CHAPTER XIII.MULATTOISM AND MONGRELISM.

PART II.

All the generic and specific forms of life are governed by their own peculiar laws of interunion, and hybridism or hybridity is therefore a phenomenon of varying character, having, it is true, certain resemblances in those instances which approach each other, but absolutely different in all cases. Naturalists have sometimes made great blunders in this respect, for they have assumed that hybridism was governed by the same laws in all cases, and therefore sought its application or inferred its presence in instances the most remote and contradictory. The most extraordinary, and, indeed, inexcusable instance of the kind has been seen in the efforts made to confound the distinctions of race, and to pervert truth into the most shameful and what would seem to be the most palpable falsehoods. It has been assumed by naturalists of high character that different genera never produce offspring, that theoffspringof different species are incapable of reproduction, and that varieties are unlimited in their powers of virility. If, therefore, there were doubt in respect to the character of certain (supposed) genera, and it was found that offspring followed a conjunction of sexes, in this particular instance, it was inferred that they were merely different species. And if the product or progeny of thesespecieswere found to beequally virile, then it was inferred that they were all originally of the same species, and nothing but varieties. This test, so simple that it can hardly be mistaken, serves with sufficient accuracy to determine the real character, and when the naturalist properly applies the laws of hybridity, that is, admits a modification of these laws in all cases or in all the different genera subjected to his examination, then he is armed with sufficient data to render his labors accurate and effective. But however pains-taking or correct in other particulars, when he assumes that hybridity is a unit, and rigidly applies this in all cases, or to families widely remote in other respects, his labors, from this defect, must be comparatively valueless.

The instance already referred to, where hybridity was thus presented, was as follows:—The mule, as is well-known, is the offspring of the horse and ass. It does not, in its turn, reproduce itself, therefore the horse and ass were different species. Prichard and others applied this test, or marked this test, in the case of human beings, of whites and negroes, and proved by it that they were of the same species. It was seen that white men cohabited with negro women, and the offspring in turn, reproduced itself, and consequently that the parents were of the same species. Or, as this has passed as current coin hitherto, and seemed perfectly satisfactory, indeed wholly unanswerable to naturalists and men of science as well as others, it is best, perhaps, to place it in distinct and categorical terms before the reader. 1st. It is universally admitted by naturalists that incapacity in the offspring to reproduce itself demonstrates the different species of the progenitors, while, on the contrary, a capacity in the offspring to beget offspring in its turn demonstrates similarity of species in the progenitors. 2d. The mule, or the offspring of the horse and ass, does not reproduce itself, therefore the horse and ass are different species. 3d. The mulatto offspring of the white man and negro womandoes beget offspring, therefore the white man and negro woman are of the same species.

This was the assumption and the reasoning of Prichard and other European ethnologists, and if hybridity were a unit, or principle of rigid and uniform character in all cases, in human beings as in animals and vegetables, in the case of the white man and negress, exactly as in that of the horse and ass—then, indeed, would the inference seem unavoidable that whites and negroes constituted in fact a single species. But they were guilty of two fundamental errors in this matter—an error of fact, and an error of reasoning, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that both were errors of fact. At all events,factsthat demonstrate difference of species in whites and negroes beyond possibility of doubt were distorted into proofs which seemed to demonstrate sameness or similarity of species with equal certainty.

Hybridity, as has been said, is not a unit, is not a fixed, uniform law or principle. A moment’s consideration is sufficient to convince any intelligent mind of this truth. Each form of life has necessarily its own character, its own specific qualities, and the laws governing its reproductive powers must be in correspondence, and just as differently manifested as any of its specific qualities. To suppose that the laws of the phenomena governing the reproductive functions of the horse and ass are exactly similar to those manifested in the case of human beings, is as absurd as to suppose that the term of gestation, the length of life, the mode of their locomotion, or any other qualities—should be exactly the same in both cases. But nothing more need be said. It is perfectly obvious that the laws of reproduction must be radically different in the human creatures, and therefore the inference of Pritchard and others, that whites and negroes were of the same species, because the mulatto, unlike the mule, did reproduce itself, is simply absurd.But they were still further and still more vitally mistaken in respect to their assumptions of fact. The mulatto, literally speaking, or in the ordinary sense, does beget offspring, but mulattoism is as positively sterile as muleism. The phenomenon of hybridity is manifested, as has been stated, in conformity with the nature of the beings concerned, and as the human creatures are separated by an almost measureless as well as impassable distance from the horse and ass, the laws of hybridity are, of course, correspondingly different. Instead of a single generation, as in the animals referred to, sterility in the human creatures is embraced within four generations, where a boundary is arrived at as absolutely fixed and impassable as the single generation in the case of the former.

