An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans

by Lydia Maria Child

The enemies of true freedom were very ready to predict that the government of Hayti could not continue for any length of time; but it has now lasted nearly thirty years, constantly increasing in respectability and wealth. The affairs of Greece have been managed with much less ability and

discretion, though all the cabinets of Europe have given assistance and advice. St. Domingo achieved her independence alone and unaided—nay, in the very teeth of prejudice and scorn. The Greeks had loans from England, and contributions from America, and sympathy from half the world; the decisive battle of Navarino was gained by the combined fleets of England, France and Russia. Is it asked why Hayti has not produced any examples of splendid genius? In reply let me inquire, how long did the Europeans ridicule us for our poverty in literature? When Raynal reproached the United States with not having produced one celebrated man, Jefferson requested him to wait until we had existed "as long as the Greeks before they had a Homer, the Romans a Virgil, and the French a Racine." Half a century elapsed before our republic produced Irving, Cooper, Sedgwick, Halleck, and Bryant. We must not forget that the cruel prejudice, under which colored people labor, makes it extremely difficult for them to gain admission to the best colleges and schools; they are obliged to contend with obstacles, which white men never encounter.

It might seem wonderful that the descendants of wise Ethiopia, and learned Egypt, are now in such a state of degradation, if history did not furnish a remarkable parallel in the condition of the modern Greeks. The land of Homer, Pericles, and Plato, is now inhabited by ignorant, brutal pirates. Freedom made the Grecians great and glorious—tyranny has made them stupid and miserable. Yet their yoke has been light, compared with African bondage. In both cases the wrongs of the oppressed have been converted into an argument against them. We first debase the nature of man by making him a slave, and then very coolly tell him that he must always remain a slave because he does not know how to use freedom. We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them for ever, because they are prostrate. Truly, human selfishness never invented a rule, which worked so charmingly both ways!

No one thinks of doubting the intellect of Indians; yet civilization has certainly advanced much farther in the interior of Africa, than it did among the North American tribes. The Indians have strong untutored eloquence,—so have the Africans. And where will you find an Indian chieftain, whose pride, intellect, and valor, are more than a match for Zhinga's? Both of these classes have been most shamefully wronged;

but public prejudice, which bows the negro to the earth, has borne with a far less crushing power upon the energies of the red man; yet they have not produced a Shakspeare or a Newton. But I shall be asked how it is that the nations of Africa, having proceeded so far in the arts of civilization, have made a full stop, and remained century after century without any obvious improvement? I will answer this by another question: How long did the ancient Helvetians, Gauls, and Saxons, remain in such a state of barbarism, that what they considered splendor and refinement, would be called poverty and rudeness, by their German, French, and English descendants? What was it that changed the intellectual and moral character of these people, after ages of ignorance and ferocity? It was the art of printing. But, alas, with the introduction of printing, modern slavery was introduced! While commerce has carried books and maps to other portions of the globe, she has sent kidnappers, with guns and cutlasses into Africa. We have not preached the Gospel of peace to her princes; we have incited them to make war upon each other, to fill our markets with slaves. While knowledge, like a mighty pillar of fire, has guided the European nations still onward, and onward, a dark cloud has settled more and more gloomily over benighted Africa. The lessons of time, the experience of ages, from which we have learned so much, are entirely lost to this vast continent.

I have heard it asserted that the Indians were evidently superior to the negroes, because it was impossible to enslave them. Our slave laws prove that there are some exceptions to this remark; and it must be remembered that the Indians have been fairly met in battle, contending with but one nation at a time; while the whole world have combined against the Africans—sending emissaries to lurk for them in secret places, or steal them at midnight from their homes. The Indian will seek freedom in the arms of death—and so will the negro. By thousands and thousands, these poor people have died for freedom. They have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—starved for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians! When the Africans have writers of their own, we shall hear their efforts for liberty called by the true title of heroism in a glorious cause. We are told

in the fable that a lion, looking at the picture of one of his own species, conquered and trampled on by man, calmly said, "We lions have no painters."

I shall be told that in the preceding examples I have shown only the bright side of the picture. I readily grant it; but I have deemed it important to show that the picture has a bright side. I am well aware that most of the negro authors are remarkable principally because they are negroes. With considerable talent, they generally evince bad taste. I do not pretend that they are Scotts or Miltons; but I wish to prove that they are men, capable of producing their proportion of Scotts and Miltons, if they could be allowed to live in a state of physical and intellectual freedom. But where, at the present time, can they live in perfect freedom, cheered by the hopes and excited by the rewards, which stimulate white men to exertion? Every avenue to distinction is closed to them. Even where the body is suffered to be free, a hateful prejudice keeps the soul in fetters. I think every candid mind must admit that it is more wonderful they have done so much, than that they have done no more.

As a class, I am aware that the negroes, with many honorable exceptions, are ignorant, and show little disposition to be otherwise; but this ceases to be the case just in proportion as they are free. The fault is in their unnatural situation, not in themselves. Tyranny always dwarfs the intellect. Homer tells us, that when Jupiter condemns a man to slavery, he takes from him half his mind. A family of children treated with habitual violence or contempt, become stupid and sluggish, and are called fools by the very parents or guardians who have crushed their mental energies. It was remarked by M. Dupuis, the British Consul at Mogadore, that the generality of Europeans, after a long captivity and severe treatment among the Arabs, seemed at first exceedingly dull and insensible. "If they had been any considerable time in slavery," says he, "they appeared lost to reason and feeling; their spirits broken; and their faculties sunk in a species of stupor, which I am unable adequately to describe. They appeared degraded even below the negro slave. The succession of hardships, without any protecting law to which they can appeal for alleviation, or redress, seems to destroy every spring of exertion, or hope in their minds. They appear indifferent to every thing around them; abject, servile, and brutish."

Lieutenant Hall, in his Travels in the United States, makes the following just remark: "Cut off hope for the future, and freedom for the present; superadd a due pressure of bodily suffering, and personal degradation; and you have a slave, who, (of whatever zone, nation or complexion,) will be what the poor African is, torpid, debased, and lowered beneath the standard of humanity."