces, is well attested in history, and its effect upon the intellectual expansion is still more marked; sadness, languor, paludal cachexia, scrofulous, deformed, and short-lived offspring, are among its train of evils. In the Roman states alone, sixty thousand perish every year from this paludal influence. These deltas of the Southern States are among the greater miasmatic foyers of the world, and are as deadly in their miasms as the Campagna of Italy or the Sunderbunds of Hindostan.
XIV.
There are many reasons to induce the belief, that if properly directed, the blacks may attain distinction in social life and progress, and a higher degree of perfectionin physical development. The skeleton of the negro is firmer and heavier, the bones being larger and thicker than that of any other race; but physiologists observe that the muscular development does not correspond to the strong dimensions of the frame. This deficiency of nature may be explained by the want of proper nutrition, or to physical causes within human control, for all proportions in nature are harmonious. Two of the most admirable boxers that have appeared in the British arena were blacks, and the dark, swarthy hue of the famous wrestler, Marseilles, reminds how common is the tinge of African blood in South France, Spain, and Italy.
While statistics appear to exhibit the physical superiority of the blacks in the low countries, they also prove how prone to pulmonary disease are they when migrating to the uplands, or higher latitudes, and how fearful the mortality. Thus Nature, it seems, offers serious barriers to their progress, and boundaries within which they must confine themselves or perish.
XV.
It has been urged that the intermingling of the freed blacks with the whites in these States will produce a variety of people more vicious, and less willing to be controlled by the social laws, than either pure race.
Of this there is but little danger, as ethnology will show. There will not be, under any ordinary circumstances, any intermingling of the two races, for the law of ethnic repugnance is too great. The strong ethnic antipathies will keep them apart. The possibility of theintermixture of families and races so widely remote is as rigidly limited as the law of chemical proportions, and the absorption of the minor quantity is inevitable. Give both races the same field for expansion in these States, and the white race will soon find itself in the minority, both of numbers and in physical strength; for, according to natural laws, the stronger blood always absorbs the weaker when there is unobstructed action, and especially when climate favors vastly one of the contending types.
There are to-day four or five times as many centenarians among the blacks as there are among the whites of the cotton regions.
In consideration of this subject of miscegenation, let us review the phenomena that have been brought to light by the naturalists who have studied hybridity among animals, and recall a few facts from history to support the experimentalists.
XVI.
In the animal world, in the wild state, hybrids are rarely if ever produced, and it is only from the experiments of the naturalists that the law of hybridity has been explained.
We see the bipartites appear, when two kindred species mix together under the influence of man, these animals partaking of the qualities of both. The horse and the ass; the ass, zebra, and hermione; the wolf and the dog; the dog and the jackal; the goat and the ram; the deer and the axis, &c., unite and breed; but these artificial species are not durable, and they have only limited fecundity. “The mongrels of the dog and the wolf aresterile from the third generation. The mongrels of the jackal and the dog are so from the fourth. Moreover, if we unite these mongrels to one of the two primitive species, they soon revert completely and totally to that species.
“The mongrel of the dog and jackal contains more of the jackal than the dog. It has the straight ears, the pendent tail; it does not bark; it is wild. It is more jackal than dog. This is the first product of the crossed union of the dog with the jackal. I continue to unite the successive produce, from generation to generation, with one of the two primitive roots,—with that of the dog, for example.
“The mongrel of the second generation does not bark yet, but it has the ears pendent at the tip: it is less wild.
“The mongrel of the third generation barks: it has pendent ears, raised tail: it is no longer wild. The mongrel of the fourth generation is entirely dog. Four generations, then, have sufficed to restore one of the two primitive types—the dog type; and four generations suffice also to restore the other type—the jackal type. Thus, when the mongrels produced from the union of two distinct species unite together, either become soon sterile, or they unite with one of the two primitive stocks, and they soon revert to this stock; in no case do they yield what may be called a new species, that is, an intermediate, durable species.
“Whether, then, we consider the external causes,—the succession of time, years, ages, revolutions of the globe, or internal causes,—that is to say, the crossing of the species, the species do not alter, do not change, nor pass from oneto the other; the species is fixed.” Such are the conclusions of the admirable efforts of Flourens.
“The imprint of each species,” says Buffon, “is a type, the principal features of which are engraved in characters ineffaceable, and permanent forever; but all the accessory touches vary; no individual perfectly resembles another.”
XVII.
Among the human families, the law of hybridity, which has been pointed out so clearly by Flourens, has also its fixed and inflexible rules; these rules have not been so well studied with men as with animals, but it is believed to have its limit at the seventh generation. At all events, the experiments of human hybridism, and acclimation in strange latitudes, have always in time ended in disaster; and that such will always be the fate of the attempted union of different races in unfavorable climes, have been the views of Humboldt, of Canning, of Guizot, and other profound statesmen. We observe among the races in savage life a natural repugnance to unite: as for instance, the negroes and the fairer people of the Philippine and Polynesian Isles show no disposition to unite; and though living side by side, in the same country, for a long period, they have not produced an intermediate race. Neither do the Eskimos nor the Red Men, neither do the Caffres nor the Hottentots mix, for in the state of nature the law of ethnic repugnance is supreme. It is only in the artificial and depraved states of society that hybrids appear, and their existence is of short and fixed duration.