But in order to understand the matter clearly, it is proposed to present the reader with the preliminary principles or facts, and inductive facts, that lead to this vital and all-important conclusion. It is all-important, not as demonstrating beyond doubt the vital and fundamental truth of distinct species, for that is a self-evident and indeed unavoidable truth that meets us at every step, and confronts our senses almost every hour or day of our lives. But mulattoism is a subject of stupendous importance in itself, and as the public are generally, and the “anti-slavery” writers especially, profoundly ignorant of it, and of all the laws that govern it, it is proposed to present the elementary principles or basis on which the whole subject rests.[1]

1. The author has devoted much time and labor to this interesting subject, and, together with his own and the observations of friends and correspondents, covering several thousand cases of the mixed blood, is able to deduce the general laws as stated in the text, and with entire confidence in their essential accuracy.

1st. In the case of the white man cohabiting with the negress, or “married” to a negro female, there will be a more limited progeny than if she were married to one of her own race.

2d. The mulatto offspring of this connection intermarrying with other hybrids, will exhibit still less virility.

3d. The offspring of the former again intermarrying with hybrids equally removed from the original parentage, shows a yet greater diminution of virile power.

4th. By still intermarrying with hybrids, and of a corresponding remove, virility is correspondingly decreased.

5th. Finally, the fourth generation of mulattoism is as absolutely sterile as muleism, and though there may be, at rare intervals, a possible exception, yet, in every practical sense, and for all the purposes of philosophic inquiry, it may be assumed as the natural and impassable barrier of this abnormal and exceptional form of being. Of the essential correctness of these laws, or their data, almost every one living in the South, or perhaps in the larger cities of the Middle States, will be able to satisfy himself, if he will take the trouble to investigate the matter. He need not pursue the subject to its ultimate end, or to an extent necessary to arrive at all the results here presented, but he may, with comparatively trifling attention to it, satisfy himself of thetendencies involved, and that there is somewhere at least approximating to these laws a fixed and absolute barrier beyond which mulattoism can not exist. All the dealers in “slaves” and many “slave owners” know this from observation and individual experience, and while entirely ignorant of any thing like the scientific formulæ here presented, not a few among the former have actually stated it to the author in total unconsciousness that either he or any one else had ever thus formalized the essential character of mulattoism. But there is a very important feature of this matter, which, not understood or overlooked, may lead astray those who undertake its investigation. As has been said, hybridity is a phenomenon to be tested and determined by the nature of the beings involved, and as it must be wholly different in the humancreatures from that manifested in animals, and life is limited to four generations in the case of mulattoes, while the mule is confined to a single generation, so, too, must the mere quality or capacity of offspring be taken into consideration. The mule is remarkable for its powers of endurance—the mulatto for its fragility and incapacity to endure hardships. A northern climate is fatal to the negro, but the same climate is still more fatal to the hybrid, for his approximation to the Caucasian, and therefore capacity for a northern clime, is more than balanced by his constitutional tendencies to fragility and decay. Thus, of the ten thousand free negroes in Massachusetts, whom, “freedom” and climate together, were there no more external additions, must finally exterminate, the last man among them would be a typical negro, or, at all events, approximating nearest to the typical standard.

But it is in the female hybrid that this tendency to decay, or this vice of constitutional formation, is most apparent. Many of them are incapable of nourishing or taking care of their offspring, and, together with miscarriages and the numerous forms of disease connected with maternity, they are often found to have had a large number of children, not one of whom reached maturity. In taking into view, therefore, the sterility of mulattoism, we must have regard to its vices of formation as well as its limited virility, and that nature completes her processes, whether of growth or decay, through many different forms; and while mulattoism is as absolutely confined to four generations as mules are to a single generation, the former result is worked out through constitutional fragility and limited longevity as much, perhaps, as by an imperfect reproductive capacity.

It is seen, therefore, that Prichard and the European ethnologists made a radical mistake in this matter, and the very proofs which they relied on to establish their single-race theory,or that whites and negroes were of the same species, actually prove the precisely opposite fact, that they are of different species. Not only is the phenomenon of hybridity different in human beings, from that peculiar to animals, but it differs in the different races of the former. The author’s inquiries on this subject have been limited to the white and negro races or species, but the evidence presented to his observation, during the war with Mexico, was sufficiently authentic to warrant the conclusion that hybrids have greater tenacity of life, when the offspring of whites and aborigines, than in the case of whites and negroes. The former approximate closer to our own race, and it is only reasonable to suppose that, in precise proportion to this fact, or to this starting-point, is the hybrid offspring endowed with vitality; and the same rule may be applied with equal certainty to all the other species of men.

