CHAPTER VII.THE HAIR.
Next to color, there is nothing so palpable to the sense as the hair, or nothing that reveals the specific difference of race so unmistakably as the natural covering of the head. The hair of the Caucasian is a graceful and imposing feature or quality, of course in perfect harmony with everything else, but sometimes, and especially in the case of females, it is an attribute of physical beauty more striking and attractive than any other. Its color, golden or sunny brown, and the dazzling hues of black, purple, and auburn tresses, has been the theme of poets from time immemorial, while its luxuriance, and silky softness, and graceful length will continue to be the pride of one sex and the admiration of the other as long as the perception of beauty remains.
In the Mongol, Malay, or Indian, as well as the Negro, it remains the same through all the stages of life, and it is only in extreme old age that it becomes gray or silvery white, or even falls off from any portion of the head. The coarse, stiff, black hair of the Indian child is that also of its parents—and a gray-headed or bald-headed Indian, except in some cases of extreme old age, is as rare perhaps as that of a bald-headed negro. But the child of the Caucasian, with perfectly white or flaxen hair, expands into the maiden with clustering ringlets of auburn or perhaps raven black, to be threaded with silver, in middle life perhaps, and though less common than with the other sex, a few years later it becomes again, as in early childhood,perfectly white. But there are no exceptions to the uniform color of the hair in other races. Such a thing as a flaxen-haired or a light-haired negro child never existed. There may be sometimes a slight approximation in this respect among Mongols, but the hair of the negro, except in some cases of extreme old age, remains absolutely the same at all periods, from the cradle to the grave. The elementary structure as shown by the elaborate microscopical observations of Mr. Peter A. Browne, of Philadelphia, differs as widely as the external or superficial modifications. The popular notion that it is wool instead of hair that covers the negro head is like many others, founded on a mere external resemblance, without any actual correspondence. It is hair, butsui generis, or rather specific and common to the negro alone, and however widely different from that of white people, it is no more so than any other quality or feature of the negro nature. The variations of this feature in the white race are almost unlimited. Hair dressing even has been elevated to the respectability of an art, if not to the dignity of a science. For many generations the kings of France keptartistesof this character, who often received a salary equal to the ministers of the crown, and one of them, Oliver Le Dain, became in fact, if not in form, the actual ruler of the kingdom. But it was the princesses and ladies of the court that exalted this “art” to its highest pitch of extravagance and display. Marie Antoinette—one of the most unhappy women that ever lived—made it an important part of every day’s employment, and exacted the same labor from her attendants. Even in our own more sensible times, the Empress Eugenie changes the fashions in this respect almost every month, and the styles or modes of dressing their hair is an extravagant though amiable weakness of our own fair countrywomen. There is in fact no mere physical quality of the female so attractive, or that is capable of beingrendered so charming, as the hair, and the elaborate dressings, the time and labor spent on its decoration, proceed as much perhaps from that delicate perception of the beautiful innate in woman as it does from female vanity or the love of display. But with this “wealth of beauty” of the Caucasian woman, what an immeasurable interval separates her from the negress! Is it possible for any who sees the latter, with her short, stiff, uncombable fleece of seeming wool, to endow her with the attribute of beauty or comeliness? And though somewhat less palpable in the other sex, the hair is an essential element of manly beauty as well as dignity, and the “love locks” of the cavaliers and even the “soap locks” of more modern times, are identified with certain conceptions of manly grace. Can any one form such conceptions in respect to the hair of the negro? Can he identify any of these things with the crisp, stiff, seeming wool that covers the head of that race? Can the sentiment of beauty, grace or dignity, or indeed any idea whatever—except as a necessary provision of nature for covering the negro head—attach to the hair of the negro? This is all that is possible to the mind of a white person in actual juxtaposition with the negro, and therefore while the European Abolitionist may fancy his head adorned by “ambrosial curls,” our own native Abolitionists are wholly unable to conceive of any use or purpose whatever for that dense mat of wiry and twisted hair which covers the negro head, except as a provision of nature for its protection. The protection of the head, or rather of the brain, is the purpose or the function of the hair in all races, but while that, in our race, is identified with elevated and striking qualities, it is the sole purpose in the case of the negro. The short, crisp, dense mass that covers the negro head, like every other quality or attribute of the negro nature, is in perfect harmony with the climatic and external circumstances with which God has surrounded him. The popular notion that thenegro skull is much thicker than that of the white man originated from this peculiarity of the covering of the negro head. The hair is so dense, so curled and twisted together, and forms such a complete mat or net work as to be wholly impenetrable to the rays of a vertical sun, and to furnish a vastly better protection for the brain than the thickest felt hat does to that of the white man. Thus, though negroes on our southern plantations, with the imitative instincts of their race, copy after the whites and wear hats, it is merely a “fashionable folly,” and dictated by no natural want, nor in the slightest degree adds to their happiness. And beside the protection from the fierce heats of the tropics, the hair of the negro protects his head in other respects. It is so hard and wiry, and in fact triangular in form, that a blow from the hand of a master would doubtless injure the latter vastly more than it would the head of the negro, and the common practice among them of butting each other with their heads, though knocking them off their feet, and the concussion heard at considerable distances, never results in injury, for the dense mat of semi-wool that covers the head protects it from mischief. The negro hair is then designed solely for the protection of the negro head, and not only differs widely from that of the Caucasian, but from that of all other races, for the negro is a tropical race, and the hair, like all other attributes of the negro being, physical and moral, is adapted to a tropical clime, and in perfect accord with the physical wants and moral necessities of the race.