The apparent duration and perfection of the Coulouglis,the bipartates of the Bergers and Turks, may be an exception to the general rule. But the results of the mingling of human families, widely separated, is generally very decided.
The Creoles, produced by the African with the Spaniard, Italian, and the Southern French, possess considerable durability, but disease and degeneration soon appear when the black mingles with the blood and humors of the more northern nations. With all these mixtures there is a profound characteristic, which constitutes the unity, identity, and reality of the species, which is, continuous fecundity; and this characteristic never varies: it is immutable. The mulattoes live less time than the black or the white race, and their offspring perish readily, and are rarely prolific, except when united with stronger individuals of either primitive type, to which they soon return.
XVIII.
The blacks have been too degraded to more than conceive of liberty, too debased to think of resistance to the forces that crushed them, and they have neither observed, nor sought for opportunities, to throw off their chains and sweep over the lands, like a destroying element, with the accumulated wrongs of centuries. Yet there were black men among them who were capable of high cultivation. The long contact with the superior white race had recast the faculties of their mind, and had altered perceptibly the rugged contour of their forms and features.
The writer observed with wonder in the regiment of black men which formed part of the column of thedesperate assault upon Fort Wagner, beautiful heads, whose classic and regular outlines recalled the finest of the antique.
We believe with the writer in the “Revue des Deux Mondes,” that contact with the white races has given the negro the lines of the Caucasian form, and that the Congo type can disappear or become greatly modified.
These changes in the typical form, which we have since observed elsewhere, appear to have taken place sometimes without the admixture of the blood of the whites.
That the black men in the United States army fought well, no one will deny; that they conducted themselves admirably in the murderous assaults at Fort Wagner, or under the destroying fire at Olustee, and in many other conflicts, every one possessed of any candor will admit. When we consider the degradation whence they suddenly rose, and the steadiness and firmness, and the manly bearing they exhibited after the few lessons of military training, we are compelled to render thanks to them for their efforts in the struggle for national existence, and to admit the probability of their attaining that degree of intelligence, wisdom, and virtue which distinguish the true citizen. That these men will attain the standard of intellect of the Caucasian, we neither expect nor believe; but we do maintain, that in the nature of every race, however debased by prejudice, and the avarice of superior society, there exists the element of honesty, virtue, truth, and a horror of wrong, which may be developed and turned to the good of all society, in repelling and resisting the force of machination, the intrigue which arises fromdisappointed ambition, or the insatiable lust of more favored and less considerate classes.
No one acquainted with the history of the commerce of human beings will wonder at the present condition of the blacks, or that they have not risen in the scale of social and intellectual advancement. For, looking back to the primitive ages we may see how the human species have been depressed in servitude, and how the very same families, who carried the arts and sciences to celestial limits, were affected by this influence. Persons of the same blood and inheritance as the best families of Greece and Rome, were often reduced to slavery, and they sank rapidly under its debasing effects. They were tamed like the black man of the South; “like brutes, by the stings of hunger and the lash; and their education was so conducted as to render them commodious instruments of labor for their possessors. This degradation of course depressed their minds, restricted the expansion of their faculties, stifled almost every effort of genius, and exhibited them to the world as beings endued with inferior capacities to the rest of mankind. But for this opinion there appears to have been no foundation in truth or justice. Equal to their fellow-men in natural talents, and alike capable of improvement, any apparent or real difference between them and some others must have been owing to the mode of education, to the rank they were doomed to occupy, and to the treatment they were appointed to endure.”
After all, the world appears to be a vast arena, where the good and the bad are gathered together, and men are left to their own efforts, whether to rise up in that scaleof intelligence and virtue which conducts to immortality, or to grovel deeper into the depths of degradation, where there is nothing but death and annihilation. The vault of heaven grows in immensity as we gaze into its limitless expanse, whilst the shadows and attractions of earth fade away from view, or allure only those who have forsaken nature.
XVIII.
Have the European races advanced in these latitudes in strength of mind and body with equal ratio as the black man? We think not. Let us consider.
The qualities of plants and vegetables are often affected by external influences, so as to assume different characters, and the impressions upon the leaves and the fruits are distinctly marked. These alterations, degenerations, and modifications may disguise the primitive type so far that it is no longer recognizable. We observe these properties among all organic bodies, among those of the animal and as well as of the vegetable world. The vine and its golden extracts are very much dependent upon these influences.
The exquisite bouquet, the soul-inspiring qualities of the best varieties of wine, cannot be acquired by the efforts of man at pleasure; without the generous nature of the soil, the rays of sunlight, and the inspiring breezes of favored localities and climes, the extract of the pressed grape is without that flavor and force which warm into life the brilliancy of the imagination, the nobility of the soul.
There is also a marked effect of soil and climate uponthe odor of plants, and in their narcotic constituents. Does not the same law affect man?
