CHAPTER XVIII.THE DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS.
The instinct of paternity—the love and care of offspring—is common to all creatures, animal and human, and is indeed necessary to the preservation of their existence. The animal frequently exhibits it more decidedly than the human creature, and however unseemly it may be, we, even our own supremely endowed race, may take a lesson from it. The animal instinct, however, is limited to the mere preservation of the life of its offspring, and the latter, when a certain development is reached, no longer needs it, for its own instinct then guides it to preserve itself.
The love, and care, and guidance of the Caucasian mother for her child is both a profound instinct and a lofty sentiment, and indeed calls into action the highest capabilities of her nature, her profoundest intelligence as well as the most exalted and self-sacrificing affection. It begins with the birth and ends only with the death, for though it is constantly modified by time and changes in the development of her offspring, it accompanies the latter through life, and disappears only at the portals of the grave.
God has endowed the parents with the highest intelligence, and laid on them the command or the duty of caring for their offspring—not the mere bodily preservation, as in the case of the animal, but the education, the guidance and development of the faculties, the moral capabilities as well as the intellectual powers of their children. He, therefore, has endowedthem with affections of corresponding breadth and strength, and adapted them to these duties, and, moreover, rewards them with corresponding enjoyment or happiness in the affections and love of their offspring. These duties are too often imperfectly performed, indeed often misunderstood. They are sometimes delegated to others, sometimes carelessly fulfilled, and often disregarded altogether. They should never be delegated to others unless the loss of health or some imperative cause exists. The mother should always nurse her own child—if able to do so—and the parents should always educate their own children. In the main, this is done in our American society, for though children go to the public schools, the impress of the character is generally made at home. The child arriving at adult age, and no longer needing the care and guidance of the parents, marries and leaves home, but the affection of the parents, especially that of the mother, accompanies it through life, and not unfrequently, after a separation of forty years, it is found to be as strong and fresh as in the days of childhood. The large brain of the Caucasian mother, or her large intellectual nature, as has been said, is associated with corresponding capabilities of affection. The interests of life, the social welfare, the progress of civilization—in short, absolute social necessities, demand this, for were it otherwise, were the affections limited to the infancy of the offspring, society, as it now exists, or indeed anything at all resembling it, would obviously be impossible.
The interest of parents in their children, years after they have left home—their grandchildren, etc., though separated thousands of miles—their letters to them, their visits to the old homestead, and the ten thousand other nameless things that bind together those of the same blood, constitute a large portion of our social existence, and is indeed an essential part of our civilization. Andallof this is dependent on the affectionsand in harmony with the elevated intellectualism of the race, the breadth and strength of the former corresponding, of course, with the mental endowments and specific capabilities of the Caucasian.
The negro, of course, is endowed with affections, approximating in some respects, indeed in many respects, to those of our own race, but there are some things, some qualities in his emotional nature utterly different, and then again some things specific with us totally absent in the negro. The mother has a similar love for her offspring at an early period in its existence, possibly stronger, or rather more imperatively instinctive, than that of the white woman. Instances are not unfrequent among the lower classes in England, and other European countries, where mothers destroy their offspring, and painful as it is to acknowledge it, the same thing sometimes happens at the North; but though an instance of the kind is possible, there have been so few among negroes at the South as to warrant us in saying that not one person in a thousand has ever heard of such a thing. It is true, the negro is in a normal condition, and the European peasant is, to a certain extent, in an abnormal one, and vice and crime, and consequent misery, are always in exact proportion to the extent of the latter in all races. Nevertheless, it is quite certain that, both living under equally favorable circumstances, the negress is less likely to destroy the life of her offspring than is the white woman. Her maternal instincts are more imperative, more closely approximate to the animal, while that sense of degradation which the higher nature and more elevated sensibilities of the white woman prompts to the hiding of her shame by the destruction of her offspring, is entirely absent in the negress. She may possibly destroy her child in a paroxysm of rage, but here nature has guarded her too strongly by the imperative maternal instinct, while those ten thousand chances in our higherhabitudes and social complications which may involve the most exquisite suffering of the unhappy mother, and impel her, by one terrible and supreme crime, to destroy her own offspring, can never happen or influence the negro mother.
