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

by John H. Van Evrie

In regard to the defeat of the Arabians by the Franks, the case is altogether different. They were the same species, and doubtless, at that time, more advanced than the Europeans, but they were Mohammedans, and in the full flush of enthusiasm for their faith, which they invariably propagated by the sword. And if they had overrun Europe as they did Asia, somewhat similar results would doubtless have followed, for though it is altogether improbable, indeed, in view of its Divine origin, impossible, that they could have exterminated the Christian religion, they would have done it and the general cause of civilization incalculable injury. But both of these great branches of the race have long since disappeared from history. The Semitic element can scarcely be said to exist at all. In Africa it is adulterated by the blood of the Negro, and perhaps the blood of some race or races not so low in the scale as the Negro. In Asia it is mixed with the Mongolian blood, and though the Arab and Persian populations of our day are mainly white, there is more or less taint pervading all the Asiatic communities. The great Pelasgian branch has long since disappeared and been swallowed up in the more modern branches of the race, and though the modern Italian claims to be, and doubtless is, the lineal descendant of the ancient Roman, no portions of the race are wider apart than the ancient Roman and his modern descendant, a striking proof that accidental consanguinity does not affect the universality of the race.

The last great cycle of history, commencing with the Reformation, comes down to and includes our own times. It is quite unnecessary to dwell upon it, as all intelligent persons have much the same view of it. With the downfall of the Roman empire, however, new varieties of the Caucasian, or, as historians have termed them, new races, have emerged into view, and in their turn struggled for the empire of the world. The hordes that, under Alaric and other leaders, overran Italy, were generally known as Goths, a generic term that is applied to great numbers of very different people, though, of course, all were white men, and therefore of the same race or species. But after varying fortunes, and passing through numerous mutations, all these races have subsided into several well-marked and well-known divisions or families now existing. There are—First. The Celts—including a large portion of the French, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, and the remains of the primitive people of the British Islands. Second. The Teutonic or German, including the Germans of all kinds, the Swiss, the mythical Anglo-Saxon and perhaps the Danes, the Scandinavians, etc. Third. The Sclavonians, embracing the Russians, Poles, Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, etc. There are some few populations that, either in language or historical facts, have little or no connection with those enumerated. These are the modern Hungarians, the European Turks, the Circassians, etc. They are, however, Caucasians: even the Turks and Circassians are, in our times, pure or mainly pure Caucasians. Finally there remain our own people, the offspring of every country and of every variety of the race, and as the more the blood is crossed the more energetic and healthy the product or progeny, the American people should become, as it doubtless will become, the most powerful and the most civilized people in existence.

Such, briefly considered, is an imperfect summary or outline of the history of our race, the only race that has a history or that is capable of those mental manifestations whose record constitutes history. It is a favorite theory of most historians to represent the mental development of the race as divided into distinct categories, not as the author has ventured, into historic periods, but into different phases of intellectual manifestation. They have supposed that men (white men) were first hunters and lived wholly by the chase—that after a while they became shepherds, and lived on their herds or flocks—that then they made another advance and became cultivators, and finally artisans, merchants, etc. Each of these conditions, it has been supposed, were dependent on, or were associated with, a corresponding mental development. The hunter had intellect enough to run down the stag or wit sufficient to entrap the game necessary for his support, but had not sufficient capacity to take care of his flocks or sense sufficient to till the earth! This notion has doubtless arisen from observing the habits of the subordinate races of men, though it is quite possible that our own race has passed through some such stages as those suggested. But there has never been any variations in its actual intellectual powers. The mental capacities given it in the morning of creation were just what they are now, and what they will be millions of years hence. Thus is explained the (to many persons) seeming anomaly that in the very dawn of history there were men like Homer, Plato, Socrates, Pythagoras, and others, with a breadth and depth of intellect corresponding to the most intellectual men of our own times. Mental power, like physical strength, remains always the same through all ages and mutations of human society, while knowledge, or the uses made of the intellectual forces, is constantly varying from age to age, and changing from one country to another. The miserable Italian organ-grinder under our window, it is somewhat difficult to suppose, embodies the high intellect and powerful will, which two thousand years ago, made his ancestors masters of the world, but such is the fact, however latent, unknown or unfelt by himself may be these powers. The amount or extent or degrees of knowledge, the perceptions of external things, their relations, the laws that govern them, their uses, their influences on our well-being or the contrary, in short, our capacities for acquiring knowledge, for comprehending ourselves and the things about us, are limitless, and therefore progress and indefinite perfectibility are the specific attributes of the Caucasian. Each generation applies its capabilities and acquires a certain amount of knowledge which the succeeding one is heir to, and which, in turn, transmits its acquisition to those following; thus its march is ever onward, and except during the “dark ages” it is believed that the great law of progress which God has imposed on the race as a duty as well as given it as a blessing, has never been interrupted.