The sexual instinct, or the instinct of reproduction, is universal in animal existence. It is that which multiplies its kind, that peoples the earth and fills the world with innumerable tribes of beings and endless processions of generations, each after its kind exhibiting the same qualities and subject to the same laws as the original types, without the slightest atom of change, though countless generations intervene between them. In respect to human beings endowed with reason and moral feeling, it is evidently designed by the Almighty Creator of all that the instinct of reproduction should be held in subjection to those higher qualities. Nevertheless, instinct in respect to the sexual functions is strikingly manifest in the lower races of mankind.

When white men—travelers and explorers—suddenly make their appearance in African villages, where they were never before seen, the females run and hide themselves from their sight; and among the multitude of white prisoners captured by the aborigines of this continent, there has probably neverbeen an instance of the violation of their persons by their savage captors. In respect to the so-called insurrection of negroes in Hayti or San Domingo, where, though all of the white blood, men, women, and children in their nurses’ arms were remorselessly butchered by the terror-stricken blacks, there are no authenticated instances of the violation of white females.

A negro insurrection—that is, a revolt of the negro from the rule of the white man, to obtain the liberty of the latter—is simply nonsensical: as entirely so as to suppose an insurrection to obtain the complexion or any other physical attribute of the superior race; but should some white miscreant, as attempted lately at Harper’s Ferry, delude “slaves” to slaughter the families of their masters, there need be little or no apprehension in respect to that hideous and monstrous idea so prominent in abolition writings—the violation of the persons of white females. It is true, hybrids and mongrels might perpetrate such monstrous crimes, but the negro—the typical, pure-blooded negro—driven on by his fears and dread of the master race, would only seek its extermination, never the indulgence tohimof such unnatural propensities.

The instinct of reproduction in animals is governed by fixed laws; but, as has been said, designed by the common Creator to be ruled by the reason and subjected to the moral affections in the higher human nature; nevertheless, the ignorance and corruption of our social life have perverted these designs, and covered society with blotches and ulcers horrible to contemplate. In this city alone there are said to be ten thousand prostitutes—lost creatures, so lost that nature denies them offspring, to reproduce themselves, to form a link or have a place in the mighty processions of their kind, that stand out distinct and accursed, dead though alive. And yet each of these blasted ones was created with capacities of love, of affection, of receivingand conferring happiness boundless and measureless. God made them pure and beautiful, and man has transformed them into beings so vile, that their very existence must not be recognized by the pure and virtuous! God created them but a little lower than the angels—man has perverted them into something scarcely better than devils!

What an awful perversion of the instincts of reproduction—of that great vital and fundamental law which animals obey without any violation of it, but which we, in our lofty nature and God-given powers, have thus transformed into such hideous shapes and worked into such sickening and diseased results! The sexes are equal in numbers, and therefore nature designs that all men should marry—that one man should be united to one woman—that they should always be attracted to each other by the affections, and, in their love and companionship, their care for their offspring, for their home and its sweet enjoyments, it offers them rewards the purest, the most exalted, as well as the most rational, that our being is capable of feeling. And yet the sad spectacle is presented every day and all about us, that that which God designed should be the source of our greatest happiness is perverted into the most loathsome and most hideous of social miseries! What may be the causes or the principal causes (for there are doubtless many) of this hideous ulcer at the very heart of modern society, it is needless to inquire—the actual or proximate cause is the perversion of the sexual laws—the violation of the instincts of reproduction wholly unknown among animals and comparatively unknown among the subordinate races of mankind. It is the proud Caucasian—the large-brained and gloriously endowed Caucasian—who mostly exhibits this terrible crime against the higher law, and who thus awfully sins against God and his own nature. Such a thing asprostitutionis unknown among negroes—among the aborigines of this continent, and scarcelyperceptible among Mongols or Chinese. There are, it is true, great vices, shocking indecencies and beastly practices among the Mongols and other subordinate races, but prostitution—the indiscriminate sale of the bodies as well as the desecration of the souls of women for money, as practiced openly in all the great centres of Christendom, is peculiar to the Caucasian alone—to that exalted and highly endowed race which God has so gifted and placed at the head of all other races of mankind.