The Italian violets grow sweeter as we climb the Alpine slopes; the mignonette blooms with greater perfection and perfume as we approach the shores of the lowlands of the Mediterranean. We find the finest types of the human race among the uplands and the mountains; below, on the low coasts and river margins, where pestilences are generated, the physical and mental forces do not fully expand, and we find there neither liberty, virtue, nor science.
Dr. Rusdorf, in his work on the influence of European climate, regards the temperate zone as the brain-making region, and attempts to prove it by physiological deductions. The brain of the Caucasian, he says, determines the superiority over the other races, and it is the standard of the organism. This, he maintains, is produced by the richness of albumen in the blood, which is also dependent upon the oxygen of pure air. The extensive observations of the English Registrar-General show indisputably that the elevation of the soil exercises as decided an influence on the English race as it does on the native races of other climes and soils. They also show that the finest animals are raised in the healthiest districts. We see that certain heights above the plains are remarkably exempt from maladies which devastate nations inhabiting lower levels. Cholera, remittent fever, yellow fever, and plague, disappear at well-defined degrees of elevation.
At Vera Cruz, and along its latitude, the yellow fever vanishes at the height of three thousand feet above the Gulf shores.
The Prussian, in his “Medicinische Geographie,” appears to indicate with great degree of certainty the limits and altitudes of the three zones, into which he classifies the catarrhal, the dysenteric, and the scrofulous diseases. The scrofulous zone ceases at an altitude of two thousand feet above the level of the sea, and here, he says, there is no pulmonary consumption, scrofula, cancer, or typhus fever. “It is,” says Babinet, “the climate of each country which permits or arrests the development of the human race, which, joined with the industry of populations, imposes limits to the numerical force of each meteorological district, and which subsists four million of men in fertile Belgium, which is no more than a small fraction of the territory of France, whilst Siberia can with difficulty nourish a part of that number with an extent which is twenty-six times that of France.” “All over the world, physical circumstances,” exclaims Draper, “control the human race.”
XIX.
It is vain to assert that the atmospheres of the maritime or the low levels do not affect the physical and mental condition of men; and after all, Fontenelle was right when he maintained, in a curious paradox, that inspiration is a barometer that varies, which mounts to genius or descends to absurdity, according to the inconstancy of the weather; that there are unhealthy countries, full of mists, winds, tempests, that never produce clear understandings; and, on the contrary, there are lands with beautiful skies and fields filled with sunlight and roses which give out flashes of divine light.
Nearly all of the Grecian lyrists were born in the enchanting climates, and among the beautiful scenes of the Asiatic shore or the isles of the Ægean Sea. Most of the eminent men of Italy rose from similar inspirations, which Michael Angelo observed when speaking of Vasari in terms of admiration. Historians say that the sun was never softer, the heavens brighter, the roses more prolific, the winds more perfumed, than in the dawn of the eighteenth century, which produced that “wild garland of beautiful women who recalled by their graces, their genius, the courtesans of Greece,” which gave birth to those philosophers who gave a new impetus to liberty and religion.
XX.
According to some writers, the unequal distribution of solar heat over the earth is the cause of marked differences in national character; others refer the distinctive effects to the quality of the air they breathe. Arbuthnot maintains that air not only fashions the body, but has also had great influence in forming language; that the close, serrated method of speaking of Northern nations was due to coldness of the climate, and hesitation of opening the mouth; whilst the sweet, sonorous phrases of temperate climes, like those of the Mediterranean, were due to the mildness of climate, where the vocal organs could be exposed without danger. “It is incontestable,” also writes Alfred Maury, in his “Earth and Man,” “that climate has upon the mode of government a considerable influence, because it exercises an immediate effect upon the character of individuals. In the warm countries,under an enervating atmosphere, where all inclines to effeminacy and idleness, the soul has not that energy and that force of will necessary to a people who wish to be free. Under a severe and cold climate, to the contrary, the character acquires more of energy, and the body more of activity. The passions are less violent, and leave to the reason a freer exercise. In the hot climes the instincts are impetuous, and they pass from an extreme of dejection to a state of exaltation which produces revolutions, insurrections, but which do not establish the independence. For, to the contrary, these violent crises introduce retaliation; and in the sanguinary conflicts, the power of an individual, although tyrannical, appears as a benefit, or is accepted as a necessity.”
XXI.
The anger of the European has always raged with undefinable fury, when once aroused, in these southern latitudes, and especially in the regions in question. The spirit is the same, whether we review the cruel and useless extermination of the Indians in Cuba or Florida; the massacres of the Mexicans by the merciless Spaniards; the internecine slaughter of the French, English, and Spaniards along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; the extermination of whole tribes, like the Yemassee, or the forced removal of the red men from the broad lands of their birthplace and inheritance. All show the implacable depth of his avarice or his ire. It was not merely the honor of subjugation, of conquering strange races, that was the object of the politics, and thatexcited the emulation of these iron-mailed and iron-hearted men and their descendants: it seems to have been an irresistible desire to immolate human races, to glut with blood that thirst for destruction which arises from depraved and burning hearts.