But the inferior races of mankind present a very different aspect in this respect. The Negro, isolated by himself, seems utterly incapable of transmitting anything whatever to the succeeding generation, and the Aboriginal American, Malay, etc., doubtless approximate to him in these respects. The Aztecs and Peruvians, at the time of the Spanish conquest, however, had advanced to the grade of cultivators, and were therefore, doubtless, capable of a limited or imperfect transmission of their knowledge. The Malay is probably capable of still greater development in these respects; but its limitations are too decided to be mistaken. The Mongolian, on the contrary, approximates much closer to ourselves, and while it cannot be said to have a history in any proper sense, it is doubtless capable of transmitting its knowledge to future generations to a much greater extent than others, but it, too, is at an immeasurable distance from the Caucasian in this respect. The Chinese, it is true, pretend to trace back their history to a period long anterior to our own, but this claim is itself sufficient proof of its own worthlessness. No one will suppose that the individual Chinaman has a larger brain or greater breadth of intellect than the individual Caucasian, and if not, what folly to suppose that the aggregate Chinese mind was capable of doing that which is impossible to the aggregate Caucasian intellect! The truth is, what is supposed to be Chinese history is a mere collection of fables and nonsensical impossibilities, and it may be doubted if they can trace back their annals even five hundred years with any certainty or with sufficient accuracy to merit a claim to historic dignity. There can be no doubt, however, that at some remote period, a considerable portion of the Chinese population was Caucasian, as indeed a portion is still Caucasian, and it is perhaps certain that Confucius and other renowned names known to the modern Chinese, were white men, and what shadowy and uncertain historical data they now possess are therefore likely to have originated from these sources. The Mongolian race was in fact unknown to ancient writers, though there has doubtless been contact with these races from a very early period.

It is supposed by Hamilton Smith and others, that the Mongolian formally existed much further North than at present, and that its immense development in regard to numbers finally pressed so heavily on the Caucasian populations of Central Asia, that it displaced them, and hence that those mighty migrations into Europe, a short time after the beginning of the Christian era, were the results of this pressure in their rear. Be this as it may, it is certain that those vast inundations which at times swept over the Asiatic world, and also threatened Europe with their terrible results, were mainly composed of Mongolic elements. Attila was of pure Caucasian blood, and his chiefs were doubtless also white men or of a predominating Caucasian innervation; but it is equally certain that the larger portion of his terrible hordes were Mongolians. His seat of empire was on the Danube and somewhere near the modern Buda, from which he threatened France as well as Rome and the Italian Peninsula, while his dominion extended to the frontiers of China, and embraced the vast regions and almost countless populations intervening between these widely separated points. His invasion of France, and his repulse if not defeat at Chalons, is one of those transcendent events that, for good or evil, change the order of history, and for centuries affect the fortunes of mankind. Had this not happened—had his march been uninterrupted—had his terrible legions swept over Western as they already had over Eastern Europe, and a vast Mongolian population become permanently settled there, the destinies of mankind would have been widely different. But his repulse—his desperate retreat and his subsequent death, which occurred soon after—changed the current of events, and his desolating hordes instead of effecting a permanent lodgement in the heart of Europe, vanished so utterly that, except a few thousand Laplanders, they have left no trace or evidence of their terrible invasion of the European world.

