These resolutions offered a common platform for the agricultural States—for the producing classes of all sections—for the masses, the millions, in short, for all men who believed in the American idea of government and demanded equal rights for all and favors for none.
Thus the Middle States, the great agricultural populations of the North, who, unaided and alone were powerless in the grasp of the federal party, led as that party was by the intellect, and sustained by the wealth and social prestige of the North, found themselves naturally allied with the agricultural populations of the South who were led by men quite the equals in general attainments, and vastly the superiors in political knowledge, of the great northern leaders. These men—Jefferson, Madison, George Clinton, and their associates—had already conquered in the great intellectual contest that had preceded the creation of the government, and though in the great battle now pending, the centralists occupied vantage ground, for their banks, state debts, and consolidated federal powers, attracted to their standards all the selfish interests and mercenary influences in the country, the former again carried the day, and in the great civil revolution of 1800 restored the government, as Mr. Jefferson expressed it, to “the republican tack.” This restoration of the federal government to its original purposes was surely second only to the revolution of 1776 in importance, and without it it is obvious that the fruits of the former must measurably have been lost. As has been seen, the northern masses were at that time wholly unable to contend with the opposing minority which embraced within its ranks the wealth, talent, education, and social influence of the day. And though largely in the majority as regards numbers, it was powerless even as regards physical force, for it was without leaders to direct its energies or to cope successfully with that brilliant array of able and accomplished civilians and soldiers that gathered about the administration and directed the councils of the federal party. If the rule of the federalists in the course of time became personally oppressive—if that personal “freedom” which in England permits the subject to enjoy locomotion as he pleases and protects his person from violence were stricken down, then it may be supposed that the northern masses would have resisted, and, perhaps, in the progress of the future have overthrown such government.
But the government actually established by the federalists—by the false construction of the Constitution, and the usurpations in practice which would have kept the producing classes—the toiling millions—in the same or similar subjection to a ruling oligarchy, as is now witnessed in England, and which, in the course of time, would render them equally abject, poverty-stricken, ignorant, and miserable, would seem to be, in view of all the circumstances then existing, beyond their power to change or reform by a civil revolution like that which did occur in 1800, or to overthrow by the strong hand of physical force. The great civil revolution, therefore, when able and accomplished statesmen of the South, the equals in talent, and vastly superior to any class in Christendom in political knowledge, led the northern producing classes through the great conflict then pending, and overthrowing the centralists restored the government to its original purity and simplicity, must be deemed, as has been said, only second in importance to the great event of 1776.
And the social condition in the South, the so-called slavery, which invariably renders the southern planter the natural ally of the northern farmer, must be considered, as it obviously is in fact, the sole, or at all events the leading cause for the successful working of democratic institutions, as it was originally the sole and unquestionable cause that originated the great American idea of government embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Nor are the consequences of that condition of so-called slavery—the existence of a subordinate social element at the South which has thus, with more or less directness, worked out the equality, freedom, and happiness of the laboring classes of the North—limited to our own land or to our own people. As has been observed, the conflict of capital and labor is the great question of the day—the question that is at the bottom of all the European revolutions of modern times, and its solution must, of necessity, involve the destruction of every government now in existence except our own. Capital in the old world has the education and intelligence as well as the government on its side against the people, and the simple fact that, in half of the American States, capital and labor are united, inseparable, and indissoluble, is of transcendent importance to the future liberation of the laboring millions of Europe.
Here—for the first time in the experience of the race—wealth, cultivation, and intellectual power are arrayed on the side of production and in defence of the rights of labor, not by a warfare on northern capital, as it is sometimes charged, but by demanding that government shall not legislate for the latter at the expense of the former. Nor is the subordinate element—the inferior race in our midst, which, in the providence of God has thus been made the mediate or immediate cause of such vast and boundless benefit to the freedom, progress, and well-being of the superior race—without participation in these benefits. God has designed all His creatures for happiness, and this happiness is always secured when they are in their true position, and in natural relations to each other; and when the condition of the negro is compared with his African state—the existing population with their African progenitors—then it is seen that the progress and happiness of the inferior has matched pari passu with those of the superior race.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FUTURE OF THE NEGRO.