It was the same spirit, under the mask of avarice, that tore the well-behaved Creeks and Cherokees from the homes of their ancestors, and banished them to the prairies of the West; that hunted down the last Seminole in the everglades of Florida, where there are to-day twenty millions of acres of land unsold and unoccupied.
It was the same spirit that, in later times, recklessly and ruthlessly destroyed, at Camp Sumter, an army of freemen, under the pretence of treating them as prisoners of war.
XXII.
Yet this depraved fury does not appear to have been natural to the soil, climate, or the native races, as observed by the early navigators; although Ponce de Leon received his death-wound from them when he sought the fountain of youth in the everglades of Florida, and De Soto encountered fierce opposition from the red men of the forest when he pursued his way towards the Appalachian mountains in search of the mines of gold. But nevertheless the Europeans were treated almost always with kindness whenever they approached the Indian with good intentions.
Contrast the present time and the people with the period and the natives when the great Navigator discovered the adjacent isles. “Nature is here,” he exclaims, “soprolific, that property has not produced the feelings of avarice or cupidity. These people seem to live in a golden age, happy and quiet, amid open and endless gardens, neither surrounded by ditches, divided by fences, nor protected by walls. They behave honorably towards one another, without laws, without books, without judges. They consider him wicked who takes delight in harming another. This aversion of the good to the bad seems to be all their legislation.”
These people with natural sentiments have passed away, and new races, with strange and repulsive ideas, have taken their place. “Like the statue of Glaucus, that time, the sea, the storms have so disfigured that it resembles less a god than a ferocious beast, the human soul, altered in the bosom of society by a thousand causes rising without cessation, by the acquisition of a multitude of creeds and errors, by the changes produced in the constitution of bodies by the continual shock of passions, has caused a change in appearance almost unrecognizable; and we sooner find, instead of the being acting always by certain and invariable principles, instead of that celestial and majestic simplicity in which the Creator has left his impress, the deformed contrast of the understanding in delirium, and of the passion which pretends to reason.”
XXIII.
Wherever society forms and sustains itself, there must be adopted certain rules and laws to maintain it.
These seemingly arbitrary laws represent the interests, the passions, and opinions of those who establish them,and they differ widely, according to the nature of the men and the climate which they inhabit.
The inhabitants of hot climes and the cold zones present strange contrasts in their natural ideas of justice, as well as in instincts and appetites. The Turk regards intemperance as a crime, and polygamy as a virtue. The Englishman looks upon the one with complaisance, but regards the other with horror. Thus reason yields to physical force, or to the differences of climate; and what men call virtue in one clime, loses its force and beauty in another. Yet there are natural laws older than the empires of force or reason; more ancient than society itself; more powerful and sublime than the passions and interests of men. These laws of kindness, of mercy, of friendship, like elementary language, come from divination.
Nature has planted certain instincts in the bosoms of all the different races of the globe alike; and these become developed according to cultivation, or debased according to degrading influences. The good of society may define the measure between good and evil, but it cannot extinguish the principles, or obliterate the sharply defined distinctions. The will of the Creator has manifested itself clearly in the workings of the natural world, if it has not been revealed to us in those tablets which fell from the skies.
XXIV.
The benign influences of society, the exercise of politeness and reason, inspire polished and agreeable manners; yet, in the midst of these, we find men who think barbarityto be one of their rights; and they abuse their fellow-creatures without pretext, and commit murder without necessity, which is a degree of ferocity below that of the carnivorous animals; for they destroy life only when impelled by the motives of hunger. Societies of men are institutions of nature, and they are founded upon the principles of mutual obligations. Society relapses into barbarism when the golden rule of “doing as we would be done by” is violated; when individual liberty is lost; and when man treats his fellow-man as property under the right of force, and therefore without legal relations. Constitutions are the indices of the education and the aspiration of nations, and they keep pace with the onward march of intelligence. These become altered and modified, as the intellect and hearts of men expand; and it is nothing but bigotry that believes in the inviolability, the perfection of the doctrines and tenets of men in the present or the past. The wise man, says the old proverb, often changes his opinion, the fool never.
XXV.
Slavery appears to be coeval with war; and war is as ancient as the human race. Plutarch believed that there had been a time, a golden age, when there were neither masters nor slaves. The human mind, at the time when Plutarch wrote, was almost controlled by the empire of force. The selfishness and superstition of society fettered the nobility of nature, and healthy reason could not assume its rightful sway.
The depth of the philosophical reasoning, the degree of humanity of one of the brightest periods of antiquity,may be comprehended from the “Politics” of Aristotle, when he says, “To the Greeks belongs dominion over the barbarians, because the former have the understanding requisite to rule, the latter, the body only to obey. For the slave, considered simply as such, no friendship can be entertained, but it may be felt for him, as he is a man.” Some of the ancient nations, the most enthusiastic in the dreams of liberty, were the most savage and stern in their laws concerning their slaves; and they adhered to their brutal doctrines in defiance of nature with singular tenacity. The right of life and death over the slave was one of the fundamental principles of the society of the Athenians, Lacedemonians, Romans, and Carthaginians.
