Las Casas, who seems to have been a generous and noble-hearted man, devoted himself for many years, indeed a whole life-time, to the cause of the natives, but at no time or in any way was he laboring for their freedom or to secure to them social or political rights of any kind. Other priests labored to secure their spiritual welfare, or what they believed to be this, while Las Casas, though a profoundly religious man, sought their material preservation, and to save them from that direful fate of total extinction which even then was threatened, and which finally has been so complete, that at this moment there is not one single descendant of these people left to tell the tale of their destruction. The popular notion, therefore, that Las Casas was the author or originator of the “slave trade,” and of American (negro) “slavery,” in order to “free” the native race, is altogether groundless.
It originated, as has been stated, in an industrial necessity—and while he assented to it, with the humane belief, doubtless, that it would tend to benefit the native race in relieving it from the excessive and fatal burthens imposed by the Spaniards, his assent or dissent could have no influence whatever on the subject. And as he was not laboring for the freedom of the natives—for nothing whatever but their mere material preservation—of course he could have no doubts or anxieties in regard to negroes in that respect, and when he saw them resisting alike the deadly malaria of the climate and the brutality of their masters, and contented and happy, he doubtless felt that it was a wise and beneficent arrangement of Providence that had thus adapted them to their condition and to the fulfilment of the great purposes of civilization and human progress.
The supply of negro labor in San Domingo, Cuba, and other islands, was followed, however, by extensive importations for the main land, and finally the trade, falling into the hands of the Dutch and English, became a world-wide commerce, and negroes were taken into every nook and corner of the New World where there were found buyers, or where the traders could dispose of their human cargoes. And here begins the wrong side of the matter—the cruelties, injustice, outrages, and inhumanities which, together with the false theories, morbid philanthropy, and a certain amount of falsehood, have made the term “slave trade” synonymous with everything that is diabolical and devilish that the imagination can conceive of. The Spanish government of the day limited the introduction of negroes, and provided for an equal number of females, and encouraged the importation of children; indeed, while there is no reason to suppose that they ever contemplated the negro as abstractly entitled to the rights claimed for them in our times, it is certain that both the governments of Charles V. and Philip II. did regard them as human, and made every provision that was proper for their kind and humane treatment, both in regard to their passage from Africa and their treatment on the plantations. But when the physical adaptation of the negro had become so clearly demonstrated in the Spanish islands, the British and Dutch merchants began to import them in such multitudes, and the prices fell so low, that it would not pay to import women and children, and then began that nameless and unspeakable outrage, not merely on human but on animal nature, which has distinguished this trade ever since, and, to the disgrace of all Christendom, which at this moment distinguishes it in the neighboring island of Cuba—the separation of the sexes and the violation of the rights of reproduction. Instead of a simple supply of negro labor essential to tropical production, and which violated no instinct, want, or necessity of the negro nature, ships were now fitted out on speculation; cargoes of men, as mere work-animals, were obtained in Africa and carried to any port where there was a chance of a market, not in the tropics alone, but all over North America; and the British Provinces of New England, as well as Cuba and Porto Rico, became the marts for traffic in human beings. This accounts for the great mortality of these people in the islands. In general terms, it may be said the negro will work no more than he ought to work; that is, nature has so adapted him that he can not be forced in this respect; but when they could be purchased so cheaply, the master had little interest in their health, and together with the very small native increase going on, the mortality vastly preponderated. The New England as well as the Middle States were fully supplied with these cheap negroes, but they never were profitable, and the laws of industrial adaptation has steadily carried their descendants southward.
The “slave trade,” after the first fifty years of its commencement, up to the American Revolution, may be said to have been in the hands of the British mainly, of the merchants of Bristol and Liverpool. These traders, as has been said, made it a mere matter of commerce, dealing in it just as they did in any other article of commerce, and many of the largest fortunes in England are believed to have had their foundations laid in this traffic. So far as the colonists participated in it, they approached somewhat to the earliest Spaniards, and though there were more males imported than there were females, the horrible practice of the islands, which forbade these people to fulfill the command of the Almighty, and multiply their kind, did not prevail to any considerable extent. Nature always recovers from the outrages committed on her laws, and though no legislation or human means has sought to remedy the disproportions of the sexes, they are now probably equal, though of the imported progenitors of our negroes probably two-thirds at least were males, and though even a larger proportion than this were imported into Northern ports, there are now scarcely a quarter of a million in the Northern States, while the descendants of those imported into the North have expanded into four millions at the South! What a lesson these facts present to the blind and infatuated “friends of freedom” in Kansas, and the equally blind believers in the ordinance of 1787. The negro, by a higher law than human enactments, goes where he is needed, and permanently no where else. A broad and liberal survey of the whole ground—the nature of the negro, his utter uselessness when isolated or separated from the white man—his organic adaptation to tropical production—the wonderful fertility of tropical soils—the vast importance of their peculiar products to civilization and human well-being—demonstrates, beyond doubt the right and justice of the original “slave trade,” or the original importation of African negroes into America. The abuses that finally attended it have been made to overshadow the thing itself, in the popular estimation, but despite all these, and all other drawbacks, it is certain that the introduction of these negroes has resulted in a vastly preponderating good to our race, while the four millions of Christianized and enlightened negroes in our midst, when compared with any similar number of their race in Africa, are in a condition so immeasurably happy and desirable, that we can find no terms that will sufficiently express it.
