Virginia, Kentucky, all of the transition States, all the States with considerable negro populations that are in the temperate latitudes, are, of course, less productive than those bordering on them with entire white populations, for the negro is greatly inferior in his industrial capabilities, as in all other respects, where white men can labor. Thus far there can be no doubt, for there is no room for doubt, but it by no means follows that the people of Ohio or Pennsylvania are in a better condition than those of Kentucky and Virginia. The people of Virginia, if not homogeneous in race, are so in interest, and that one great fact underlying the social condition, is itself, or in the results that flow from it, of vast benefit. The interests of the State, of all its people, the “slaveholder,” “non-slaveholder,” and the negro or so-called slave, are homogeneous, universal, and indivisible, and therefore without social conflict, or causes for social conflict, the tendencies of the social order are harmonious and beneficent. The only seeming conflict or the sole thing that superficial thinkers might mistake for such, is the fact that the negro is not adapted to the locality, and they might suppose that therefore the owner of his services, or of this so-called slave property, might, to a certain extent, monopolize the soil that of right belonged to the white laborer. But a moment’s reflection will be sufficient to convince any rational mind of the unsoundness of this supposition.
A Virginia planter may, perhaps, inherit a thousand acres of land and a hundred negroes. His poor white neighbor is without land perhaps, and thinks it hard that these negroes, whom his instinct as well as reason assures him are not as well adapted to the locality as himself, should occupy it, while he has none. But the planter himself is worse off still. The land is worn out—the negro capacity can not resuscitate it—they barely earn sufficient for the common support—the planter finds it hard to live at all, and only does so, perhaps, by parting with some of his people, and therefore whatever the evil of this negro element in localities which the changes of time and circumstances have brought about, it is an evil that presses upon the owner of this species of property with vastly greater force than it does on the non-slaveholder. Of course the remedy is obvious—“Slavery Extension”—free and full expansion—the acquisition of new territories suited to the industrial capacities of the negro. For example, if we suppose the late General Walker had been successful, and opened Central America to American settlement, energy, civilization, and prosperity—the Virginia or Maryland planter, who now finds it difficult to “make both ends meet,” would gather up his household and migrate to these inviting and fertile regions. His negroes producing double or treble, or even more, in their new homes, he could afford to send his children to the North or Europe to be educated, and himself spend his summers at the Springs or abroad, and live as luxuriously as he pleased, while his negroes or so-called slaves, in their centre of existence, where God ordained that they should live, laving themselves in the genial heats of the tropics, with all their best and highest capacities called into action, and the best qualities of their nature healthily and naturally developed, would be even more benefited, perhaps, than the master himself. The vacancy would be filled by the increasing white population, by the constant inflowing of the mighty masses pouring in upon us from the Old World, by the poor German or other European peasant, who only needs liberty and the means for developing the high nature with which God endowed him, to exhibit himself as the equal of the kings and aristocrats who have crushed him into an artificial inferiority actually resembling the natural inferiority of the negro, and these impoverished soils being resuscitated by his industry, his intelligence, in short, his industrial adaptations, the now wasted and wasting lands of the transition States would become, and doubtless will become some day, the very garden of the republic. Nor would this be the whole of the beneficial process in question. The world needs, and especially our own farmers and working classes need, the products of the tropics. Sugar, and coffee, and tropical fruits should be had at half their present prices, while the increased production, the extension of commerce and general progress would have a vast influence over the civilization of our times by this simple application of industrial forces in conformity with the fundamental laws of climatic and industrial adaptation. A large majority of our negro population are at this moment outside of their own centre of existence, and a time will come when the border or transition States will probably have few of these people. As observed, it is absurd, a contradiction, an abuse of language, to speak of “slavery,” or the social subordination of the negro, as an evil, or as being, under any possible circumstances, unprofitable, for that involves the anomaly of supposing the idle and good-for-nothing negro a benefit to the State; but the negro is profitable to his master, beneficial to the State, and happy himself in such proportion as he approximates to the tropics, and is placed in juxtaposition with the external circumstances to which God has adapted him. They or their progenitors were mainly landed at northern ports. They were, in the then scarcity of labor, possibly needed even in the Central States. As an advanced guard in the rising civilization of the New World, they were once, perhaps, essential to the Provinces of Virginia, Maryland, etc., for the rich soil, the rank vegetation, the extensive marshes and wild river bottoms generated an extent and degree of malaria that was often fatal to the white man, and rendered the labor and aid of these people of vital importance in the early settlement of the country. But as the country became cultivated and white laborers became plenty, it was seen that the labor of the negro was less valuable; so that Mr. Jefferson, and many of his contemporaries, actually fancied it an evil, and desired to be relieved from it. And indeed, what was worse still—they confounded the existence of the negro with the relation, the so-called slavery, of the negro; and it was only when Louisiana was occupied, and new and appropriate regions were opened to the negro, and in harmony with his industrial capacities, that this erroneous notion of Mr. Jefferson and others disappeared from the southern mind. Virginia has still a large negro population, but while they are mainly employed in cultivating tobacco, suited to the simple capacity and subordinate nature of the negro, the demand for cotton, rice, sugar, etc., in the great tropical regions of the republic, is rapidly attracting them southward, and in conformity with their own happiness as well as the welfare of the white citizenship, this process is destined to go on until they are all within their own centre of existence. Whether or not Virginia, or any other transition State, would be better without them at this time, it is of course impossible to say, or to conjecture even. The simple fact, however, of their presence there would seem to indicate that it was desirable to have them among them yet, or at all events in considerable numbers, but the industrial attraction is constantly carrying them further south—to Texas, Florida, and other Gulf States, where their labor is more valuable.