Genghis Khan, in the twelfth century, was the next great conqueror and mighty leader of those vast Mongolic hordes which, at various times, have inundated the ancient world, and in their desolating march swept away numerous empires and extinguished whole populations. Genghis Khan, though of predominating Caucasian blood, was mixed with Mongolian, but his successors for several centuries after were mainly Caucasians or the children of Caucasian mothers. Finally, the last and the greatest of these terrible conquerors, Tamerlane, in the sixteenth century, made a conquest of nearly the whole of Asia, penetrating even into Africa and conquering Egypt, while his defeat of Bajazet, the Emperor of the Turks, then at the zenith of their power, opened Europe to the march of his desolating hordes, and could his life have been extended a few years longer, it is quite possible that he would have accomplished what seems to have been the object of Attila, and subjected the European as well as the Asiatic world to his terrible sway. As it was, he invaded and conquered India as well as Egypt, and the master of, or wearer of twenty-eight crowns, he reigned over the whole of Asia to the borders of China, except the Turkish dominions, and even here he was the recognized master though he gave back the empire to the sons of Bajazet. The character of his conquests—the death and desolation that marked his path—was the most terrible as well as the most extensive ever witnessed before or since, and many of the largest and most powerful empires of Asia were as utterly blotted from the earth as if it had opened and swallowed them up. He himself was of pure Caucasian extraction, and doubtless his generals and chiefs were the same, and the Caucasian Tartars formed a very considerable portion of his forces. There was doubtless also a large mixed or mongrel element, for of the throngs of female captives taken in these Mongolian invasions, few ever returned to their homes, but becoming the wives of Mongolian chiefs, those numerous and often powerful dynasties which have ruled over the Asiatic populations had their origin. Nevertheless a vast majority of these almost countless hordes led by Tamerlane were unmixed Mongolian, and, therefore, though the leader was himself a Caucasian or white man, the bloody and desolating character of his conquests were stamped by the cruelty and ferocity of that race. Perhaps no better illustration of the Caucasian and Mongolian character could be presented than the contrast between Alexander’s invasion of Persia and India and similar invasions of Tamerlane. The first, though a “Pagan” several centuries before the Christian era, was humane and merciful to the conquered, and except in battle shed no blood, while the latter not content with the enforcement of the Moslem rule of tribute or death or the religion of the Prophet, slaughtered whole populations after the battle was over, and for the gratification of his ferocious hordes. His conquest of Bagdad and his pyramid of ninety thousand heads is one of those terrible things that historians are generally puzzled with, for not only is there nothing resembling it in history, but there seems to be no motive or sufficient cause for it. It was the result, the offspring of Mongol ferocity and apathetic cruelty, such as we now witness in India and China, and springs as much, perhaps, from a low grade of sensibility or incapacity to feel or sympathize with suffering, as from a sentiment of cruelty.