Strange condition of society among men who cultivated the arts and sciences so successfully! Yet it does not appear that any legislator attempted to abrogate servitude.
Stranger still that the glorious period of the reign of democracy at Athens should not have brought with it the universal freedom of men, when liberty was the divine ideal of its aspirations.
XXVI.
Not until the star of Christianity rose above the horizon of the pagan and superstitious world, softening the hearts of men and revealing to them a new life, did Slavery vanish from among refined and generous societies, under the charter,Pro amore Dei, pro mercede animæ. And never has it reappeared, except among those nations who have become debased from avarice, or depraved by ambition. When cupidity allows fanaticism to blind themind with the belief that savages or negroes can be more easily converted to Christianity whilst in slavery than in freedom, then there is an end to social progress. Yet such were the ideas of Louis XIII. when he consigned the negroes of his colonies to Slavery. And such has been the creed of the slaveholders and breeders of America. The monstrous doctrine imposed itself upon the understandings of the slave faction, as the superstitions of the false prophets have fettered and crushed the minds of the pagan nations. It has debased their natural sentiments, as well as it has depressed and perverted their natural talents and virtues. “In the same manner,” said Longinus, “as some children always remain pygmies, whose infant limbs, fettered by the prejudices and habits of servitude, are unable to expand themselves, or to attain that well-proportioned greatness which we admire in the ancients, who, living under a popular government, wrote with the same freedom as they acted.”
XXVII.
We may learn from the history of the past, if we will not accept the data of the present, how climate, food, domesticity, or recognized customs of society may alter the minds and dispositions of men; how they may gradually build up governments, founded upon monstrous ideas, and yet in unison with the compunctions of their conscience. Ascribe the origin to any cause you will, it does not alter the revolting facts, nor lessen the repulsiveness of the absurdity, nor the enormity of the crime. Volney believed “that the social institutions calledGovernment and Religion were the true sources and regulators of the activity or indolence of individuals and nations; that they were the efficient causes which, as they extend or limit the natural or superfluous wants, limit or extend the activity of all men. A proof that their influence operates in spite of the difference of climate and soil is, that Tyre, Carthage, and Alexandria formerly possessed the same industry as London, Paris, and Amsterdam; that the Buccaneers and the Malayans have displayed equal turbulence and courage with the Normans, and that the Russians and Polanders have the apathy and indifference of the Hindoos and the Negroes. But, as civil and religious institutions are perpetually varied and changed by the passions of men, their influence changes and varies in very short intervals of time. Hence it is that the Romans commanded by Scipio resembled so little those governed by Tiberius, and that the Greeks of the age of Aristides and Themistocles were so unlike those of the time of Constantine.”
Volney observes that “the moral character of nations, taken from that of individuals, chiefly depends on the social state in which they live; since it is true that our actions are governed by our civil and religious laws, and since our habits are no more than a repetition of those actions, and our character only the disposition to act in such a manner under such circumstances, it evidently follows that these must essentially depend on the nature of the government and religion.”
Says Addison, “In all despotic governments, though a particular prince may favor arts and letters, there is a natural degeneracy of mankind, as you may observe fromAugustus’s reign, how the Romans lost themselves by degrees, until they fell to an equality with the most barbarous nations that surrounded them. Look upon Greece under its free states, and you would think its inhabitants lived in different climates and under different heavens from those at present, so different are the geniuses which are formed under Turkish slavery and Grecian liberty.
“Besides poverty and want, there are other reasons that debase the minds of men who live under Slavery, though I look on this as the principal. The natural tendency of despotic powers to ignorance and barbarity, though not insisted upon by others, is, I think, an unanswerable argument against that form of government, as it shows how repugnant it is to the good of mankind and the perfection of human nature, which ought to be the great end of all civil institutions.”
“Liberty should reach every individual of a people, as they all share one common nature; if it only spreads among particular branches there had better be none at all, since such a liberty only aggravates the misfortune of those who are deprived of it, by setting before them a disagreeable subject of comparison.”
“The pride of Athens,” writes Mirabeau, “and the jealousy of the Greeks, banished forever the liberty of those countries, so long fortunate.”
Such is and always was our world, covered from time to time with conquerors and slaves, because the conquering, in forging the irons of the unhappy, with which they bound them, sharpen those which must bind them in turn.
Such is and always will be man, from time to time despotand slave, for man, denaturalized by servitude, becomes readily the most ferocious of animals if he escapes an instant from oppression. There is but one step from the despot to the slave, from the slave to the despot, and the chain becomes them alike.
XXVIII.
There are strange forces constantly at work: civilizations spring up, disappear, and sometimes, but rarely, return again after a sleep of ages: it seems as though genius laid fallow for a period, like the golden grains.
The Greek mind teaches the Arabs under the Caliphs of Bagdad and Cordova, and in turn the Arabian influence instructs the reviving European mind after the dark ages. The fall of Constantinople crushed the Greek mind completely. The genius and the “godlike men” of Rome vanished under the influence of the strong blood of the Goths, and the flourishing nations of the African shore have yielded so completely to physical and moral causes, that we justly doubt the story of their magnificence, their power, their intelligence.