But the mere covering of the head, or the mere protection of the brain, is not all that distinguishes the different races in these respects. The beard is equally radical and universal, though not so palpable a specialty as color, and in some respects it may be said to be a more important one. The Caucasian alone has a beard, for though all others approximate to it in this respect, it is the only bearded race, and somewriters on ethnology have been so impressed with this imposing and striking distinction that they have sought to make it the basis of a classification of races. And there certainly is no physical or outward quality that so imposingly impresses itself on the senses as a mark of superiority, or evidence of supremacy, as a full and flowing beard. Color, when in repose, or when it does not give expression to the inner nature, does not, in reality, constitute a distinction at all, but the beard is an evidence of superiority, that, however varied the action or whatever the circumstances, is equally distinct and universal as an attribute of supremacy. This is sufficiently illustrated in our own race and our every day experience. The youth is beardless, andpari passuas he approaches to the maturity of manhood there is a corresponding development of beard. The intellect—the mental strength—the moral beauty, all the qualities of the inner being, as well as those outward attributes tangible to the sense, harmonize perfectly with the growth of the beard, and when that has reached its full development, it is both the signal and the proof of mature manhood—an exact admeasurement and absolute proof of the maturity of the individual as well as the type and standard of the race. This is equally true when applied to different races. The Caucasian is the only bearded race, but all others approximate in this respect, and the negro is furthest removed of all, for the tropical woolly-haired African or negro, except a little tuft on the chin and sometimes on the upper lip, has nothing that can be confounded with a beard. People sometimes see negroes with considerable hair on their faces, and hence conclude that they are as likely to have beards as white men; but they forget that all in our society who are not whites are considered negroes, and therefore those bearded negroes have a large infusion, and doubtless sometimes a vastly predominating infusion of Caucasian blood. The beard symbolizes our highest conceptions ofmanhood—it is the outward evidence of mature development—of complete growth, mental as well as physical—of strength, wisdom and manly grace, and the full, flowing, and majestic beard of the Caucasian, in contrast with the negro or other subordinate races, is as striking and imposing as the mane of the lion when compared with the meaner beasts of the animal world. Like color or any other of the great fundamental facts separating races, the beard is sufficient to determine their specific character and their specific relations to each other, and we have only to apply our every day experience as regards this outward symbol of inner manhood to measure the relative inferiority of the negro. The Abolitionists demand that the “equal manhood” of the negro shall be recognized, and complain bitterly of a government that refuses to respond to their wishes in this respect, but if this “equal manhood” was actually revealed to them in the person of the negro as it is in the persons of white men, and as God has alone provided and ordained or permitted it to be revealed, they would be overwhelmed with astonishment or convulsed with laughter. A negro with a full and flowing beard, with this symbol of perfect manhood or with this outward manifestation of the inner (Caucasian) being, would be a ludicrous monstrosity, as impossible, of course, as the Caliban of Shakespeare; but if such a supernatural being should suddenly make his appearance in an Abolition conventicle, the “friends of humanity” would be as much astonished as if an inhabitant of another world had come among them. A youth, with the majestic and flowing beard of adult life, if the monstrosity did not shock and disgust us, would be irresistibly comical, and equally so in the case of the childish and romping negro. Thus, were the leaders of the “anti-slavery enterprise” busily engaged in discussing the “equal manhood” of the negro, and in earnestly denouncing those who, unable to see it, decline to admit such a thing, anda negro should enter the room with the actual proof of its existence—with the full, flowing beard of the Caucasian, and therefore the outward symbol of an “equal manhood,” as the hand of the Eternal has revealed it in the person of the former—the whole Abolition congregation, if not paralyzed with horror, would burst into uncontrollable laughter. The wrongs of the “slave,” the cruelties of the master, the “hopes of humanity,” the most doleful stories and the saddest tales of the suffering “bondmen,” would be interrupted by screams of laughter at such a ludicrous spectacle as a negro with the majestic and flowing beard of the white man. This outward symbol of complete manhood, or this external indication which typifies the high nature and lofty qualities of the Caucasian, is no more impossible, however, to the negro than that “equal manhood” which is demanded for him, and therefore were the “friends of humanity” to vary their programme and demand an “equal” beard, or that we shall grant the negro the full and flowing beard of the Caucasian, they would render their performances more interesting without giving up any of their “principles,” as the absurdity is exactly the same in either case.