A few years since a “slave” woman escaping from Kentucky to Ohio was recognized and taken back to her home, but on the way down the river cut the throat of her child, whom she had carried off in her flight. The Abolitionists, of course, admired and praised this bloody deed, and declared that, rather than her child should live a slave, she, with Roman sternness and French exaltation, herself destroyed its life. If they had said that the mother had killed her child because it was not permitted to have a white skin, or straight hair, or to have any otherspecialtyof white people, it would have been quite as rational and as near the truth as to say that she killed it because it was not to grow up with the freedom of the white man. The woman was doubtless a mulatto or mongrel, who in revenge possibly for the supposed wrong, inflicted this punishment on those whom she had been taught to believe had wronged her. But while this unnatural crime was quite possible, as indeed any unnatural vice or crime is always possible to the mixed element, it is scarcely possible to the negress, whose imperative maternal instinct, as has been observed, shields her from such atrocity. The negro mother has always control and direction of her offspring at the South so long as that is needed by the latter. The master, of course, is the supreme ruler—the guide, director, the common father, the very providence of these simple and subordinate people, but while his is the directing power that sees to all their wants, and protects them in all their rights, the relations of mother and child are rarely interfered with, for both the interests of the master and the happiness of the mother demand that she should have the care and enjoy the affection of her own offspring.This, however, is confined to a limited sphere when contrasted with the instinctive habitudes and enlarged intellectualism of our own race. The negro child, in some respects, at the same age, is more intelligent than the white child. This same fact is manifested by our domestic animals. The dog or calf of six months is vastly less dependent on the mother than the human creature. The negro child, with its vastly greater approximation to the animal, is also less dependent at a certain age than the white child. As frequently stated in this work, the negro has absolutely nothing in common with animals that our own race has not.
There is an impassable chasm, wide as it is deep and everlasting, between the human and animal creation. But while the negro has nothing whatever in common with animals that we ourselves have not, in all those things or qualities in a sense common to both men and animals, the negro has a vastly larger approximation to the latter. As the intelligence or the capacity of providing for itself, therefore, is more rapidly developed in the animal, so, too, in the case of the negro child, at a certain age it is less dependent on the care and affection of the mother than is that of white people. Those ignorant and perverse persons who stifle the impulses and sympathies with which God has endowed them for their kind, and engage in teaching, as they suppose, negro children, have been so impressed by this fact, that in their utter ignorance of the negro nature, they have inferred that the latter was really the superior race; they have often found a negro boy or girl of ten years, for example, whose perceptions, memory, etc., seemed to them, and, doubtless, sometimes were, more clear, prompt, and decided, than those of white children of the same age, and therefore they were quite convinced of the superiority of the negro and of the sublimity and immensity of their own labors in thushelping on the intellectual development of a wronged and down-trodden but really superior race.
But if they could have followed out the future of these children for a few years, and were persons of sufficient understanding to analyze facts at all, they would have made a still more startling discovery than that of the fancied superiority of the negro. The negro mind reaches its maturity, its complete development, at from twelve to fifteen years, and though there may be vastly more knowledge or experience, the negro of fifty has no more actual mental capacity than he had at fifteen. The faculties directly dependent on the senses are actively and rapidly developed in the negro child, but the reflective faculties, the faculties in regard to which the senses are mere avenues through which external influences are conveyed to the brain, are absent, of course, in the negro, for there is an absence of brain itself, and therefore it is just as absurd to imagine him possessing them as to suppose the sense of sight in any creature without eyes or without an organism for that faculty. The white boy, on the contrary, only begins at this age to manifest the reflective faculties, which, constantly expanding, doubtless reach their maturity from twenty to twenty-five. Of course the mind may continue to expand in a sense for many years, for a life-time, but the actual mental capabilities, like those of the body, doubtless reach their normal standard from twenty to twenty-five. Thus, a white boy and negro of ten, with the faculties directly dependent on the senses possibly most active in the latter, begin a year or two later to diverge from each other. The negro at fifteen, with scarcely perceptible reflective faculties, remains stationary, while the Caucasian, with constantly increasing powers, with imagination, comparison, and reflection, superadded to the mere perceptive faculties, requires several years more for the development of his complete intellectual nature. It is not merely thatthe negro mind becomes stationary at twelve to fifteen, for tothemit is complete development, but if we can suppose a white boy of twelve to fourteen remaining thus—mentally considered—through life, then we can form a pretty accurate conception of the mental differences between white men and negroes, for the latter are intellectually boys for ever. This is a common and familiar expression at the South, which originates in the nature and necessities of things, and the term boy expresses the intellectual existence of the negro as truthfully as the termmanexpresses the physical condition of the white man.
