After reviewing the sources of information, I am convinced that the following facts may be regarded as established: The American people are no smaller in size than are the peoples in Europe from which they are derived; they are at least as long-lived; their capacity to withstand fatigue, wounds, etc. is at least as great as that of any European people; the average of physical beauty is probably quite as good as it is among an equal population in the Old World; the fecundity of the people is not diminished. The compass of this essay will not permit me to enter into the details necessary to defend these propositions as they might be defended. I will, however, show certain facts which seem to support them. First, as regards the physical proportions of the American people. By far the largest collections of accurate measurements that have ever been made of men were made by the officers of the United States Sanitary Commission during the late Civil War. These statistics have been carefully tabulated by Dr. B. A. Gould, the distinguished astronomer. From the results reached by him, it is plain that the average dimensions of these troops were as good as those of any European army; while the men from those States where the population had been longest separated from the mother country were on the whole the best formed of all.[6]
The statistics of the life-insurance companies make it clear that the death-rate is not higher in America among the classes that insure than in England. I am credibly informed that American companies expect a longer life among their clients than the English tables of mortality assume.
The endurance of fatigue and wounds in armies has been proved by our Civil War to be as good as that of the best English or Continental troops. Such forced marches as that of Buell to the relief of the overwhelmed troops at Pittsburg Landing, or Shiloh,—where the men marched thirty-five miles without rest, and at once entered upon a contest which checked a victorious army,—is proof enough of the physical and moral endurance of the people. The extraordinary percentage of seriously wounded men that recovered during this war,—a proportion without parallel in European armies,—can only be attributed to the innate vigor of the men, and not to any superiority in the treatment they received. The distinguished physiologist, Dr. Brown-Séquard, assures me that the American body, be it that of man or beast, is more enduring of wounds than the European; that to make a given impression upon the body of a creature in America it is necessary to inflict severer wounds than it would be to produce the same effect on a creature of the same species in Europe. His opportunities for forming an opinion on this subject have been singularly great, so that the assertion seems to me very important. That the fecundity of the population is not on the whole diminishing, is sufficiently shown by the statistics of the country. In the matter of physical beauty, the condition of the American people cannot, of course, be made a matter of statistics. The testimony of all intelligent travellers is to the effect that the forms of the people have lost nothing of their distinguished inheritance of beauty from their ancestors. The face is certainly no less intellectual in its type than that of the Teutonic peoples of the Old World, while the body is, though perhaps of a less massive mould, without evident marks of less symmetry.
Perhaps the best assurance we obtain concerning the fitness of North America for the long-continued residence of Teutonic people may be derived from the consideration of the history of the two American settlements that have remained for about two hundred years without considerable admixture of new European blood. These are the English settlement in Virginia and the French in the region of the St. Lawrence; both these populations have been upon the soil for about two hundred years, with but little addition from their mother countries. In Virginia, essentially the whole of the white blood is English; the only mixture of any moment is from the Pennsylvania Germans, a people of kindred race, and equally long upon the soil. I believe that not less than ninety-five per cent of the white blood,—if I may be allowed this form of expression,—is derived from British soil. We have no statistics concerning the bodily condition of the Virginian people which will enable us to compare them with those of other States. The few recruits in the Federal army who were measured by the Sanitary Commission were mainly from the poorer classes, the oppressed “poor whites,” and are not a fair index of the physical condition of the people of this State. We have only the fact that the Confederate army of northern Virginia, composed in the main of the small farmers of the commonwealth, fought, under Lee and Jackson, a long, stubborn, losing fight, as well as any other men of the race have done. No other test of vigor is so perfect as that which such a struggle gives. Where a people make such men as Jackson, and such men as made Jackson’s career possible, we may be sure that they are not in their decadence.
In Kentucky and Tennessee we have little else than Virginia blood and that of northwestern Carolina, which was derived from Virginia, with the exception of the very localized German settlements along the Ohio River: practically the whole of the white agricultural population of these States is of British blood that has been on this soil for about two hundred years. I do not believe there is any other body of folk of as purely English stock as this white population of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee: it amounts to almost three millions of people, and there is scarcely any admixture of other blood. In Virginia, as before remarked, there are no statistics to show just what the physical conditions of the population are; but in Kentucky and Tennessee a large number of men who were born upon the soil were measured by the Sanitary Commission. The results were as follows: the troops from Kentucky and Tennessee were larger than those from any other State; in height, girth of chest, and size of head, they were of remarkable proportions. The men of no European army exceed them in size, though some picked bodies of troops are equally large. We must remember also that these men were not selected from the body of the people, as European armies are, but that they represent the State in arms, very few being rejected for disability. We must also remember that the men from the most fertile parts of these States, those parts which have the reputation of breeding the largest men, went into the Confederate army; while the Union troops were principally recruited from the poorer districts, where the people suffer somewhat from the want of sufficient variety in their food. The fighting quality of these men is well shown by the history of a Kentucky brigade in the Confederate army in the campaign near Atlanta in 1864, in which the brigade, during four months of very active service, received more wounds than it had men, and not over ten men were unaccounted for at the end of the campaign.[7] The goodness of this service is probably not exceptional; it has for us, however, the especial interest that these men were the product of six generations of American life,—showing as well as possible that the physical and moral conditions of life upon this continent are not calculated to depreciate the important inheritances of the race.