The Hindoos or East Indians, like the Chinese, also pretend to trace back their history to a time long anterior to our own historic era. Their claim, in this respect, is doubtless better founded than that of the former, but it, too, is absurd and valueless. The Hindoos were originally Caucasian, who, at some remote period, invaded and conquered India, and stamped their civilization and religion on the whole peninsula. It is quite likely, indeed it is certain, that India had been invaded and conquered by numerous nations or tribes of Caucasians long anterior to the Hindoo conquest. There are in our day too many traces of this, too many evidences of the former existence of the great master race of mankind in India, to permit us to doubt. The vast debris spread all over India, indeed the sixty or seventy dialects of Sanscrit proves that India must have been long subject to the dominion of the Caucasian. It is believed by many that Hindoo Koosh, or the high tableland of Thibet, was the cradle of the race, and it is rational to suppose that long anterior to our own historic era white men may have formed the principal portion of the Indian population. They doubtless thus spread themselves over the peninsula; or if that was the birth-place of the Mongolian, then it is certain that restless and energetic Caucasian tribes at a very early day invaded and conquered the country. Even now there is a large Caucasian element in India. The Afghans are pure Caucasian, while the Sikhs, the Rajpoots, and a large portion of the people of Oude are doubtless of predominating Caucasian blood. That caste which English writers have so much to say about, and the good people of Exeter Hall desire so much to “abolish,” is, to a great extent, mere mongrelism, and that which is not mongrelism is simply what England itself suffers from to a greater extent than any other country or people. The Normans invaded the latter country, took possession of their lands, and reduced the conquered Anglo-Saxons to slavery, where they have remained, ever since, and though the Norman blood has long since disappeared, the theory or system remains, for a few cunning and adroit “Anglo-Saxons,” claiming to be the descendants of Norman Conquerors, now monopolize the land and rule the great body of the people as absolutely as the real Normans did in their day. The early invaders of India grasped everything, as did the Normans in England, but they amalgamated with the conquered, and thus enfeebling themselves, fell a victim to fresh invasions of pure Caucasians. They, in their turn, underwent the same fate, and thus, from time immemorial there grew up those multitudinous dynasties, each of which had its own character, and which became a caste, often, doubtless, as a means for governing the people, and preserved by the conquerors as carefully as that which they in their turn imposed on the country. The Normans and Saxons were of the same race, and the greater the admixture of blood, the more energetic the population, while the admixture of the conquering Caucasian with the conquered Mongolian, has rendered the modern Hindoo powerless and contemptible in comparison with the English or European invader of our times. The general subject of the human races has been so little studied, and our actual knowledge of these great Asiatic populations is so limited and so imperfect, that it is difficult to determine their present character, let alone their former history, and it is quite possible that the present native of India is specifically different from the Chinese. It has been the custom of writers on this subject to assume that the Caucasian and Mongolian, with their often extensive affiliations, constitute the sole population of the Asiatic continent, and that the differences which are actually presented are those produced alone by climate and external influences. The writer has adopted this view, but without assenting to it in fact, for the actual differences between Nena Sahib or an Indian prince, and the true Mongol of the Chinese model, are certainly as distinct as those separating the former from a modern Englishman, and therefore he thinks it quite probable that further investigation will show a race or species of men, mainly to be found in India, that are yet to be known and to take their place in the great human family, midway between the Caucasian and Mongolian. Be this as it may, however, it is certain that our own race alone has a history or is capable of those mental manifestations which constitute the materials of history. The Mongolic element, though often invading and temporarily conquering large portions of territory occupied by Caucasian populations, has receded almost as rapidly as it advanced, and therefore their actual centre of existence remains substantially the same at all times. There is, however, a trace of Mongolian blood now found outside of its own proper centre, but probably there is a much larger Caucasian element among Mongolic nations. The Caucasian Tartars invaded and conquered China a few centuries ago, and though doubtless mixed up with and mainly Mongol at this time, they are the ruling dynasty. The instincts of this race naturally impelled it to escape from contact or collision with the superior race; thus, the great wall of China was a vain attempt to keep out a race it fears and hates, and which its instincts assure it must rule over itself wherever they exist in juxtaposition. Many persons fancy that our treaties with Japan and China will bring these vast populations within the circle of modern civilization, and open up to ourselves a fancied Asiatic commerce, which, through California and a Pacific railroad, we shall mainly monopolize. Of course these notions originate in utter ignorance of what China is in reality, and except in degree do not differ from that of the Abolitionists in respect to negroes and negro “slavery.” The Mongol never will, as indeed he never can, become an element in the modern or Christian civilization of our times and of our race, and though there may be a certain trade carried on between us and China, it is not likely to vary to any considerable extent from that existing now, while any attempt to establish a diplomatic intercourse or equality is simply absurd, and must end in nothing.

This, then, is the history of the Mongolian race—the race nearest our own—all the history we have of it, and indeed all the history there is of it, for however brief or imperfect our own knowledge of the race, it is doubtless better and more reliable than is its own pretended history of itself. As has been said, unlike the Negro, whose capacities cannot go beyond the living or actual generation, and with whom millions of generations are the same as a single one, the Mongolian mind may perhaps, with more or less correctness, grasp the life of a few generations, but in no proper sense is it capable of acting, and consequently of writing history.

CHAPTER V.
COLOR.

Anatomists and physiologists have labored very earnestly to account for or to show the “cause” of color, not of the Negro alone, but in the case of our own race. They have generally supposed that the pigmentum nigrum, a substance lying immediately beneath the outward skin, or cuticle, constituted that cause, and therefore the complexion was fair or dark, blonde or brunette, just as the “coloring” matter might happen to be dark or otherwise. This, in a sense, is doubtless true, but to speak of it as a cause is an abuse of terms, for it is simply a fact, and no more a cause than it is an effect. Cause and causes in natural phenomena are known only to Omnipotence, and why the Caucasian color is white or the Mongol yellow, or the Negro black, is as absolutely hidden from us as the cause of their existence at all—as wholly beyond the scope of human intelligence, and therefore of rational inquiry, as the cause of the return of the seasons, or why men and animals at a certain time arrive at maturity or finally decay and die. The divine wisdom and perfect fitness of the fact itself, however, are clearly appreciable, and we are able to see, not only its transcendent importance, but the utter impossibility of its being otherwise. There is in all the works of God perfect harmony, as well as perfect wisdom, and, therefore, such a monstrosity as a “colored man”—or a being like ourselves in all except the color of the negro—is not merely absurd, but as impossible in fact, though not so palpable to a superficial intelligence, as a white body with a negro head on its shoulders, or indeed as a dog with the head of any other animal or form of being.