These general laws of climatic and industrial adaptation, which thus underlie the social fabric when made up of mixed populations, are also illustrated by the national history, and demonstrated in every step of the national progress. When negroes were first introduced into the British North American Colonies, there was, of course, and for many years after, a great demand for labor. Here was a mighty continent, a new world, open to the enterprise and energy of the most energetic and most enterprising branch of the great master race of mankind. All that was wanted was labor—labor, too, that was of the lowest kind in some respects, and laborers whose imperfect innervation and low grade of sensibility could resist the malarious influences always more or less potent in new countries and virgin soils, even in temperate latitudes, were often desirable. The Bristol and the Liverpool “slave merchants,” therefore—the progenitors of the saints and philanthropists of Exeter Hall—supplied these wants, ordinarily with negroes, but occasionally with some of their own poorer and more helpless brethren, whom they did not hesitate to kidnap and send out to labor on the American plantations. Negroes, therefore, were forced from the sea-board to the interior, even as far as Canada, while the Central Colonies had even very considerable numbers of these people. With the downfall of the British dominion, however, the Bristol merchants were forced to engage in other enterprises, and as the genius and daring of Clive and his companions had just then opened a new and boundless empire in India, English capital, enterprise, and polity took another direction, and though the African trade was continued for some years afterward by our own people, there were, comparatively, but few negroes imported after the overthrow of the British rule. After the removal of a foreign and artificial rule, and the establishment of a political system in harmony with the instincts and wants of our people, the social and industrial laws were permitted a natural development, and from this period a widely different movement began. Negro labor was less profitable in the Eastern than in the Central States, and of course less profitable in the latter than in Virginia, the Carolinas, etc., and therefore the industrial attraction carried them from the interior to the sea-board, and from the North to the South. The acquisition of Louisiana, of Florida, etc., the opening of new regions and the formation of new States adapted to the climatic wants and industrial capabilities of the negro, drained them off still more rapidly. Mr. Jefferson and others, as has been observed, confounding the relation of the races, or so-called slavery, with the non-adaptability of the negro labor in temperate latitudes, desired to exclude, not negroes, but the social relation which they supposed an evil, from the northwest territory, and the old confederation, it will be remembered, passed an ordinance to that effect. This “ordinance,” which ignorance and folly have so long worshipped as a “bulwark of freedom,” with as abject a spirit and total absence of reason as the Hindoo worships his Juggernaut, of course never had, nor could have, the slightest influence over the subject.
If there had been no extension of our southern borders, no Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, or other States adapted to the wants and industrial capabilities of the negro, the whole Northwest, at this moment, would be what these blind and mistaken people term “slave territory.” The cheap lands and fresh soils of the West, would attract the holders of this species of property even more strongly than any others, and the only difference, so far as the negro is concerned, would be, or could be, that their numbers would be less than at present. As he approximates to his centre of existence, or as the negro is in harmony with the external conditions to which the Almighty has adapted him, his well-being is secured, his vitality is greater, and he multiplies himself more rapidly; therefore as regards the negro element, it would have been less in the Northwest than it is now in the South-west, but the relation, of course, would be as at present, for however willing Vermont, or some other State without negroes might be to pervert these relations, and in theory place themselves on a level with a subordinate race, those who are in juxtaposition with negroes have never done so, or thus voluntarily attempted social suicide.