Mulattoism is to the South what prostitution is to the North—that is, those depraved persons who give themselves up to a wicked perversion of the sexual instincts, resort to the mongrel or “colored women” instead of houses of ill-fame, as in the former case. Such a thing as love, or natural affection, never has nor can attract persons of different races, and therefore all the cohabitations of white men and negro women are abnormal—a perversion of the instincts of reproduction. This “original sin,” as it may well be termed, carries with it, by inevitable necessity, certain consequences, and the declaration of Holy Writ, that the children are punished to the third and fourth generation for the sins of their fathers, is literally true in a physiological sense. The precise laws governing the generation of mulattoism have been already stated, and need not be repeated in this place, but it may be well to remember that the offspring constantly diminishes when hybrids intermarry with hybrids of the same remove, until, reaching the fourth generation, it loses all generative capacity as absolutely as the mule. With this radical and fundamental vice of organization, it will be readily seen that mongrelism can never become an important or dangerous element of population. Mr. Clay once advanced the opinion that the mixed blood of the South was rapidly increasing, and therefore a time would probably come when the negro blood would be absorbed by the whites, and the negrolife be utterly extinct. The ignorant abolition writers have made much of this opinion of Mr. Clay, but whatever the general intellectual superiority of that distinguished gentleman, any common sense person must know that his ignorance of the laws of organization renders his opinion on this subject of no value whatever. Two hundred or one hundred years ago, the proportion of the sexes among the white people was doubtless less equal than now, and therefore those abnormal cohabitations of white men with negro women were more frequent than at present. But after a certain amount or number of the mixed blood these cohabitations would take that direction, and, as at present, would be mainly confined to the hybrid and “colored” women. And in view of the fragility, sterility, and almost universal tendency to disease and disorganization in this mixed and mongrel element, it is seen at a glance how impossible it is that it should ever be of sufficient amount to threaten the safety or even to disturb the peace of Southern society. In proportion to the normal population or to the pure blood, it is doubtless less than it was fifty years ago, and it may even become less in the future, but it is wholly and absolutely impossible that it can ever exist in larger proportion than at present.

This vicious intercourse with the mongrel women at the South, of course, has no resemblance or relation to amalgamation; but it is ignorantly or wilfully thus confounded by the abolition writers of the day. Amalgamation is reciprocal union of the sexes, such as that between the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons in England—that occurs constantly between the natives of this country and those who have migrated here from Europe, and indeed as occurred in Mexico and other Spanish provinces, where the Spanish conquerors, who brought few Spanish females with them, sought wives among the natives or Indian races. The white blood of the South, likethat of the North, is pure and untainted, and a white woman so lost and degraded as to mate with a negro, would not be permitted to even live among negroes in a Southern community. Occasionally a monstrous indecency of this kind does occur at the North, but they are usually English or other foreign-born persons, and unless there was some moral or physical cause—some disease of body or mind which rendered her incapable of self-guidance, it can hardly be supposed that an American-born woman ever committed such an indecent outrage upon her own womanhood, and sin against God, as to mate with a negro. At the South, as has been said, such a thing is altogether impossible, for the woman would not alone be driven from the society of her own race, as at the North, but she would not be permitted (if known) to live even among negroes! Amalgamation can never occur at the South, and scarcely needs an exposition in this place; but as it is now actually taking place in Jamaica and other islands, and, to a certain extent in Cuba, and, moreover, such a monstrous social cataclysm is necessarily involved in the theory or idea of the abolition of “slavery,” it is well enough, perhaps, to give it an explanation.

There are about four millions of negroes in this country, and if, for the purposes of illustration, we may suppose the theory of anti-slaveryism to be finally reduced to practice, the following results must or would occur:—Four millions of whites would form marital unions with these negroes—the men taking negresses to wife, and the females negroes for husbands, ending with the next generation, of course, in mulattoes and the extinction of negroes. The third generation would absorb the mulattoes and end in quadroons; the fourth generation would manifest a corresponding diminution, and a time come when every atom of negro blood would disappear as utterly as if there had never been a negro on this continent. The popularnotion would be, perhaps, like that of Mr. Clay, that amalgamation of the races would absorb the negro blood, it being the smaller element, and this would remain forever floating in the veins of posterity. But this could not be: it would die out, and in time become totally extinct.

If, for example, one hundred of the leading and influential Abolitionists of the day should practically live out their own doctrines—should be placed on some island in the Pacific Ocean, each with a negress as wife, and utterly excluded from intercourse of any kind with the rest of mankind, they and their posterity would, after a certain time, utterly perish from existence. In the second generation whites and negroes alike would be extinct—that which the hand of the Eternal had fashioned, fixed, and designed for His glory and the happiness of His creatures would be blotched, deformed, and transformed by their own wickedness into mulattoes, and could no more exist beyond a given period than any other physical degeneration, no more than tumors, cancers, or other abnormal growths or physical disease can become permanent conditions. The fourth generation, as stated elsewhere, with diminished and diminishing vitality, would impart such feeble glimmerings of life, that their immediate progeny would be as absolutely limited in their powers of virility as mules, and the whole mass of disease and corruption would disappear from the earth, which God has forbidden it to desecrate any longer by its foul and disgusting presence.[2]But contemplating the subjectin mass, or practical abolitionism, as it would work itself out among the millions, if we are permitted, for the purposes of illustration, to suppose such a monstrous and stupendous crime against God and our own being as the actual and practical development of the theory, widely different results would naturally follow. As has been said, four millions of our own white race would be involved in this monstrous maelstrom of amalgamation with the subject race, while the remaining twenty millions would be left untouched and unpolluted by the physical degradation that must needs follow such a stupendous sin as practical abolitionism. But they would not escape the moral deterioration, and the nation, weighed down by mulattoism, by such an ulcer on the body politic, by such a frightful mass of disease and death, would doubtless fall a conquest to some other nation or variety of the master race, and again become English provinces or dependencies of some other European power!

2. Royalism, or a Hereditary Aristocracy, or class that attempts to create a permanent superiority over the great body of the people by incestuous intermarriage with its own members, is punished with similar results as those that attend the violation of the sexual relations of different Races. And the idiotic, impotent, and diseased offspring of hereditary kings has always a certain physiological resemblance to the effete and sterile mulatto. Both are violations of the normal order, and both are limited to a determinate existence, just as any other diseased conditions which nature forbids to live.

Nations are punished in this life, however it may be with individuals, and a sin so enormous, a crime and impiety against God so awful, an outrage on their own nature so boundless and bottomless as practical abolitionism, or the actual living out of the abolition theory, would drag after it, as an inexorable necessity, a corresponding punishment.

History is pregnant with examples of this inevitable law. Nations after nations have risen, flourished, decayed, and died on the African continent; millions upon millions of white Christian men have existed in the valley of the Nile alone; three hundred Christian bishops have met in convention on the site of ancient Carthage, when London was unknown and Rome itself the seat of the heathen Cæsars; and now, of the five hundred millions of Caucasians known to have existed on that continent since the Christian era began, there are probably not one million of typical white men left to tell the tale of theirdestruction, or to mourn over the desolation brought upon them by the crimes and sins of their progenitors. The vastly preponderating white element would doubtless save us from similar consequences, should we ever commit such a hideous crime as that involved in the practical application of the abolition theory; but, as has been said, we would most likely fall a conquest to some European power. But should this fate not overtake us, should we be left to struggle with the load of sin and disease thus brought upon ourselves by our crimes against reason and the ordinances of the Eternal, the nation would in time slough off mulattoism, and finally recover from the foul and horrible contamination of admixture with the blood of the negro. The twenty millions of pure and untainted blood would increase so rapidly over the diseased portion, that finally every trace, atom, and drop or globule of the latter would be utterly extinct, and though the time for this process to work itself out, or for the white race to recover its healthy and natural condition, cannot be estimated with any certainty, such would needs be the final result. This same process, though the parties are directly reversed, is now in active operation in Mexico, and all the Spanish-American States. The Spanish conquerors brought few countrywomen with them, and therefore sought wives among the natives or aboriginal race, and amalgamation became universal in all the Spanish provinces, the result of which has been the generation of a vast and wide-spread mongrelism. The Spanish dominion usually embodied in the pure blood, not from any prejudice against the mixed element, but from jealousy of the native born, preserved order and general prosperity. But the overthrow of this dominion brought the mongrel element into power, for though Iturbide, Santa Anna, Bravo, Bustamente, Parades, all or nearly all the chiefs of Independence were of pure Castilian blood, it was the mongrel element that overthrewthe Spanish power and established the republic. Spaniards were constantly migrating to the American possessions of the Spanish crown, but, with the overthrow of the Spanish dominion, this supply of white blood was cut off, and instead of the generation of mongrelism, from that instant the reparatory process began, which can only end in sloughing off the mixed blood, and the restoration of the aboriginal race to its natural and healthy condition, as it was before the Spanish conquest and the admixture of the white element. This mixed or mongrel element is found in the cities, but it is rapidly declining. Mexico had, at the era of Independence, two hundred thousand inhabitants. It has now little over one hundred thousand people. Puebla, Perote, Jalapa, all the cities of Mexico decline in similar proportion, while the rural population—the pure, untainted, aboriginal element—though placed under great and striking disadvantages, holds its own, and were it guided and cared for, as it was one hundred years ago, would doubtless rapidly increase in number. Nor is it alone the fragility, feebleness, the vicious organization and imperfect vitality of mulattoism, or of the mongrel element, that is thus rapidly diminishing the population in Mexican cities. Themoraleof mongrelism partakes of the physical deformity, and the vices of the mind are as striking and constant as the defects of the body. A creature with half the nature and wants of the white man united in the same existence with those of the Indian, is confronted with another, perhaps three-fourths white, while on the other side of him is one who has three-fourths Indian blood, and population made up of such materials is necessarily and perpetually at war with itself. Hence in all the revolutions of Mexico there is no design, no common object that unite men in common purposes, no sense, reason, or common impulse whatever, except to destroy, to overturn, to seize power to-day without any purpose for to-morrow.And this goes on, and must go on until nature repairs the outrages inflicted on her, until mongrelism dies out and the aboriginal or Indian element is restored to its pristine condition, until every atom of the white blood is extinct and the Indian race is again what it was at the time of the Spanish conquest.

