Mr. Bowen, the celebrated Baptist missionary, [see his work entitled Central Africa and Missionary Labors from 1849 to 1856, by T. J. Bowen, Charleston, Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1857,] met with a great many cases of leucosis in Soudan or Negroland, back of Liberia, and erroneously concluded that these people had very little, if any negro blood in them, and would be better subjects for missionary labors than the blacks of the same country. They are, however, nothing but white black men, a degeneration of the negro proper, and are even less capable of perpetuating themselves than the hybrids or mulattoes. Mr. Bowen is at a loss to account for the depopulation, which he verifies has been going on in Soudan the last fifty years, threatening to leave the country, at no distant time, bare of inhabitants, unless roads be constructed by the Christians of the Southern States for commercial intercourse, and double exertions made to civilize and Christianize the waning population of Central Africa before it entirely disappears. The good missionary, though sent out from Georgia, was evidently taught in that British school which assumes that there is only a single species in the genus homo, in opposition to the Bible, that clearly designates three. That school quotes the references in the sacred volume, implying unity in the genus—a unity which no one denies—to disprove the existence of distinct species, and upon this fallacy builds the theory that negro, Indian and white men are beings exactly alike, because they are human beings. Ergo, the liberty so beneficial to the white man, would be equally so to the negro—disregarding as a fable those words of the Bible expressly declaring that the latter shall be servant of servants to the former—words which would not have been there if that kind of subordination called slavery was not the normal condition of the race of Ham. To expect to civilize or Christianize the negro without the intervention of slavery is to expect an impossibility.
Mr. Bowen's experience and natural good sense occasionally got the better of his theoretical views. Thus, at page 90, we find him confessing that "the native African negroes ought to have masters in obedience to the demands of natural justice." At page 149 he lets us into the secret of the depopulating process which has been going on in Central Africa the last fifty years. While standing among some negroes in Ikata, a town in Central Africa, a capricious mulatto chief sent some officers among the company, who singled out a poor fellow who had offended the chief by saying that as he let a white man into town, he might let in a Dahomey man also, and presented him with an empty bag with the message: "The king says you must send me your head." The Rev. missionary, who was present at the beheading, made no comment further than to state the fact. But he might have added that the blood of that negro, and millions of others, will be required at the hands of Victoria Regina and the United States for having officiously destroyed the value of negro property in Africa by breaking up the only trade that ever protected the native Africans against the butcheries, cruelties and oppressions of their mulatto, Moorish and Mahommedan tyrants. It is these butcheries and cruelties, and the little care taken of the black man in Africa, the last fifty years, since he became valueless through British and American philanthropy, that lie at the root of the depopulating process which is going on in the dark land of the Niger. Empty bags are now filled with heads instead of cowries. Mr. Bowen was surprised to see so few black men in Soudan, where, half a century ago, he says they were so numerous. But he rather regards it as a fortunate circumstance, as he has no hope of Christianizing the typical negro, except through slavery to Christian masters—and that idea is abhorrent to the school in which he was taught; but he has more hope from the mixed races, and these, he confesses, can not be effectually Christianized until civilized. He deplores the bad example of the black race, among them, their polygamy, etc., as greatly in the way of civilizing the mulattoes. But he has overlooked the important fact, as many do, that the existence of the hybrids themselves depends upon the existence of the typical Africans. The extinction of the latter must, of necessity, be soon followed by the extinction of the former, as they can not, for any length of time, propagate among themselves.
Mr. Bowen inferred that the negroes of Central Africa, although diminishing in numbers, are rising higher in the scale of humanity, from the very small circumstance that they do not emit from their bodies so strong and so offensive an odor as the negro slaves of Georgia and the Carolinas do, nor are their skins of so deep a black. This is a good illustration of the important truth, that all the danger of the slavery question lies in the ignorance of Scripture and the natural history of the negro. A little acquaintance with the negro's natural history would prove to Mr. Bowen that the strong odor emitted by the negro, like the deep pigment of the skin, is an indication of high health, happiness, and good treatment, while its deficiency is a sure sign of unhappiness, disease, bad treatment, or degeneration. The skin of a happy, healthy negro is not only blacker and more oily than an unhappy, unhealthy one, but emits the strongest odor when the body is warmed by exercise and the soul is filled with the most pleasurable emotions. In the dance called patting juber, the odor emitted from the men, intoxicated with pleasure, is often so powerful as to throw the negro women into paroxysms of unconsciousness, vulgo hysterics. On another point of much importance there is no practical difference between the Rev. missionary and that clear-headed, bold, and eccentric old Methodist, Dr. McFarlane. Both believe that the Bible can do ignorant, sensual savages no good; both believe that nothing but compulsatory power can restrain uncivilized barbarians from polygamy, inebriety, and other sinful practices.
