[LETTER XXVIII.]
SOCIAL REFORM.
Augusta, (Georgia,) September 3, 1835.
It is impossible to foresee the time when the blacks in this country shall be set free; there is here a great gulf between the black and the white. The difficulty here is not exactly of a pecuniary kind; for, to apply to the two million and a half of American negroes the process which the English have applied to their colonies, only 300 millions would be required, a sum which is not beyond the means of North America. By rendering the process of emancipation more gradual, so as to render it more slow and safe than in the English Islands, a much less sum would be sufficient; but another obstacle occurs, against which money can do nothing. The English nature is exclusive; English society is divided into an endless number of little coteries, each jealous of its superior, and despising its inferior. The Englishman is in his own country, what his country is in reference to the rest of the world, an islander.
This spirit of exclusiveness which prevails in society at home, appears again in the relations of the English with other people. The Englishman cannot fraternise with the Red Skins or the blacks; between him, and them there is no sympathy, no mutual confidence. The Anglo-Americans have retained and even exaggerated this trait of their fathers; and to the men of the North as well as to those of the South, to the Yankee as well as to the Virginian, the negro is a Philistine, a son of Ham. In the States without slaves, as well as in those in which slavery is admitted, the elevation of the black seems impossible. An American of the North or of the South, whether he be rich or poor, ignorant or learned, avoids a contact with the negro, as if he were infected with the plague. Free or slave, well or meanly clad, the black or the man of colour is always a Pariah; he is denied a lodging at the inns; at the theatre or in the steamboats he has a distinct place allotted him far from the whites; he is excluded from commerce, for he cannot set his foot on 'Change nor in the banking rooms. Everywhere and always, he is eminently unclean. Thus treated as vile, he almost always becomes so.
In Europe, blacks or coloured persons have sometimes filled high stations; there is not an instance of the kind in the United States. The republic of Hayti has its accredited representatives at the court of France; it has none in Washington. An anecdote was told me at New York of the disappointment of a young Haytian, who was a near relation of one of Boyer's ministers, and who had received a good education in France; having arrived in New York, he could not get admittance into any hotel, his money was refused at the door of the theatre, he was ordered out of the cabin of a steamboat, and was obliged to quit the country without being able to speak to any body. At Philadelphia, I heard of a man of colour who had acquired wealth, a rare thing among that class, who used sometimes to invite whites to dine with him, and who did not sit at table, but waited upon his guests himself. At the dessert, however, upon their pressing him to be seated with them, he would yield to their urgency. At the end of 1833, in one of the New England States, and I think it was in Massachusetts,[DL] a man of colour being on board a steamer with his wife, wished to get her admitted into the ladies' cabin; the captain refused her admission. A suit was, therefore, brought against the captain, by the man, who was desirous of having it decided by the courts, whether free people of colour, conducting themselves with propriety, could enjoy the same privileges with whites in a State, in which they were recognised as citizens by the laws. He gained his cause on the first hearing, but was cast on appeal.
The different nations of the great Christian family, after having for ages received the doctrines taught by the successors of St. Peter, have selected out of the Christian scheme, some one principle most congenial to their nature, and made it the basis of their character. The French, a most Christian people, have chosen the principle of universal charity. In our eyes, there are no longer Gentiles; our prepossessions in favour of foreigners increase as the square of the distance that separates their country from ours. The Spanish, a chivalric people, have adopted with enthusiasm the adoration of the Virgin, which is of a more modern origin. The Protestants have taken up the principle of individual conscience, and this is nearly all that they have accepted from Christianity; they have renounced the successive additions of the church to the faith of the Apostles, and they have even rejected a part of what Christ himself had engrafted on the Jewish theology. Among Protestants, the Yankees have carried this retrograde tendency to the greatest extreme; they have, except in some few points, relapsed into Judaism, and returned to to the Mosaic law. They appeal in preference to the maxims and doctrines of the Old Testament; they borrow their names from it, and amongst the peculiarities that strike a Frenchmen in New England, one of the strongest is the great prevalence of Hebrew names, such as Phineas, Ebenezer, Judah, Hiram, Obadiah, Ezra, &c., on the signs and in advertisements.
As the religion of the people exercises a controlling influence over the general tone of its feeling and character, the Yankees, having thus fallen back into Judaism, possess, like the Jews, that exclusive spirit which was already inherent in their insular origin. The fact is, that their religious notions square exactly with this depression of the blacks. The blacks seem to them inferior beings; they revolt against the thought of any assimilation with them, even in the slightest degree; a mixture of the two races, or, as they call it, amalgamation, is in their eyes an abomination, a sacrilege, which would deserve to be punished, as the sin of the Hebrews with the daughters of Moab was punished. The emancipation of the negro comprises two things; the one, formal; that is manumission by the master, which it would not be difficult to effect, if a sufficient indemnity were offered to the planters and the country could pay it; and the other, moral, that is, a real acknowledgment of the rights of the black, by admitting him to the personal privileges of the white man, which would meet with insurmountable obstacles at the North as well as the South, and would, perhaps, be even more repugnant to the former than to the latter.
The principal difficulty of emancipation, so far as regards the slave himself, is also of a moral character. To render him fit for the enjoyment of liberty, it is necessary that he should be initiated in the duties and dignity of man, that he should labour in order to pay his tax to society, and maintain his family with decency, that he should learn to obey other motives than the fear of the lash. He must learn the sentiment of self-respect; he must wish and know how to be a father, son, husband. He only can have a perfect right to liberty, who is in a condition to enjoy it with profit to himself and to society. Slavery, odious as it is, is one form of social order, and should be preserved where no better form can be substituted for it, as it must disappear where the inferior is ripe for a better state of things.
In regard to the lower orders in Europe, the difficulty is of the same kind with that which stands in the way of the emancipation of the American slaves; it is only different in degree, and it is already half overcome. In order that the hireling should be raised from his present abject state, the higher classes must be ready to treat him as a being of the same nature with themselves, and he himself must have acquired higher sentiments than such as belong to his present condition. He must not only be inspired with the desire of being happier, but also with the ambition of being better. To establish new relations between the different classes, both parties must labour with that firm will, which recasts ideas and habits. The question of the improvement of the condition of the lower classes is essentially a moral question. A moral remodelling of society is the necessary preliminary. Now, whoever pronounces the world moral in the wider sense of the term, means religion. Philanthropy and philosophy have no hold on the moral nature of man, unless they borrow it from religion. Religion only can move the hearts of all classes deep enough, and enlighten the minds of all strongly enough, to cause the rich and the poor to conceive new ideas of their mutual relations, and to realize them in practice.