Although it is only a part of the problem, it is well to notice that the death-rate in these States of old American blood is singularly low, and the number of very aged people who retain their faculties to an advanced age very great. The census of 1870 gave the death-rate of Kentucky at about eleven in a thousand,—a number small almost beyond belief. It should also be noticed that the emigration from Kentucky has for fifty years or more been very large, relatively almost as heavy as that from Massachusetts. It is a well-known fact, which is made most evident by the statistics of the Sanitary Commission above referred to, that the larger and stronger citizens of a State are more apt to emigrate than those of weaker frame, the result being that the population left behind is deprived of its most vigorous blood.
The Canadian-French population presents us with another instance in which a European people long upon the soil, and without recent additions of blood from the native country, have maintained themselves unharmed amid conditions of considerable difficulty. This French population has been upon the soil for about as long as that of Virginia; that is to say, for two centuries and more. I have been unable to find any statistics concerning the numbers brought as colonists to America. I have questioned various students on this matter, and have come to the conclusion that the original number did not exceed twenty-five thousand souls. This people has not perceptibly intermingled with those of other blood, so that its separate career can be traced with less difficulty than that of any other people. Race-hatreds, differences of language, of religion, and of customs have kept them apart from their neighbors in a fashion that is more European than American. This has been a great disadvantage to the race, for they have remained in a state of subordination as great as that in which the Africans of the Southern States now are. No other folk of European origin within the British Empire have remained so burdened by disabilities of all kinds as this remarkable people. The soil with which they have to deal is much more difficult than the average of America; most of it lies beyond the limits where Indian corn will grow, and much of it will scarcely nourish the hardier small grains. Despite the material difficulties of their position, their general illiteracy and intensified provincialism, this people have shown some very vigorous qualities; they have more than doubled in numbers in each generation; they are vigorous, exceedingly industrious, and have much mechanical tact. In New England they hold their own in the struggle with the native, so that it seems likely that the States of that district may soon be in good part peopled by the folk of this race. As near as I can ascertain, these Canadian-French of pure blood in Canada and the United States amount to about two and a half millions; if this be the case, the population has more than doubled each thirty years since their arrival upon American soil,—which is about as rapid a rate of increase as can be found among any people in the world, perhaps only surpassed by the population of Virginia; which commonwealth, starting with an original English emigration which could not have exceeded one hundred thousand, counts at the present day not less than six million descendants, or about twice as many as there would be if each generation only doubled the numbers of the preceding.
There is yet another separate people on the American soil which has been here for about six generations without any addition from abroad: these are the so-called Pennsylvanian Germans. I shall not take time to do more than mention them, for they, without recent European admixture, show the same evidences of continued vigor that is presented by the Virginian British and the Canadian French blood. Their progeny are to be counted by millions; and though they, like the Canadian French, have shown as yet little evidence of intellectual capacity, this may be explained by the extreme isolation that their language and customs have forced upon them.
Imperfectly as I have been able to present this important series of facts, it is enough to make it clear that they are mistaken who think that the recent emigrations from Europe have helped to maintain the vigor of the American people. It seems more likely that, so far from adding to the strength of the older stocks, the newer comers, mostly of a lower kind of folk than the original settlers, have served rather to hinder than to help the progress of the population which came with the original colonies.
These considerations may be extended, by those who care to do so, by a study of several other isolated peoples in this country,—the German colonies of Texas, the Swiss of Tennessee, and several others; all of which have prospered, and all of which have gone to prove that the climate of North America is singularly well fitted for the use of Northern Europeans. No sufficiently large colonies of Italians, Spanish, or Portuguese have ever been planted within the limits of the present United States to determine the fitness of its conditions for the peoples of those States. There is no reason, however, to believe that they would not have succeeded on this soil if fortune had brought them here.