Mr. Jefferson, by the acquisition of Louisiana and the extension of our Southern limits, therefore, “saved” the Northwest from a negro population and so-called slavery, just as the acquisition of Texas by President Tyler and the eminent and far-seeing Calhoun and others, at a later day, opened other and still wider regions adapted to the wants and specific nature of our negro population, and which are now, by the natural and indestructible laws of climate and industrial adaptation, gradually withdrawing this population from the border or transition States. Indeed, one only needs to examine the several census returns of the federal government, from 1790 to 1860, to understand both the history of the country, in these respects, and the operation of the laws of climate and industrial adaptation. They will then see that the negro element constantly tends southward—a black column ever on the march for its own centre of existence—an advance guard of American civilization, that moves on without cessation, and that must continue to advance until it is in perfect accord with those external conditions to which it is naturally adapted. Nor is the interest of the master—the increased value of the negro labor—the sole motive power, though certainly the leading cause of this progress southward. The increased and increasing white population, with the vast European emigration, is pressing on its rear, while the demands of modern society for the products of its labor, and many other influences, are every day increasing in force, and impelling the negro tropic-ward with greater rapidity at present, perhaps, than ever before.
Persons wholly ignorant of these causes, or of the laws underlying this progress of the negro southward, have blindly labored against it, and in regard to the annexation of Texas, which opened such a wide and beneficent field for negro industry, and therefore for the true welfare of these people, they doubtless really believed they were doing them a kindness when thus foolishly striving to reverse the ordinances of the Eternal, and to prevent the expansion of this negro population. And this expansion, or this industrial attraction constantly going on from Virginia and other border States to Texas and the Gulf States, doubtless does appear unjust, and, perhaps, inhuman to those ignorant of the negro nature, as well as of those laws of industrial adaptation which always have and always must govern the subject. The sale of negroes in Richmond and Norfolk, to be sent South, seems to them, perhaps, a great hardship, but while it is believed that the larger portion are accompanied by their masters, who naturally seek new homes in Texas, etc., there is no other possible mode or means through which they could reach a more genial clime, and therefore, even if it were indeed a harsh procedure to sell them in Richmond, it would still be vastly more inhuman to keep them from approximating to their specific centre of existence. As it is, it is true beneficence and kindness to facilitate their progress southward; but if they really were black-white men, as the ignorant anti-slaveryite fancies they are, and without any specific affinity or adaptation for a tropical climate, even in that case their public sale at Richmond or Norfolk, to supply the labor market of Texas, would not involve a thousandth part of the misery and physical suffering endured by a very considerable portion of those British subjects who annually arrive at New York. Indeed, it is safe to say that the thousand or so diseased, half-starved, and miserable British subjects, which the Mayor of New York had penned up and out of sight of the Prince of Wales at Castle Garden, in order not to offend the olfactories or revolt the senses of that young person, embodied more physical suffering, more wrong and outrage on humanity, than could be inflicted on negroes through all eternity, so far as this process of extension southward may be concerned. The master, or the man who purchases the service of the negro, has, of course, the utmost interest in taking care of him and providing for all his wants, while the negro himself, on the way to the climate and the external conditions for which the Almighty has adapted him, must be in the pathway of progress, and advancing generally toward that goal of happiness and well-being which the common Creator has designed for all His creatures.
No law or legislation would seem to be needed—nothing but the removal of all obstructions from the path of progress, and the free and full development of the laws of industrial attraction. The demands for tropical products, and the greater value of the negro labor—the necessities of modern civilization and the interests of the master—have carried the negro from the Central, as they are now carrying him from the border States, toward the great tropical centre of the continent. And by a beneficent and inevitable necessity which God himself has fixed forever in the economy of the universe, the welfare of the negro is secured in exact proportion as these laws of industrial attraction and adaptation are permitted free action and full development.
In conclusion, therefore, it would seem that a simple removal of all obstructions to these fixed and fundamental laws would be all that was needed to secure the best welfare of all—white men and negroes—of the North equally with the South, for while the industrial attraction would remove the negro element just as fast as the interests of the border States may demand, the West can always secure themselves from a considerable negro population, by aiding in the removal of obstructions from our southern borders, as Jefferson saved them sixty years ago.
CHAPTER XXI.
NORTH AND SOUTH.—ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN IDEA OF GOVERNMENT.
Although the progenitors of our so-called slaves were mainly imported at Northern ports, and all of the Northern and Middle States have had, at times, considerable negro populations, the process of transition southward has been so rapid that the Northern communities, or the people of the Northern States, have been but little impressed by them or influenced in their ideas and mental habits by the presence of this widely different and subordinate element of our general population. But when they became a fixed population, when Virginia, especially, had acquired what, by comparison, may be called a large negro element, then the actual presence of these negroes called into existence new ideas, and gave development to new modes of thought or mental habitudes. All our ideas and mental habits are, in a sense, accidental, the result of circumstances, just as language, which is the outward expression of our ideas, becomes changed by time and circumstances. The English of the tenth century were widely different, of course, in their ideas and mental habits from the English of the fourteenth century, under the rule of the Normans; and this difference was widely varied from anything that mere time or ordinary circumstances could have produced.