The good missionary, however, believes in the possibility of civilizing the inferior races by the money and means of the Christian nations lavishly bestowed, after which he thinks it will be no difficult matter to convert them to Christianity. Whereas the venerable Methodist believes in the impossibility of civilizing them, and therefore concludes that the Written Word was not intended for those inferior races who can not read it. When the philosophy of the prognathous species of mankind is better understood, it will be seen how they, the lowest of the human species, can be made partakers, equally with the highest, in the blessings and benefits of the Written Word of God. The plantation laws against polygamy, intoxicating drinks, and other besetting sins of the negro race in the savage state, are gradually and silently converting the African barbarian into a moral, rational, and civilized being, thereby rendering the heart a fit tabernacle for the reception of Gospel truths. The prejudices of many, perhaps the majority of the Southern people, against educating the negroes they hold in subjection, arise from some vague and indefinite fears of its consequences, suggested by the abolition and British theories built on the false assumption that the negro is a white man with a black skin. If such an assumption had the smallest degree of truth in it, the more profound the ignorance and the deeper sunk in barbarism the slaves were kept, the better it would be for them and their masters. But experience proves that masters and overseers have nothing at all to fear from civilized and intelligent negroes, and no trouble whatever in managing them—that all the trouble, insubordination and danger arise from the uncivilized, immoral, rude, and grossly ignorant portion of the servile race. It is not the ignorant semi-barbarian that the master or overseer intrusts with his keys, his money, his horse or his gun, but the most intelligent of the plantation—one whose intellect and morals have undergone the best training. An educated negro, one whose intellect and morals have been cultivated, is worth double the price of the wild, uncultivated, black barbarian of Cuba and will do twice as much work, do it better and with less trouble.
The prejudice against educating the negroes may also be traced to the neglect of American divines in making themselves acquainted with Hebrew literature. What little the most of them know of the meaning of the untranslated terms occurring in the Bible, and the signification of the verbs from which they are derived, is mostly gathered from British commentators and glossary-makers, who have blinked the facts that disprove the Exeter Hall dogma, that negro slavery is sin against God. Hence, even in the South, the important Biblical truth, that the white man derives his authority to govern the negro from the Great Jehovah, is seldom proclaimed from the pulpit. If it were proclaimed, the master race would see deeper into their responsibilities, and look closer into the duties they owe to the people whom God has given them as an inheritance, and their children after them, so long as time shall last. That man has no faith in the Scriptures who believes that education could defeat God's purposes, in subjecting the black man to the government of the white. On the contrary, experience proves its advantages, to both parties. Aside and apart from Scripture authority, natural history reveals most of the same facts, in regard to the negro that the Bible does. It proves the existence of at least three distinct species of the genus man, differing in their instincts, form, habits and color. The white species having qualities denied to the black—one with a free and the other with a servile mind—one a thinking and reflective being, the other a creature of feeling and imitation, almost void of reflective faculties, and consequently unable to provide for and take care of himself. The relation of master and slave would naturally spring up between two such different species of men, even if there was no Scripture authority to support it. The relation thus established, being natural, would be drawn closer together, instead of severed, by the inferior imitating the superior in all his ways, or in other words, acquiring an education.
ON THE CAUCASIANS AND THE AFRICANS.
Several years ago we published some original and ingenious views of Dr. Cartwright, of New Orleans, upon the subject of negroes and their characteristics. The matter is more elaborately treated by him in the following paper:—De Bows Review.
The Nilotic monuments furnish numerous portraits of the negro races, represented as slaves, sixteen hundred years before the Christian era. Although repeatedly drawn from their native barbarism and carried among civilized nations, they soon forget what they learn and relapse into barbarism. If the inherent potency of the prognathous type of mankind had been greater than it actually is, sufficiently great to give it the independence of character that the American Indian possesses, the world would have been in a great measure deprived of cotton and sugar. The red man is unavailable as a laborer in the cane or cotton field, or any where else, owing to the unalterable ethnical laws of his character. The white man can not endure toil under the burning sun of the cane and cotton field, and live to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The African will starve rather than engage in a regular system of agricultural labor, unless impelled by the stronger will of the white man. When thus impelled, experience proves that he is much happier, during the hours of labor in the sunny fields, than when dozing in his native woods and jungles. He is also eminently qualified for a number of employments, which the instincts of the white man regard as degrading. If the white man be forced by necessity into employments abhorrent to his instincts, it tends to weaken or destroy that sentiment or principle of honor or duty, which is the mainspring of heroic actions, from the beginning of historical times to the present, and is the basis of every thing great and noble in all grades of white society.