Several attempts have been made to define the racial characteristics of the Negro, but they have not been attended with success.
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe has written more and written better about the American Negro than any other person during the present century. She has given laboriously and minutely wrought pictures of plantation life. She has held up to the gaze of the world portraitures comic and serio-comic, which for the gorgeousness and awfulness of their drapery will perish only with the language in which they are painted.
But Mrs. Stowe's great characters are marred by some glaring imperfections. "Uncle Tom" is too goodish, too lamb-like, too obsequious. He is a child of full growth, yet lacks the elements of an enlarged manhood. His mind is feeble, body strong—too strong for the conspicuous absence of spirit and passion.
"Dred" is the divinest character of the times—is prophet, preacher, and saint. He is so grand. He is eloquent beyond compare, and as familiar with the Bible as if he were its author. And every hero Mrs. Stowe takes in charge must make up his mind to get religion, lots of it too, and then prepare to die. There is a terrible fatality among her leading characters.
Mrs. Stowe has given but one side of Negro character, and that side is terribly exaggerated. But all strong natures like hers are given to exaggeration. Wendell Phillips never tells the truth, and yet he always tells the truth. He is a man of strong convictions, and always pronounces his conviction strongly. He has a poetical nature, is a word-painter, and, therefore, indulges in the license of the poet and painter. Mrs. Stowe belongs to this school of writers. The lamb and lion are united in the Negro character. Mrs. Stowe's mistake consists in ascribing to the Negro a peculiarly religious character and disposition. Here is detected the mistake. The Negro is not, as she supposes, the most religious being in the world. He has more religion and has less religion than any other of the races, in one sense. And yet, divorced from the circumstances by which he has been surrounded in this country, he is not so very religious. Mrs. Stowe seizes upon a characteristic that belongs to mankind wherever mankind is enslaved, and gently binds it about the neck of the Negro. All races of men become religious when oppressed. Frederick the Great was an infidel when with his friend Voltaire, but when suffering the reverses of war in Silesia he could write very pious letters to his "favorite sister." This is true in national character when traced to its last analysis. Men pray while they are down in life, but curse when up. And of necessity the religion of a bond people is not always healthy. There is an involuntary turning to a divine helper; a sort of religious superstition, that believes all things, hopes all things, and is patient. The soul of such a people is surcharged with an almost incredulous amount of poetry, song, and rude but grand eloquence. And when the songs that cheered and lighted many a heavy heart in the starless night of bondage shall have been rescued and purified by the art of music, the hymnology of this century will be greatly indebted to this much-abused people. So, under this religious garb, woven by the cruel experiences consequent upon slavery, the lion slumbers in the Negro.
Every year since the close of the Rebellion the Negro has been taking on better and purer traits of character. Possessed of an impressible nature, a discriminating sense of the beautiful, and a deep, pure taste for music, his progress has been phenomenal. Strong in his attachments, gentle in manners, confiding, hopeful, enduring in affection, and benevolent to a fault, there is no limit to the outcome of his character.
Like the oscillations of the pendulum of a clock the Negro is swinging from an extreme religious fanaticism to an extreme rationalism. But he will finally take his position upon a solid religious basis; and to his "faith" will add virtue, knowledge, and good works. Everywhere under good influences he has made a good citizen. No issue in the State has been foreign to him. He has proven his patriotism and his fondness for this land to which he was dragged in chains, and in his obedience to its laws and devotion to its principles has stood second to none. His home promises much good. His whole life seems to have undergone a radical change. He has shown a disposition and delight in the education of his children; and the constantly growing demand for competent teachers and educated preachers shows that he has outgrown his old ideas concerning education and religion. From an insatiable desire for gewgaws he has turned to a practice of the precepts of economy. From the state of semi-civilization in which he cared only for the comforts of the present, his desires and wants have swept outward and upward into the years to come and toward the Mysterious Future. He has learned the difficult lesson that "man shall not live by bread alone," and has shown himself delighted with a keen sense of intellectual hunger. One hundred weekly newspapers, conducted by Negroes, are feeding the mind of the race, binding communities together by the cords of common interests and racial sympathy; while the works of twenty Negro authors[141] lend inspiration and purpose to every honest effort at self-improvement.
The fiery trials of the young Colored men who gained admission to West Point, and the noble conduct of the four regiments of black troops in the severe service of the frontiers have strengthened the hopes of a nation in the final outcome of the American Negro.
But what of the future? Can the Negro endure the sharp competition of American civilization? Can he keep his position against the tendencies to amalgamation? Since it has been proven that the Negro is not dying out, but on the contrary possesses the powers of reproduction to a remarkable degree, a new source of danger has been discovered. It is said that the Negro will perish, will be absorbed by the dominant race ere long; that where races are crossed the inferior race suffers; and that mixed races lack the power to reproduce their species; and that hence the disappearance of the Negro is but a question of time. Mr. Joseph C. G. Kennedy, superintendent of the Federal Census during the war, took the following view of this question: