The mongrels, and possibly some negroes at the North, often seem as well educated as white men, but it must be at the expense of the body, shortening the existence, just as we sometimes witness in the case of children when the pride, vanity, or ignorance of parents have stimulated their minds, and dwarfed or destroyed their bodies. An “educated” negro, like a “free negro,” is a social monstrosity, even more unnatural and repulsive than the latter.
It is creditable to the people of the South that no such outrage on nature and common sense is found in all her borders. God has made the negro an inferior being, not in most cases, but all cases, for there are no accidents or exceptions in His works. There never could be such a thing as a negro equaling the standard Caucasian in natural ability. The same Almighty Creator has also made all white men equal—for idiots, insane people, etc., are not exceptions, they are results of human vices, crimes, or ignorance, immediate or remote. What a false and vicious state of society, therefore, when human institutions violate this eternal order, and by withholding education from their own brethren, educate the inferior negro, and in a sense make him superior to white men, by setting aside the law of God!
Some of the States have passed laws against teaching negroes to read; a more extended and enlightened knowledge of the negro will, doubtless, some day govern this matter through public opinion, and without governmental interference. The negro learns from his master all he needs to know, all that he can know, in a proper sense, all that is essential to the performance of his duties, or necessary to his happiness and the fulfilment of the purposes to which nature has adapted him; and though there might, perhaps, be no good reason given why he should be prohibited from learning to read, it is sufficient to say that it is absurd, as well as a waste of time that should be carefully employed. His mental powers are unable to grapple with science or philosophy, or abstractions of any kind, and it would be folly to suppose that he would be or could be interested in history or biography, in which his race, his instincts, his wants have no share, record, or connection whatever.
All this applies, of course, to the South—to negroes in their normal condition and natural relation to the superior race. It may be well enough at the North, as long as they have mongrels and free negroes, to provide schools for them, as they have no other guide or protector but the State itself, but though they thus acquire a certain kind of mental activity, as observed, it is at the expense of the vital forces, and another of those incidental causes that tend to the final extinction of this abnormal element. It is, however, a disgrace, and, to a certain extent, a crime in any State to educate negroes or mongrels, so long as they have one single uneducated white man within their limits. The proof of this is seen every day in the fact that however educated, or whatever the seeming mental superiority of the “colored” man, the uneducated white man tolerates no equality. Thus nature vindicates her rights, and whatever the ignorance, delusion, or crimes of society, the eternal order fixed by the hand of God is inevitable and everlasting.
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 endowed them 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. And all of this is dependent on the affections and 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 higher habitudes 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.