The frightful tales invented of their cruel treatment on the passage from Africa may be dismissed with the single remark that it was the highest interest of the traders to take the utmost care of them, and if that be not sufficient, with the simple but pregnant fact that the average mortality, when the trade was legal, was only eleven per cent., while the illegal trade, the efforts to put it down, the false philanthropy, and mistaken interference, have raised the mortality to something like forty per cent.!
There were but two mistakes, wrongs, inhumanities, outrages on nature, whatever we may term them, involved in the “slave trade,” so far as we were concerned: 1st, the importation mainly of males, and the consequent violation of the laws of reproduction—of that fundamental and universal command of the Almighty to multiply their kind and to replenish the earth; and, 2d, their importation into northern latitudes, unsuited to the physical and industrial nature of the negro. But, as has been said, nature, sooner or later, recovers from every outrage upon her laws, and while we, in our ignorance and folly, have been disputing over our petty theories in respect to this subject, her reparatory processes have silently and steadily gone on and corrected our mistakes, and, therefore, both of the real wrongs connected with the “slave trade” are now substantially righted.
It is, however, discreditable to our intelligence that the statute-book of the nation is disfigured by our laws and legislation on this subject. England has waged a war upon the distinctions of nature and the natural relations of races, ever since we threw off her dominion, and set up a new system of government founded on the fixed and unchangeable laws of nature. The preservation of her own system—the rule of classes and of artificial distinctions among men of the same race—impels her by a blind instinct quite as much, perhaps, as reason, to pursue this policy, and therefore, under the pretense of putting down the “slave trade,” she has constantly labored to obliterate the distinctions of race, and force or corrupt the white men of America into affiliation and equality with negroes. The war upon the “slave trade” was simply the means for accomplishing her ends—the equalization of races in the New World, and in Canada, the West Indies, in all her American possessions, she has succeeded. Negroes, whites, Indians, and mongrels are all alike her subjects, and the distinctions of society, as in Europe, are wholly artificial, while those of race, of nature, that are fixed by the hand of the Eternal, are impiously disregarded. And we have been her tools, her miserable dupes, and ourselves labored for our own degradation, to accomplish her objects and obliterate the distinctions of races. The question of importing more negroes—to keep open or to prohibit the “slave trade”—was and is a question of expediency, that our government should decide for itself, without regard to the opinions or policy of any other people. But to blindly follow England in her nefarious and impious efforts to break down the distinctions of race, to pronounce the conduct of our own ancestors infamous and worthy of death because English opinion and monarchical influences and exigencies demand it, is a disgrace to the manhood of our people and the intelligence of our statesmen that should not be permitted to disgrace our government any longer; and it is to be hoped that the time is not distant when this disgraceful legislation will be swept from our statute book.
CHAPTER XV.
NATURAL RELATIONS AND NORMAL CONDITION OF THE NEGRO.
There are now between four and five millions of negroes in the United States. They or their descendants must remain forever—for good or evil—an element of our population. What are their natural relations to the whites?—what their normal condition?
The Almighty has obviously designed all His creatures—animal as well as human—for wise, beneficent, and useful purposes. In our ignorance of the animal world, we have only domesticated or applied to useful purposes a very small number, the horse, the ox, ass, dog, etc.; but these we practically understand, so that even the most ignorant will not abuse them or violate their instincts. The most ignorant farmer or laborer would never attempt to force the dog to perform the domestic rôle of the cat, or the ox that of the horse, or the sheep that of the ass, etc. He knows the natures of these animals—their relations to himself and to each other, and governs them accordingly.