The subject opens up questions of mighty import to us, and possibly, as Mr. Calhoun believed, great dangers to our people and the future of civilization; but if understood—if American legislators and statesmen comprehend the real character of these vast populations south of us, known as the Spanish-American republics, and apply to them the true principles of social and political economy, when the time comes to deal with them, there need be little or no apprehension in regard to the results. Meanwhile, the solution of these problems is every day becoming simpler and more easily understood. The mixed blood is rapidly dying out; a time must come when it will be wholly extinct, and then the white American will stand face to face with the native, a race which, whatever may be our experience of it in the North, is easily governed, and as has been said, if understood, there need be little or no apprehension of danger or difficulty in regard to it.

The same process is going on in Jamaica and other islands, though here it is the negro instead of the Indian that is in issue. An idea or assumption was set up in England that the negroes of these islands wereblackwhite men—men like themselves, except in color—and therefore naturally entitled to the same rights; and a party sprung up that at last induced the British Parliament to “abolish” the existing relations of the whites and negroes, and to place them on the same political and legal level. The white people protested against this wrong and outrage on reason and common sense, but it was of no avail. Their cry for mercy was unheard—at all events,disregarded—and the helpless and outraged whites are now in process of utter extinction by amalgamation.

The same political and legalstatusleads, of course, to the same social level, and it, in turn, to the general admixture of blood. A white woman is not likely, even under these unnatural circumstances, to desecrate her womanhood by mating with a negro, though public sentiment forces her to associate with them. But this woman marries a man with one-eighth or one-fourth of negro blood, without hesitation, and the woman of this shade readily mates with a mulatto, and the latter with the typical negro. Thus, while natural instinct shrinks from such a crime against nature and such an impiety toward God as the marriage or mating of the pure types, the outward force of legal and political systems impels all shades of mongrelism in the direction of the preponderating element; and a time must come when the white blood, becoming extinct, the negro will relapse, of course, into his native Africanism.

The outward presence of a foreign government impels the unhappy white people of these fertile and beautiful islands into this monstrous violation of the laws of organization, and certain ultimate social destruction; but the power of the government also restrains the negro element from a rapid collapse into its native Africanism. In Hayti, where all external or governmental influence is withdrawn, the negro nature already strongly manifests its normal savagery, when no longer restrained by the master race, and the worship of Obi or Feticism, and even the native African dialect, is becoming common to many districts in that island. In general terms, it may be said that the exact moment when the white blood becomes extinct is also the instant when Africanism is perfectly restored, but the outward presence of the British government on the islands, and of the Colonization Society in Liberia, will prevent the completedevelopment of this otherwise natural and necessary law. That the white blood of Jamaica must be absorbed, or rather must die out, is a necessity, an effect, a fate that is unavoidable—the final end being alone a question of time. A foreign government, as has been said, regardless of the protests and the cry for mercy of its unfortunate people, forcibly changed their relations to the subordinate race. It declared the negroes the legal and political equals of the whites; this necessarily led to social equality—that, in its turn, to the marriage of whites and quadroons—quadroons with mulattoes, and mulattoes with negroes; thus the process, beginning with the act of the British Parliament abolishing “slavery,” ends naturally and necessarily in the social immolation and final extinction of the white people of that island.

All the links in the chain are continuous—all the series of events dependent on each other—all the steps of the process naturally united; the emancipation, the legal equality, the social level, the admixture of blood, and the ultimate extinction, are part and parcel of the same awful crime against nature and against God, against the laws of organization and against the decrees of the Eternal. Theend, therefore, of these things must be the restoration of the pure Indian type on the main land and that of the negro in the islands; and, as has been said, though the time needed for the completion of this reparatory process—for such it is, physiologically considered—may not be determined with certainty, it can not be very distant, and were white men to stand aloof and permit the process to work itself out, without interference, it is quite probable that a hundred, or, at most, a hundred and fifty years hence, there would not be a drop of white blood found south of our own limits.

