The Heritage of The South / A History of the Introduction of Slavery; Its Establishment From Colonial Times and Final Effect Upon the Politics of the United States

by Jubal Anderson Early

"Ferocious in his amours, the African negro has no sentiment of love. The more wives he possesses the richer he is. If he inclines to traffic, each additional father-in-law is an additional trading connection; if devoted to war, an ally. His animal passions too often disdain all such mercenary suggestions; he brings home new wives for the sake of new gratifications. Fond of ornaments, his prosperity is displayed in thick bracelets and anklets of iron or brass. An old European hat or a tattered dress-coat, without any other article of clothing is a sufficient badge of kingship. He inclines to nocturnal habits. He will spend all the night lolling with his companions on the ground at a blazing fire, though the thermometer may be at more than 80°, occupying himself in smoking native tobacco, drinking palm wine and telling stories about witches and spirits. He is an inveterate gambler, a jester and a buffoon. He knows nothing of hero-worship; his religion is a worship of fetiches.

"They are such objects as the fingers and tails of monkeys, human hair, skin, teeth, bones, old nails, copper chains, claws and skulls of birds, seeds of plants. He believes that evil spirits walk at the sunset hour by the edge of forests; he adores the devil, who is thought to haunt burial-grounds and, in mortal terror of his enmity, leaves food for him in the woods. He welcomes the new moon by dancing in her shine. Whatever misfortune or sickness befalls him, he imputes to sorcery and punishes the detected wizard or witch with death. He determines guilt by the ordeal of fire: the accused who can seize a red-hot copper ring without being burned is innocent. His medicine-man—a wind raiser and rain-maker—pursues his main business of exorcism in a head-dress of black feathers, with a string of spirit-charms around his neck and a basket of snake-bone incantations. The more advanced tribes have already risen to idol worship; they adore grotesque figures of the human form, and following the course through which intelligence in other races has passed, they have wooden gods who can speak and nod and wink.

"In this deplorable, this benighted condition, the negro nevertheless shows tokens of a capacity for better things. He is an eager trader, and knows the value of his ebony, bar-wood, beeswax, palm oil, ivory. He has learned how to cheat; nay, more, infrequently he can out-cheat the white man. He can adulterate the caoutchouc and other products he brings down to the coast and pass them off as pure. His color secures him from the detection of a blush when he lies. Though utterly ignorant of any conception of art, he is not unskillful in the manufacture of cooking pots and tobacco pipes of clay; he has a bellows-forge of his own invention; he can reduce iron from its ores and manufacture it. He makes shields of elephants' hide, cross-bows, and other weapons of war. But in the construction of musical instruments his skill is chiefly displayed. From drums of goat-skins, from harps and gourds, he extracts their melancholy sounds and disturbs the nocturnal African forests with his plaintive melodies.

"It has been affirmed by those who have known them well, that the equatorial negro tribes do not increase but tend to die out spontaneously. This is attributed to infanticide and to the ravages of miasmic fever, which in its most malignant form will often destroy its victim in a single day. Even though quinine be taken as a prophylactic no white man can enter their country with impunity. The night dews are absolutely mortal."

The most conclusive answer to all the slanders against Southern slave owners is to be found in the rapid multiplication of the slaves by natural increase, which could not have taken place if such barbarities had been practiced or such immorality had existed, as has been represented. Our detractors have convicted themselves of the slanders they have uttered by taking the Southern slave from the Cotton fields to the ballot box and vested him with all the privileges of an American citizen. If the institution of slavery has so tutored the negro that immediately his bonds are loosened, he is qualified for the privileges of the ballot box, what a civilizing tendency that institution must have had. If on the contrary that institution has kept him in utter ignorance of moral and Christian duty and made him the cringing, degraded creature he has been represented, what a monster must be he who proposes to vest in the untutored savage the power of governing others while the white man is disfranchised. In his native land he has never reached the dignity of a civilized being, and he has never been civilized until transplanted into slavery. Even till this day there are native Africans who continue in a state of barbarism despite the civilizing influence of the British government and the efforts of missionaries. In the western country away from the coast and civilization, tribes of the "hinterland" practice cannibalistic rites, the victim being preferably a blood relation of the sacrificer. The unfortunates are kidnapped, then with ghoulish ceremony and weird incantations they are frightfully mutilated; while life still remains a demoniacal feast is held and human flesh consumed to offset the "Ju-Ju" or spell of evil omen. Then the victim is put out of his misery and buried so that the white man shall know nothing of the mysteries ages old, which the tribes of Africa revere; many of the victims are young women and girls, captured by members of secret societies and taken to some remote spot in the bush.

Whatever of eminence any individual of the race has attained, is due directly or indirectly to the civilizing influence of the institution of slavery. It was the master of slaves who accomplished the greatest missionary success and the progress of his ward since is due to the training and influence of the past.

Foreign people have said that if the Confederate Government had freed the slaves, it might have been recognized by European nations. Such persons should recall that when Don Quixote freed the galley slaves he had then to defend himself against them—they would see the absurdity of such an idea. What could the people of the South have done in the prosecution of the war if 3,000,000 slaves had been turned loose among them and the whole labor system of the country deranged?

Our victors say that having submitted "to the arbitrament of arms," and having been overcome, the question of right has been decided against us, and that we are a conquered people who must submit to the fate of the conquered; but though the gordian knot was cut with the sword, constitutional questions cannot be solved in the same way, such a view would but prove the wrong of the whole doctrine of coercion. The Constitution created by sovereign states, whatever the powers delegated, could never have contemplated the possibility of one of those states being reduced to the condition of a conquered province. That Constitution was as binding in those states, which remained after the secession of the Southern states as before, and it was as much an outrage to make war upon those latter for the act of secession, as it would have been to have destroyed their existence as states while they remained in the Union.

It is true that the South claimed to be a sovereign independent people after their withdrawal, and were so by every principle of right and justice, but that position did not authorize the making of war against them. A counter-claim was that the seceding states had no right to withdraw, and therefore those arrayed in opposition undertook to compel them to submission to the rule and laws of the Union: upon that ground alone could they justify the war. They were the aggressors and disregarded the Constitution and the Union and they also were the ones who violated the principle and precept of that Constitution, which they were sworn to support and defend.