Let the traducers of the African race, those who affect to believe that his faculties consist in mere “imitation,” answer this inquiry. Even in the Southern States, terribly crushed and shattered as has been for centuries the true African character, these lurking faculties for the higher attainments rising superior to the fetters which bound the body of the possessor, would occasionally burst forth like the sudden illumination of a brilliant meteor, startling the midnight gazer while all was enshrined in darkness around. Whether in the person of the distinguished orator and advocate of his race, Frederick Douglass of Maryland, or an Ellis, the negro blacksmith linguist, or George Madison Washington of Virginia, or Blind Tom of Alabama, the musician and pianist, now surprising the world, Elizabeth Greenfield of Mississippi, the celebrated “Black Susan,”—all slaves when developed,—these great truths of African susceptibility are incontrovertible. With one more point this treatise shall have ended. But subsequent to its completion, and very recently, a high functionary, at the head of one the greatest nations of modern times, in an elaborate argument on the subject, having seen fit to make it history, by recording, as part of an official document, the following declaration, I deem it as treacherous to the African race, to which I wholly belong, if I did not place as permanently on record an equally bold and defiant declaration—a proof to the contrary. Says this sage and statesman,—
“The peculiar qualities which should characterize any people who are fit to decide upon the management of public affairs for a great state have seldom been combined. It is the glory of white men to know that they have had these qualities in sufficient measure to build upon this continent a great political fabric, and to preserve its stability for more than ninety years, while in every other part of the world all similar experiments have failed. But if anything can be proved by known facts, if all reasoning upon evidence is not abandoned, it must be acknowledged that, in the progress of nations, negroes have shown less capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, whenever they have been left to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.” Instead of the assertion, that in the progress of the nations the negro has shown less capacity for government than any other race of people, that no independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands, I shall commend a reply to this predicate, by the proposition that the negroes were foremost in the progress of time; first who developed the highest type of civilization. National civil government and the philosophy of religion were borrowed by the white races from the negro. And if the learned jurist will go back to school-boy days, he will remember what time has evidently caused him to forget.
In the days of Egyptian greatness one dynasty existed, evidently, for more than one thousand years. This is known to Holy Writ as the government of the Pharaohs. During the reign of these princes, the sovereigns repeatedly were chosen from Egyptian and Ethiopian families. By Ethiopian families, is meant the going out of the kingdom of Ethiopia to select from a royal family the ruler, just as Great Britain goes into Germany to select from a family a sovereign for the throne.
Among these mighty princes were Menes, or Misraim, Sesostris, Osiris, and the Rameses, the last of which was the dynasty name numerically recorded I., II., III., and so on. Rameses I., the greatest of the princes, was the god-man, and none other than Jupiter-Ammon. In him was the beautiful and symbolic idea of the attributes of Deity,—the Christian’s God,—first developed. The person of the Deity, Rameses I., was represented as a human being of robust proportions, having a “bushy, woolly head, with ram’s horns.” His position, seated on a throne of gold and ivory, ivory base and golden floor; in his left hand a sceptre, the right grasping a thunderbolt. At his side was the Phœnix, in its well-known attitude. This last symbolic attribute is sometimes, indeed generally, spoken of by writers as an “eagle with extended wings,” which is evidently an error, from all the facts connected with the god Jupiter, and Rameses II., his successor; besides, the eagle was not an ideal, symbolic bird of religion in Africa. It is suggestive of combat and carnality instead of purity, the successor being styled by the ever-devoted Africans, “Rameses the Ever-living, Always-living Rameses”—his name occurring twice in the salutation.
Here, in this ideal symbol of a God, was also the identity of man; ivory representing durability, gold, purity, the sceptre, authority, and the thunderbolt, power; the ram’s head, innocence, decision, and caution against too near approach. In a word, none must presume to attempt to speak face to face with the Deity, as death would be the result; as it is a well-known characteristic of a ram, while innocent as a sheep, he will instantly attack any head, man’s or beast’s, that approaches his.
Another beautiful symbolic attribute of Jupiter-Ammon,—Rameses I.,—which afterwards personified Rameses II., was the Phœnix. This bird, like many ancient images, was allegorical or ideal. It was described as similar to an eagle, larger, and beautiful; with breast, wings, and tail of a brilliant gold tint; a crown of solid gold crest capped its head, the rest of the body covered with green. It never flew, but always walked with stately step and dignity. There was but one known to have an existence, and the beginning was never known. It produced no young, but was itself from the beginning a full-grown bird. It lived, and lived, and lived on, from generation to generation, through ages and periods, and periods and ages, till, seeming weary of life, it built a nest of fagots and brush picked up, which was long constructing; sat upon it when finished, laid a golden egg in time; the egg ignited the nest into a burning mass; the bird continuing to sit, threw up its wings and head in great excitement, and was consumed in the flames; when in the ashes was left a ball, out of the ball came forth a worm, from this worm instantly sprang another Phœnix, which lived on like the first, to transfigurate or reproduce itself again in time.
There were still other symbolic representatives of Deity among them, Rameses II. being also called Apis, and represented as an ox or a bull; while Rameses III. was called Osiris, and represented as a dog—the ox or bull, as the attribute of patience, endurance, and strength; the dog, as faithfulness and watchfulness.
Is it not clear that much of the philosophy of our theology was borrowed from their mythology? Whence the “great white throne” upon which God sits; the “golden pavement,” the “thunders” of his wrath, “Behold the Lamb of God,” “Our God is a consuming fire,” “No man can look upon God and live,” “A self-creating God,” with numerous kindred quotations which might be made from the Scriptures?
The Africans, as is well known, were great herdsmen; a great part of their wealth and available currency consisting in their live stock; every family, however limited their circumstances, having a flock of sheep or goats, and both more or less; this running through to the present day, where, in recent travels on that continent, the writer met, in the first large city, a dairyman, who, every morning, milked eighty cows, and farther in the interior, towards Soudan, the dairy which supplied him every morning milked two hundred cows. And among the higher families, as nobles, chiefs, and princes, from five to ten thousand head, the property of one person or family, is commonly met with. Dr. Livingstone speaks of meeting with kings, even in that least civilized interior region of his explorations, who possessed as many as forty thousand cattle. These herds are watched by faithful attendants,—men when large, or women when small, with the indispensable shepherd dog, which is generally black. In speaking of the riches of Job, the man of Uz, the Scriptures tell us that his cattle were on a “thousand hills.”