Mulattoism is an abnormalism—a disease—a result that brings suffering unspeakable as well as extinction—that is unavoidable; and, in view of this fate brought upon them by aforeign government, who can doubt but that the total slaughter of the white people of Jamaica would have been merciful, in comparison to that forced upon them by the abolition of “slavery,” and equality with negroes? Or will any one sufficiently informed on this subject, who understands the physical and moral suffering involved or inseparably linked with the mixed blood, doubt for a moment that, as a question of humanity, it would be vastly more humane to slaughter all the negroes in our midst, rather than apply to them the abolition theory, or rather than doom them to legal equality, to amalgamation, to mulattoism, mongrelism, and that final unavoidable extinction that necessarily attends the minor element under these circumstances? But in addition to the physical suffering attending the process of extinction in Jamaica, it was, or is, or must be, the annihilation of Caucasian intelligence, of civilization, of all that God has bestowed upon His creatures that is exalted and glorious, and therefore the crime perpetrated, however blindly or well-intentioned, must stand out in future ages the most awful and impious ever known in human annals.

Such is a brief outline of the physiological laws governing mulattoism and mongrelism—that abnormal or diseased condition which results from admixture of the blood of separate races or species of men. Its mental and moral features are equally distinct and discordant, though less susceptible of explanation or of being classified, as in the case of the merely physical qualities. As a general principle the mongrel has intellectual ability in proportion as he approximates to the superior race. This is a necessary truth; there is mental capacity or intelligence, latent or actual, in exact proportion to the size of the brain, in animals, indeed, as well as human beings, as certainly and invariably as there is muscular power in proportion to the size and form of the muscles; but this principle is hardly a guide or test in respect to the moral qualities of the mixedblood. There is scarcely anything or any phase of the general subject that has so blinded and led astray “anti-slavery” writers as this subject of mulattoism; for they were not only ignorant of it, but never dreamed for a moment that there was any such thing in existence, and constantly assumed in their reasonings (?) that the mulatto was a negro, and therefore presented him, and even the quadroon, as an evidence of the mental capacity of that race. One of these people would find his way to England or the North, was educated, became an editor, physician, priest, sometimes even an author, on a small scale perhaps, at all events a public lecturer, to whom white men and women listened with the utmost gravity, and perfectly satisfied themselves of the mental equality of the races, for here was a negro who talked the same language, had the same ideas, and was quite as eloquent as the general average among white men. Even the Abbé Gregoire labored under this very absurd and very general misconception, and wrote a book giving the biography of fifteen negroes to prove the mental equality of the races, not one of whom was a negro at all! Some mules are doubtless superior to some horses, but no mule was ever equal to the average horse; and doubtless some mulattoes have been superior to some white men, but no mulatto ever did nor ever can reach the intellectual standard of the Caucasian. What nonsense it would be to point out a favorite mule to show that asses were the equals of horses; yet this nonsense, or similar nonsense, is practised every day by those who rely upon mongrels and hybrids to prove the mental capacity of the negro! Indeed, quadroons, and even mongrels, with only one-eighth of negro blood, like Roberts, the President of Liberia, have been quoted as illustrations of negro character and accepted as perfectly satisfactory by the blind followers of the equally blind teachers of Abolitionism. The fact that such a thing as an “educated” mulatto exists at all among us,as long as we have uneducated white men, is a disgrace to the nation, to our institutions, to our social development; and in England it serves as a test of social wrong and wickedness frightful to contemplate. As has been said, no mule was ever equal to the average horse, so no mulatto was ever created equal to the standard white man; yet in England there are eight millions unable to read or write, and through human institutions rendered inferior to the “educated” mulatto! The moral qualities of the mixed element are less definite, but every one’s observations, as well as history and statistics, tend to the same general conclusion—the greater viciousness of the mulatto when compared with either of the original types or typical races. This essential truth, common to all exceptional and abnormal conditions, is universally manifested among “slaves” at the South, “free” negroes at the North, mestizoes in Mexico, or the whilom hybrids of Hayti. The mongrels of Mexico—the so-called Leperos—are thieves, ladrones, robbers, and assassins, not like the Italian bravos of a former age, who, to a certain extent, redeemed their horrible crimes by a kind of chivalrous daring which gave their victims some chance for life, but secret, crouching, and cowardly assassins, who never attack where there is the slightest danger to themselves. They crouch, concealed in the shadow of a wall or door-way, enveloped in huge cloaks, with the exception of the arm that wields the keen, narrow-bladed, and double-edged knife, which is plunged in the back of the hapless victim, and then they invariably run away, unless supported by their vile companions. In the field they never face white men except when their numbers are overwhelming, and they give no quarter; but if themselves defeated, their cry for mercy is so intolerable in its groveling clamor, that the victor is disposed to dispatch them at once to get rid of it. With diminished vitality, and less hold on existence than the pure blood, the mongrel, whileutterly reckless of life in respect to others, clings to it himself and shrinks from death with an abject terror rarely or never witnessed in the original races. The typical negro, for example, though brave enough when led by his master, shrinks in terror from the face of the lordly Caucasian when not thus supported, and a score or two of the latter in the open field would doubtless drive a thousand negroes before them like sheep to the slaughter. But a negro condemned to die, to be hanged, to be burned even, rarely manifests dread or apprehension of any kind. His imperfect innervation, his sluggish brain, and low grade of sensibility, render him incapable of anticipating that terrible physical suffering from which the elaborate and exquisitely organized Caucasian suffers under these circumstances. So, too, the Indian—“the stoic of the woods—the man without a tear,” as the poet Campbell, and others ignorant of his nature, have represented him—a creature, according to their absurd fancies, fashioned on the Roman model, with the self-poised and philosophical indifference to outward things of a Seneca, and the calm contempt of physical suffering of a Cato, but who, all this time, in his grosser organization, has none of the white man’s perceptions of physical pain, and therefore sings his death-song in total unconsciousness of that which to us is the extreme, or supposed extreme, of physical suffering.