The affections harmonize, of course, with the mental nature, and the love of the negro mother corresponds with the wants of the offspring. She has a boundless affection for her infant; it grows feebler as the capacities of the child are developed; at twelve to fifteen she is relatively indifferent to it; at forty she scarcely recognizes it; and all of these phases in the maternal instinct or domestic affections of the race are in accord with its specific nature and the purposes assigned it by the Almighty Creator. Without the enlarged brain and reasoning power of the white mother, nature has made amends to the negress, and provided for the wants of her offspring by giving her a more imperative maternal instinct, that shall insure its safety and welfare. When the negro reaches maturity, at twelve to fifteen, nature has accomplished her purposes. The offspring no longer needs her care, and the mother becomes indifferent to it, and it cares little for the mother. A few years later, and she forgets it altogether, for her affections corresponding with her intellectual nature, there is no basis, or material, or space for such things. Of course, living in juxtaposition with the superior race, and the imitative faculty of the negro constantly brought into action, there is a seeming resemblance to white people in these respects. But one only needs to remember themental qualities of the negro—the small and widely different brain, and consequently feeble, and, as compared with us, limited sphere of intellectualism, to see the absurdity of endowing the negro with domestic affections corresponding with ours. At twelve to fifteen, as has been said, the purposes of nature are accomplished. The offspring no longer needs the care of the mother—the affections with which nature endowed her are no longer needed. Why should they exist, then? Isolated in Africa, they perhaps rarely feel any interest in their offspring after the latter reach maturity, and, separated a few years, would not know them, would have no recollection of them, for there is no civilization, no social development, nothing whatever of that which we call society, and in which with us the domestic affections—the family relationship—the love of mother, wife, sisters, brothers, and offspring constitute so large and essential a part. The limited intelligence of the negro, the small brain and feeble (scarcely perceptible) reasoning faculties, it will be evident to the reader, must be accompanied by corresponding domestic affections and an emotional nature that accords with this limited intellectualism. And this is manifested in the habits, wants, and condition of the negro at the South, in his feeble and capricious love for his wife and indifference to his offspring, redeemed only in the potent and instinctive affection of the mother in its earlier years for her child. The strongest affection the negro nature is capable of feeling is love of his master, his guide, protector, friend, and indeed Providence, who takes care of him in sickness and shelters and provides for him in old age and helplessness. God has adapted all His creatures for the wisest and most beneficent purposes, has endowed the negro with affections harmonizing with his wants, has given the negro mother imperative maternal instincts that shall secure the safety and welfare of her offspring, but little more, for little more is needed; forsociety or civilization neither does nor can belong to negro existence, while affection for his master, love and devotion to him who protects and provides for him through life, is both a necessity and an enjoyment, and therefore God has made it the strongest and most enduring feeling of the negro nature. Of the four or five millions in our midst, great numbers are the children or grandchildren of African parents, a few even are of African birth, but probably not one has any distinct memory, recollection, or tradition of their forefathers[3]—not one that cherishes any past family sentiment or affection of any kind whatever, indeed not one that even preserves an African name! We trace back not alone the general but the family histories, the loves and affections, the hopes and fears, and sacrifices and sufferings of our pilgrim forefathers of two or three centuries ago, because all this accords with the large brain and expanded intellectualism, and the corresponding strength and breadth of the affections, which may be said to be the motive forces which impel the whole social phenomena in question. But the negro neither has nor can have any thing in common with this. He has no capacities of the kind, no civilization or social development, and therefore no wants of the kind, no affections even resembling our own, though at the same time God has endowed him with all that is necessary to his happiness and to the mutual welfare of both races when in juxtaposition.
3. These facts, and some others mentioned in this chapter, were referred to in a previous one, but they need to be repeated in this connection to fix them fully on the mind of the reader, as well as to explain the subject here under discussion.
3. These facts, and some others mentioned in this chapter, were referred to in a previous one, but they need to be repeated in this connection to fix them fully on the mind of the reader, as well as to explain the subject here under discussion.
The affection of the mother for her child, and the husband for the wife, though widely different from that which we witness in our own race, is abundantly sufficient for the purposes that nature has in view, and with the accomplishment of thesepurposes they subside. The affection for the master, which is necessary to their welfare through life, remains—the sole enduring affection of the negro nature, as it is obviously the sole permanent want of the negro existence. The laws and legislation of the Southern States generally accord with these facts of the negro nature, for though those who have made these laws were unable to explain them even to themselves, their every-day experience and practical knowledge of the negro enable them to legislate for the wants and welfare of these people as well and justly as for themselves. Probably all, or nearly all of the States forbid the separation of the mother and child, so long as the maternal instinct remains, or her care of her offspring is needed by the latter; and even if there be no law of this kind on the statute-book of some States, it is in the hearts and instincts of the dominant race, and is equally potent in the form of public sentiment to prevent such an outrage on nature as the forced separation of mother and child.
There are, doubtless, instances where wrong is done at the South, as well as elsewhere, to the subordinate negro as well as to our own kind, but with the same political and social system as that of the North, and with vastly more political intelligence and faithfulness to the principles of that system, it is only reasonable to conclude that, in regard to the negro element, the same enlightened spirit of justice and fair dealing generally pervades Southern society. And when it is remembered that the social adaptation is in harmony with the natural relations of the races, and not only that there is no social conflict, but, on the contrary, that it is the utmost interest of the master to treat his negroes kindly, then whatever the temporary exceptions, the general result must be in favor of the happiness and welfare of these people.