Negroes and Negro "Slavery:" the first an inferior race: the latter its normal condition.

by John H. Van Evrie

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 their destruction, 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 overthrew the 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. The morale of 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 were black white 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 legal status leads, 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 complete development 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. The end, 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 a foreign 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 mixed blood. 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, while utterly 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 delicately nurtured 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.