We see the effete races infused with the fresh blood; the vigorous juices of the Scandinavians march forward with unparalleled pace to the triumphs of reason and philosophy. The pure, warm, healthy vitality of the North recalls to life the exact sciences, the laws of reasoning, and philosophy, and æsthetics, which, arising from Grecian genius, had slumbered for a thousand years.
XXIX.
In the slave lands of America a high order of intellect was proclaimed; but when analysis approached, it sank into mediocrity, or vanished into dust, like the forms in the ancient tombs when exposed to the light of heaven. Slavery has produced nothing but horror. The flashes of light that have burst forth through its mists have been the expiring efforts of genius. Here the sciences have always languished and declined to take root, for they are the offspring of genius and reason. The arts never appeared, for the spirit of imitation never arose. To cultivate the sciences, there is need of exalted desire, which comes from healthy and prosperous races or from celestial fire. Here there was the barbarity of ignorance; the only desires were to increase the enormities of their crimes, by the spread and general adoption of Slavery, and to conceal its proportions and influences beneath a cloud of mental darkness, which is frightful to contemplate, when placed in comparison with intelligent communities like New England, Belgium, and Prussia.
They thought to perpetuate an aristocratic power, and transmit the inheritance of Slavery as a blessing, but they forgot that in the formation of happy nations and states humanity forms the broad base; they forgot that ambitious and avaricious families quickly degenerate and disappear completely from the earth. The vicissitudes of political life hasten that decline which is commenced by riches and rank, when supported by morbid ideas and sentiments.
The noble families of Athens and Corinth, the patricianbody at Rome, vanished so rapidly as to excite the surprise of the nations they governed. The names of the descendants of the founders of Venice, written in the Libro di Oro, are no longer to be found among the living in Italy.
The same law is silently at work in our times.
XXX.
The inequalities of the earth’s surface are like the rugosities of the human brain: the depths of the one contain the richest and most inexhaustible treasures of mineral wealth, as the wrinkles of the other collect the stores of mental lore. As the surface of the brain becomes less marked and rugged, the strength and scope of the mind vanish, and approach the standard of the lower animals; and likewise, as the elevated lands of the earth shrink in form, and sink into the level of the plain, so the characters of the races who inhabit them lose force and elevation.
Sometimes the minds of men are the reflections of the beauties and sublimities of nature. Sometimes men become degraded, and nature then does not inspire.
XXXI.
The lofty and diversified mountain range, or system of ranges, known as the Appalachian or Alleghany, rises or reappears in the State of New York, midway between the Atlantic coast and the shores of those fresh-water seas, Erie and Ontario. It then stretches downsouth-westward, with its adjacent spurs, through the great States of Pennsylvania and Virginia; then, dividing, it forms, with its eastern range, the western and northern limit of North and South Carolina and Georgia; and with the western it intersects Tennessee, forming that beautiful basin known among the white men as East Tennessee, but among the traditions of the red men as the Garden of the Manitou—their God. In Northern Alabama, the separated ranges seemingly unite; and passing southward, towards the central portion of the State, the mountain summits gradually contract, and finally sink into the level of the great alluvial plains, which stretch away, without undulation, to the shores of the Gulf. These huge masses of rock, dislocated and elevated like the Vosges and the Hartz Mountains at the close of the carboniferous or devonian period of the earth’s age, contain, with the adjacent and connecting bands,—which are composed of the silurian, primitive, and metamorphic ledges,—most of the accessible mineral wealth of the republic. And the collective beds of iron, coal, marble, zinc, copper, and gold are unsurpassed in similar extent and richness by the mines of any country of the known world, with the exception of those wonderful deposits of ores and minerals among the unexplored and almost inaccessible recesses and plateaus of the Sierra Nevada or the Andes.
With the exception of the northern extremity of this mountain group, these mines of natural wealth may be said to have been unexplored. Below the rich and populous State of Pennsylvania, the hum of human industry ceases; for we then pass into the paralyzing shadow of Slavery. This Slavery forbade the development of theearth’s treasures, as well as the enlightenment of the minds of the poor and ignorant whites. The forges of Vulcan would have hammered out and broken into fragments the chains of that bondage which not only oppressed the fettered blacks, but debased, with its corroding influence, the competing labor of the white man.
The slaveholders concealed this immense natural wealth from the eyes of science from motives of policy; and rather than incur the hazard of revolution, by educating the masses of their own people, they preferred to neglect their natural advantages, and to send to distant and even foreign lands the products of their fields and their system, to be worked up into the marvellous fabrics of human ingenuity and skill. This same State of Virginia, which is the real gateway to the empires of the West, and which is not surpassed in natural physical advantages by any equal extent of territory on the globe, is the most ignorant of all of the States of the republic. Ninety thousand of its native-born free people, over twenty years of age, before the war could not read nor write; whilst sterile and stormy Maine, with her cold lands and colder skies, contained but two thousand of the same class, out of a population more than half as great. And New England, with a population of almost three times as great as the free people of Virginia, is ashamed by the number of seven thousand illiterate natives past the age of twenty. Who will wonder at the display of barbarity and audacity when the statistics of education and ignorance are exhibited? “Education and liberty,” says Mirabeau, “are the bases of all social harmony and all human prosperity.”
Which can civilization curse the most, London orAmsterdam? the Dutch who introduced Slavery, or the English who thought Virginia a good place to “colonize aristocratic stupidity,” and who sent colonists, who were, according to the historian, “fitter to breed a riot than to found a colony.” The condition of the present day shows how rigidly the first instructions have been observed and enforced. “Thank God,” writes one of its early governors to the English Privy Council, “thank God there are no free schools or printing, and I hope we shall not have any these hundred years! for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best government. God keep us from both!”
XXXII.
And so these mines, and fields, and forests, remain to the present day, unsurveyed, unexplored and unknown, save to a few wanderers of science.
In Northern Alabama, where the terminating slopes of this upheaval of rocks disappear beneath the level of the vast cotton fields, which number their acres by the million, there appear enormous deposits of iron ore, of extraordinary richness and depth, lying in juxtaposition with corresponding beds of limestones and coal.
Here is alone sufficient material for the iron fingers and forges and the steam power to fabricate the vegetable growths, the harvests of the vast and fertile plains of the entire South, and to build up with enduring form those great and thriving cities which are seen in the dim vista of the future of the Mississippi Valley, with its hundredmillions of people. These elevations, when denuded of their immense primeval forests of pine and oak, will be covered with constant verdure, affording sure sustenance to numberless flocks and herds of kine, which will require less care than the cattle of the plains of Texas or the pampas of Peru, since Nature, with her caverns and narrow valleys, will afford shelter from the destructive storms of winter and the chilling blasts of spring.
Between the two great spurs of the divided mountain range which encompass the head-waters and tributaries of the Tennessee, appears the garden spot of the Republic: the soils, enriched by the decomposition of the blue limestones, are here of great strength and endurance; the innumerable streams are of sufficient force and volume to satisfy the wants of industry and mechanics, whilst the lofty mountains, which rise to the height of seven thousand feet above the ocean, with their broad and impressive shadows, temper the atmospheres, so that the body can labor and the mind expand.
To the natural beauties of the landscape art has yet added nothing: from the teeming harvests of the valleys, from the massive ledges of minerals, man has yet detracted nothing.
Nature here is almost inexhaustible.
No wonder that the dying Indian returns to the region of the Hiwassee to end his days on earth, impelled by an irresistible desire to behold once more the wonders and beauties of natural scenery, which are preserved among the fading traditions of the tribes that have been banished to the far off western frontiers.
XXXIII.
From beneath the eastern aspect of the mountains of Alabama, a broad belt of metamorphic rocks bursts forth, and trends to the north-eastward, following the mountain ranges in almost parallel lines through the States of Georgia, South and North Carolina, and disappearing in Virginia beneath the waters of the Potomac. These lands of decomposed mica and talcose schists contain throughout their broad extent particles of gold; and some of the narrow and circumscribed fields are unsurpassed in their undeveloped richness by any of the known gold fields of similar extent in the world. These auriferous soils, owned or controlled by the slaveholder, have yielded, by the superficial scratchings and washings of the slave and the poor white, during the period since the discovery of the precious metal, about forty millions of dollars. There are not less than one hundred millions more within the reach and grasp of skilled and determined labor.
Along beside, and traversing through and through these golden rocks and sands, occur immense bands of itacolumite, known, from its flexibility, as the elastic sandstone. They stretch from Alabama to the interior of North Carolina, bursting forth now as great flexible bands of stone, and then bulging out as entire mountains. This singular formation is the same that has been recognized in Brazil, Ural Mountains, and Hindostan, as the matrix of the diamond; and here, nearly one hundred of the precious gems of fine water have been picked up from the earth, from time to time, by the careless observer.
XXXIV.
This upheaval of the earth’s surface, reminding the geographer of the Italian peninsula, vaguely perhaps in form, in natural fertility and in purity of climate, is destined to play an important part in the future advancement of the Republic. For here is the heart of the eastern portion of the continent, geographically, climatologically, and mineralogically. Here Nature is too prolific to be long neglected by the cupidity or the ambition of men, when the barriers and obstructions of inquiry and settlement, which have been reared against the advance and design of civilization by the Slave Faction, shall have been removed. When the tide of European emigration, which steadily brings to the New World the pure blood and youth of races, turns its stream of industrial life towards these valleys, mountain slopes, and terraces; when the laws of alimentation are understood and properly observed; when the spire of the school-house rises in the vista of every landscape, or points the way at every cross-road,—then we may expect to see a new variety of the human race appear, possessed of remarkable physical strength and beauty, and whose ideas and efforts, typical of the healthy and developed mind, will, like the influences of New England and Scandinavia, give fresh impulse and impress to the civilizations of the earth.
XXXV.
