The Memories of Fifty Years / Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the Southwest

by W. H. Sparks

Under the influences of the institutions of the South, as they were, there was little of the servile meanness so predominant where they were not, and the lofty and chivalrous character of the Southern people was greatly owing to these institutions, and the habits of the people growing out of them. The slave was a class below all others. His master was his protector and friend; he supplied his wants and redressed his wrongs, and it was a point of honor as well as duty to do so; he was assured of his care and protection, and felt no humility at his condition. The white man, without means, was reminded that, though poor, he was above the slave, and was stimulated with the pride of position as contrasted with that of the slave; his political, legal, and social rights were unrestrained and equal with those of the wealthiest. This was the only distinction between him and the wealthiest in the land, and this wealth conferred no exclusive privilege, and its acquisition was open to his energy and enterprise, and he gloried in his independence. He could acquire and enjoy without dependence, and his pride and ambition were alike stimulated to the emulation of those who shared most fortune's favors.

The beneficial influences of the institution of African slavery were not only apparent in the independent and honorable bearing and conduct of the Southern people, growing from the habit of command, and involuntary contrast of condition, but upon the material advancement and progress of the country. The product of slave labor, when directed by a higher intelligence than his own, is enormous, and was the basis of the extended and wealth-creating commerce of the entire country. These products could be obtained in no other manner, and without this labor, are lost to the world. The African negro, in osseous and muscular developments, and in all the essentials for labor, is quite equal to those of the white race; in his cerebral, greatly inferior. The capacities of his brain are limited and incapable of cultivation beyond a certain point. His moral man is as feeble and unteachable as his mental. He cannot be educated to the capacity of self-government, nor to the formation and conducting of civil government to the extent of humanizing and controlling by salutary laws a people aggregated into communities. He learns by example which he imitates, so long as the exampler is present before him; but this imitation never hardens to fixed views or habits, indicating the design of Providence, that these physical capacities should be directed and appropriated for good, by an intelligence beyond the mental reach of the negro.

Why is this so? In the wisdom and economy of creation every created thing represents a design for a use. The soil and climate of the tropical and semi-tropical regions of the earth produce and mature all, or very nearly all of the necessaries and luxuries of human life. But human beings of different races and different capacities fill up the whole earth. The capacity to build a fire and fabricate clothing is given only to man. Was the element of fire and the material for clothing given for any but man's use? This enables him to inhabit every clime. But the capacity to produce all the necessaries and luxuries of life is given only to a certain portion of the earth's surface; and its peculiar motions give the fructifying influences of the sun only to the middle belt of the planet. The use of this organization is evidenced in the production of this belt, and these productions must be the result of intelligently directed labor.

The peculiarity of the physical organization of the white man makes it impossible for him to labor healthfully and efficiently for the greatest development of this favored region. Yet his wants demand the yield and tribute of this region. His inventive capacity evolved sugar from the wild canes of the tropics, than which nothing is more essential to his necessities, save the cereals and clothing. He fabricated clothing from the tropical grass and tropical cotton, found the uses of cassia, pimento, the dye woods, and the thousand other tropical products which contribute to comfort, necessity, and luxury; advancing human happiness, human progress, and human civilization.

The black man's organization is radically different. He was formed especially to live and labor in these tropical and semi-tropical regions of the earth; but he is naturally indolent, his wants are few, and nature unaided supplies them. He is uninventive, and has always, from creation down, lived amid these plants without the genius to discover, or the skill and industry to develope their uses. That they are used, and contribute to human health and human necessities, is abundant evidence of Divine design in their creation.

The black man's labor, then, and the white man's intelligence are necessary to the production and fabrication, for human use, of these provisions of Providence. This labor the black man will not yield without compulsion. He is eminently useful under this compulsion, and eminently useless, even to himself, without it. That he was designed to obey this authority, and to be most happy when and where he was most useful, is apparent in his mental and moral organization. By moral I mean those functions of the nervous system which bring us in relation with the external world. He aspires to nothing but the gratification of his passions, and the indulgence of his indolence. He only feels the oppression of slavery in being compelled to work, and none of the moral degradation incident to servility in the higher or superior races. He is, consequently, more happy, and better contented in this, than in any other condition of life. His morals, his bodily comforts, and his status as a man, attain to an elevation in this condition known to his race in no other.

All the results of his condition react upon the superior race, holding him in the condition designed for him by his Creator, producing results to human progress all over the world, known to result in an equal ratio from no other cause. The institution has passed away, and very soon all its consequences will cease to be visible in the character of the Southern people. The plantation will dwindle to the truck-patch, the planter will sink into the grave, and his offspring will degenerate into hucksters and petty traders, and become as mean and contemptible as the Puritan Yankee.

In the two hundred years of African slavery the world's progress was greater in the arts and sciences, and in all the appliances promotive of intelligence and human happiness, than in any period of historical time, of five centuries. Why? Because the labor was performed by the man formed for labor and incapable of thinking, and releasing the man formed to think, direct, and invent, from labor, other than labor of thought. This influence was felt over the civilized world. The productions of the tropics were demanded by the higher civilization. Men forgot to clothe themselves in skins when they could do so in cloth. As commerce extended her flight, bearing these rich creations of labor, elaborated by intelligence, civilization went with her, expanding the mind, enlarging the wants, and prompting progress in all with whom she communicated. Its influence was first felt from the Antilles, extending to the United States. In proportion to the increase of these products was the increase of commerce, wealth, intelligence, and power. Compare the statistics of production by slave-labor with the increase of commerce, and they go hand in hand. As the slave came down from the grain-growing region to the cotton and sugar region, the amount of his labor's product entering into commerce increased four-fold. The inventions of Whitney and Arkwright cheapened the fabric of cotton so much as to bring it within the reach of the poorest, and availed the world in all the uses of cloth.

The shipping and manufacturing interests of England grew; those of the United States, from nothing, in a few years were great rivals of the mother country, and very soon surpassed her in commercial tonnage. Every interest prospered with the prosperity of the planter of the Southern States. His class has passed away; the weeds blacken where the chaste, white cotton beautified his fields; his slave is a freedman—a constitution-maker—a ruler set up by a beastly fanaticism to control his master, and to degrade and destroy his country.

This must bear its legitimate fruit. It is the beginning of the end of the negro upon this continent. Two races with the same civil, political and social privileges cannot long exist in harmony together. The struggle for supremacy will come, and with it a war of races—then God have mercy on the weaker! The mild compulsion which stimulated his labor is withdrawn, and with it the care and protection which alone preserved him. He works no more; his day of Jubilee has come; he must be a power in the land. Infatuated creature! I pity you from my heart. You cannot see or calculate the inevitable destiny now fixed for your race. You cannot see the vile uses you are made to subserve for a time, or deem that those who now appear your conservators, are but preparing your funeral pyre.