Has the Negro a higher and better nature? We shall see.
To separate him from the rest of the human family would be to dispute the great truth, that has been so long accepted, by all thoroughly Christianized nations—the Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of man. "Of one blood God formed all nations, for to dwell upon the face of the earth." Man, in his first estate, was supremely moral, being created in the righteous image of his Maker; had man continued in this condition, he would have been perfectly innocent and happy, favored with the exalted privilege of direct communion with God, inspired only by Him who is the Great Source, all light and perfection, from whom emanates nothing dark, unholy or unclean.
But man fell, and was driven from Eden. Hence, he began to wander away from God, in spirit and purpose; the tempter had been admitted and man's heart grew very deceitful and desperately wicked. The command of God, however, as written in Genesis, 1st chap., 28th verse, was inviolable. The earth must be peopled; thus man continued to wander, and his heart became proud and defiant, even to the resistance of the will and purpose or God. So far did the distance become between man and his Maker and so greatly abounded his wickedness, that at last God gave him over to his own evil imaginations.
The inhabitants of the antediluvian world, as a consequence of man's first transgression, fell lower and lower in the scale of good morals. They became so confirmed in wickedness, so totally depraved, that God destroyed them all, save one man and his family, whom He accounted as righteous, for the sake of his faithful obedience, and whose seed He preserved for the repeopling of the earth. The races, whether Semitic, Hamitic or Japhetic, as springing from the three sons of Noah, all partook of some of the natural proclivities of their revered and ancient grand-sire. What Canaan lacked in the line of perfection in the moral ethics of his day, may be directly attributed to heredity. The lineage of the Negro has been directly traced through Cush to Ham; hence, to argue the total moral depravity of the sons of Ham is but to concede the total moral depravity of the entire human race, as emanated from Noah in the postdiluvian age.
To assert that the Negro has no defects, and is morally good, would be to deny him as one of the legitimate heirs of the family of Noah, and deprive him of his natural inheritance. On the contrary, the Negro is joint-heir to all the virtues and all the infirmities of the other members of the human family. He is just as good and equally as bad as his fairer-complexioned brothers.
"Multiply and replenish the earth," was the eternal fiat. The subsequent confusion of tongues, and the dispersion of the people even to the remotest parts of the globe, were but links in the chain of God's design. The entire globe must be peopled, not a portion of it; hence the sons of man continued their migration until they were lost to each other.
The history of civilization discloses to us the land of the Hamites, as the cradle from whence sprang all learning, literature and arts, but man's heart still being deceitful, proud and wicked, continued to wander away from the true God; and, notwithstanding his acquired knowledge, and the very high state of civilization to which he had attained, he forgot God, and was allowed to drift into pagan darkness and superstition. These people were scattered, and their land despoiled, and they fled for refuge far into the wilderness where they were left in thick darkness:
"Grouping in ignorance, dark as the night," with
"No blessed Bible to give them the light."
Had any other division of the human family been subjected to the influences of the same depressing climate, for an equal length of time, as were the Hamites, and surrounded by the same degrading circumstances, having no light without the assistance of divine counsel, their degeneration would have been equally as great as these descendants of Ham, when first began their involuntary migration into this country. The subsequent training which the Negro received in the school of bondage, while, in some respects, may have been a very potent lever in raising them from the pit of darkness and superstition, was not that which would best serve in the development of his higher moral nature.
Prior to the beginning of colonial slave traffic, the Negro, as found in his original home, the dark continent, was innocent and simple in his habits, possessed of a very high regard for truth and virtue. And, though very ignorant and superstitious, the result of his paganistic worship, vice and immorality was to him almost unknown. He was a lover of the beautiful, and in disposition easily entreated; and, because of these very tractile elements in his character, he fell an easy prey to the machinations of his more wily and crafty brother Japhet.