Races of men—nations—even the lesser communities, during the periods of their social existence, erect monuments, or leave, unwillingly sometimes, traces of their progress, their advancement, their culture, as memorials for the admiration, or as the objects of horror for the contempt, of future generations.
The gigantic pyramids and sphinxes of Egypt tell of the civilization of their extinct founders; the airy and graceful columns, with the wonderful sculptures of the Parthenon, disclose the degree of the perfection and the delicacy of the Greek mind. Rome, though long since vanished from among the nations of the earth, has left the impress of her force, grandeur, and wisdom in those laws which now direct the tribunals of men; the lofty and colossal structures of the temples of the Rhine are the emblems of faith as well as the masterpieces of the Gothic heart and intellect; even the mysterious and history-forgotten Druids have left their rude reminiscences in those weird circles of enormous and cyclopean rocks, beyond which all is darkness.
Thus men perpetuate their memories among the annals of the earth. But after their long period of existence and progress, what have the Slave Faction left for the historian to contemplate with satisfaction? for an attentive world to study, imitate, and admire? What beyond this appalling cloud of ignorance have they left as legacy to the poor white? What besides misery, violence, and crime have they bequeathed to the black man? With what treasures, in the estimation of mankind, have theyenriched themselves, or left as inheritance to their degenerate offspring?
The history of this remorseless party, its selfish and sordid aims, its cruel results, will always find place among the annals of civilized man so long as the noblest acts of men are admired, and so long as the dark deeds of cruelty appall and overshadow our better nature. Thermopylæ, Marathon, and the holy sites where Liberty has struggled for existence, and where men have risen above the trammels of their earthly natures, will be remembered no longer than this field of blood and torture among the obscure forests of Georgia.
XXXVI.
Who will say that Nature and Liberty were the genii who directed the labors of the leaders of the Rebellion?
Soil, climate, hereditary traditions, and customs of society, give to a people the fierceness and gentleness of character, as well as the perfection of mind and body. This fatal Stockade, with the silent mound of earth which contains its harvest of death, is a fair and just exponent of the bigoted and selfish policy that struck down the Flag of the Republic; of that cruel and unearthly spirit which has despised all the “attachments with which God has formed the chain of human sympathies,” and which, without a tear of remorse, has strewn the Atlantic Ocean with a broad pathway of human bones!
NOTES.
Since the close of the war, and since the time when the sketch of the graveyard was taken, Colonel Moore, of the U. S. Quartermaster’s Department, has been to Andersonville, under orders from the Secretary of War, and arranged the cemetery in a very acceptable manner. All of the stakes were removed, and neat head-boards placed instead, with the names of the dead properly painted in black letters. The ground has been cleared up by this efficient officer, and the cemetery carefully laid out into walks, adorned with flowers and trees. Colonel Moore, in his report to the Quartermaster-General, writes the following account:—
“The dead were found buried in trenches, on a site selected by the rebels, about three hundred yards from the stockade. The trenches varied in length from fifty to one hundred and fifty yards. The bodies in the trenches were from two to three feet below the surface, and in several instances, where the rain had washed away the earth, but a few inches. Additional earth was, however, thrown upon the graves, making them of still greater depth. So close were they buried, without coffins, or the ordinary clothing to cover their nakedness, that not more than twelve inches were allowed to each man. Indeed, the little tablets marking their resting-places, measuring hardly ten inches in width, almost touch each other. United States soldiers, while prisoners at Andersonville, had been detailed to inter their companions; and by a simple stake at the head of each grave, which bore a number corresponding with a similarly numbered name upon the Andersonville hospital record, I was enabled to identify, and mark with a neat tablet, similar to those in the cemeteries at Washington, the number, name, rank, regiment, company, and date of death of twelve thousand four hundred and sixty-one graves; there being but four hundred and fifty-one that bore the sad inscription, ‘Unknown U. S. Soldier.’”
Extract from letters of the rebel Senator Foote, dated Montreal, June 21, 1865.
“Touching the Congressional report referred to, I have this to say: A month or two anterior to the date of said report, I learned from a government officer of respectability, that the prisoners of war then confined in and about Richmond were suffering severely from want of provisions. He told me, further, that it was manifest to him that a systematic scheme was on foot for subjecting these unfortunate men to starvation; that the Commissary-General, Mr. Northrup (a most wicked and heartless wretch), had addressed a communication to Mr. Seddon, the Secretary of War, proposing to withhold meat altogether from military prisoners then in custody, and to give them nothing but bread and vegetables; and that Mr. Seddon had indorsed the document containing this communication affirmatively. I learned, further, that by calling upon Major Ould, the commissioner for exchange of prisoners, I would be able to obtain further information upon the subject. I went to Major Ould immediately, and obtained the desired information. Being utterly unwilling to countenance such barbarity for a moment,—regarding, indeed, the honor of the whole South as concerned in the affair,—I proceeded without delay to the hall of the House of Representatives, called the attention of that strangely constituted body to the subject, and insisted upon an immediate committee of investigation.”
As to the capacity of the bakery, any one can make his own estimates from the plan given. The foreman of the government bakery at Nashville, gives his views in the following note:—