There are something like twelve millions of negroes in America, on the mainland and the adjacent islands—as large a proportion, perhaps, in view of their industrial adaptation, as there are of the Caucasian or dominant race; and, therefore, whatever may be the contingencies or the wants of the future, there would seem to be no necessity now for any further importation of these people. Of the twelve millions, there are between four and five millions in their normal condition at the South. There are, perhaps, half a million of so-called free negroes, about equally divided between North and South. There are about four millions in Brazil, Cuba, and Porto Rico of so-called slaves, but really in a widely different condition from that common to the South. Finally, there are between three and four millions of so-called free negroes in the tropics, in Jamaica, Hayti, and the other islands, with some thousands, however, scattered about the coast towns, and in the terra caliente of the mainland. The free negro, in the American Union, as has been stated, is destined to extinction. It is only a question of time, when this doom will be accomplished. The census returns, and the universal experience, recognize this deplorable truth; but beyond them, and independent of any demonstration whatever, their extinction is a necessity—is as legitimate and unavoidable as any other effect or effects linked by inevitable necessity with their predetermining cause or causes. They are not merely turned loose—abandoned to their fate without masters or protectors to look after them, but they are assumed to be Caucasians, black-white men, creatures like ourselves, with the same capacities, and the same wants, and though no one assumes to do so individually, society forces them to live up to the theory in question, and, as this is impossible, as no human force or forces can set aside the ordinances of the Eternal, it destroys them. If, for example, laws were passed to change the color, the hair, the form of the limbs, or any physical quality of the negro, and the whole power of the State was brought to bear upon him to compel him to be like the white man in these respects, it is obvious that nothing could be accomplished save the destruction of the unhappy creature. The capacities, the wants, the moral and intellectual nature of the negro, differ from our own to the precise extent that his physical nature or bodily structure differs from ours, and, therefore, Northern society, or rather that monstrous and malignant philanthropy which in its ignorance and blind impiety deems itself kind and beneficent, necessarily destroys the object of its solicitude when it strives to give him the rights of the white man, or to force him to change his moral and intellectual nature into that of the white man.
If all the children of the age of ten, in a given community, were turned from their homes into the street and left without their natural protectors to care and provide for their wants, they would perish in time, of course, if we could suppose them to remain at this age or condition. But if, in addition to this abandonment of these helpless ones, a theory were set up that they had all the capabilities of the adult, and should, therefore, enjoy the rights and perform the duties of men and women, they would, of necessity, perish still more rapidly. If a dog, or horse, or other domestic animal were turned loose or lost its owner, it would sooner or later perish, but if some deluded “philanthropist” should set up the assumption that his bull-dog, for instance, was entitled to the rights and should enjoy the life of the hound, and therefore attempt to force it to exhibit the same qualities, the scent, sight, or swiftness that God has given the latter, he would, of course, destroy the poor thing with far greater rapidity than if he had simply turned it loose to shift for itself. Similar results do attend and must attend that malignant philanthropy and blind impiety which would impose the rights or force the duties of the white man on the differently organized and differently endowed negro. In Virginia and Maryland he is simply turned loose without any guide or protector or white man’s rights whatever, not even the right of free locomotion common to British subjects, and, therefore, lives longer, for there is no especial violence attempted—no direct effort made to force him to live out the life or to manifest the nature of widely different beings. But in Canada and Massachusetts, where white manhood is held so cheaply that the negro is supposed to be entitled to the same rights, and direct efforts are made to compel him to fulfill the same duties, where the little Prince of Wales in his recent visit declared that he would not recognize those distinctions of race that originate in the mind of the Eternal and are fashioned by the hand of Omnipotence, which no amount or extent of human force, folly, impiety, or crime can obliterate even to the millionth part of a primordial atom, and which millions of years after those paltry distinctions of human invention which transform this common-place lad into an imaginary superiority over his fellows shall have disappeared, then he rapidly and miserably perishes.
The tendency to extinction, therefore, is always accelerated or diminished in exact proportion as “impartial freedom” is thrust upon him—as he is permitted “to enjoy equal rights” with the white man, or as ignorance and folly, in their blind and cruel kindness and exterminating goodness, strive to force him to manifest the nature and live the life of a different being. This assertion, doubtless, startles the reader, as it once certainly would have startled the writer himself. We are all so accustomed to mental habits directly in conflict with this assertion, that it is somewhat difficult to lift our minds out of them and to take true cognizance of the facts, and inductive facts, that daily confront us.
The negro is a different being from the white man, and therefore, of necessity, was designed by the Almighty Creator to live a different life, and to disregard this—to shut our eyes and blindly beat our brains against the decree—the eternal purpose of God himself, and force this negro to live our life, necessarily destroys him, for surely human forces can not dominate or set aside those of Omnipotence. Nor is the negro the sole sufferer from this blind impiety, this audacious attempt to disregard the distinctions and to depart from the purposes of the Almighty Creator. The large “free” negro populations of Maryland and Virginia are the great drawbacks on their prosperity, and if the hundred thousand or so of these people were supplanted by the same number of white laborers, or, indeed, the same number of “slave” negroes, a wide and beneficent change would rapidly follow. Furthermore, they are vicious as well as idle and non-productive, and every one of them a disturbing force—a dangerous element—which, in conjunction with those hideous wretches maddened with a monstrous theory like those miscreants at Harper’s Ferry, are always liable to be made instruments of fearful mischief. The consequences of the fifty thousand “free” negroes in juxtaposition with the three millions of white people in New York are barely perceptible, but as scarcely one in fifty of these people are engaged in productive labor, they are a considerable burden upon the laboring and producing citizens. True, they do not see it or feel it—and multitudes of honest and laborious citizens in the rural districts are profoundly interested in the “cause of freedom,” while thus contributing a certain portion of each day’s labor for the support of some fifty thousand non-productive negroes. Again, in the cities and larger towns, the vices and immoralities of the whites have an extended association with this free negro element.