This organic insensibility of the lower races to physical pain, which renders them indifferent to the approach of death, is sometimes equalled, and perhaps surpassed, as regards the outward expression, by the dominating moral forces in the case of the higher organized Caucasian. Lamartine has said that the mistress of Louis XV., the notorious Duchess Du Barry, was the only person sent to the guillotine during the reign of terror that asked for mercy, or shrank with terror from the approach of death. Not men alone, but women, even delicatelynurtured young girls, who, under ordinary circumstances, would faint on witnessing the death of a sparrow, ascended the steps of the guillotine without a tear or the quiver of a muscle. They died for an idea, and a false one at that, but they believed it true and immutable as heaven itself, and the exaltation of the mind over the body, the dominating moral forces over the laws of the physical being, enabled them to meet death without a murmur, and, as regards the outward expression, to seem as indifferent to the physical pain involved, as the Indian or the negro, whose lower organization is incapable of such suffering.

But the mulatto or mongrel has neither the physical insensibility of the inferior nor the moral force of the superior race, and the instinctive consciousness of his feeble vitality renders him the most cowardly of human beings. The generals and leaders of the mixed blood in Spanish America, as well as those of Hayti, have been as much distinguished for their monstrous vices, their treachery, cowardice, sensuality, and ferocity, as for any special ability they may have displayed. The cruel and despotic government of Spain, when desirous to crush the revolutionists, invariably trusted the bloody work to mongrel chiefs, who just as invariably exceeded their orders, and when directed to decimate a town or village, often massacred the entire population.

The mongrel generals of Hayti were even more ferocious and bloody, if not surpassing in treachery and cowardice the Indian mongrels of the Continent. Rigaud, the most distinguished of the Haytien chiefs, was also the most repulsive in his enormous and beastly vices. Christophe and Dessalines were negroes, and they simply acted out the negro instinct under those unnatural circumstances. They remorselessly slaughtered all the white men, women, and children of the island that they could find, for when the negro risesagainst his master, it is not to conquer but to exterminate the dreaded race; and the helpless infant or its frightened and despairing mother touches no chord of mercy in the souls of these frantic and terror-stricken wretches when forced or betrayed into resistance to their masters. But the mongrel leaders, and especially Rigaud, were mere moral monsters, whose deeds of slaughter were alternated with scenes of beastly debauchery and unnatural and devilish revelry, such as could neither originate in the simple animalism of the negro nor with the most sensual, perverse, and fiendish among white men.

But we have this viciousness of the mongrel displayed continually before us at the North as well as at the South. Nine-tenths of the crime committed by so-called negroes is the work of the mongrel—the females almost all being as lewd and lascivious as the males are idle, sensual, and dishonest. The strange and disgusting delusion that has fastened itself on so many minds at the North seeks to cast an air of romance over these mongrel women—these “girls almost white”—and in negro novels and on the stage represent them as “victims of caste,” and often doomed to a fate worse than death to gratify the “vices of the whites.” And a diseased sentimentality, as indecent as it is nonsensical, is indulged by certain “pious ladies” in respect to these “interesting” quadroons, etc., who are almost always essentially vicious, while their own white sisters falling every hour from the ranks of pure womanhood, are unheeded, and their terrible miseries totally disregarded.

Finally, it scarcely need be repeated that mongrelism is a diseased condition—a penalty that nature imposes for the violation of her laws—a punishment that, by an inexorable necessity, is inflicted on the offspring of those who, in total disregard of her ordinances, of instinct, of natural affection, and of reason, form sexual interunions with persons of different races, but which, like all other abnormal conditions, is confined within fixed limits and mercifully doomed to final extinction.

Back to Index Next