"Beside those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions, proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin; which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. Perhaps a difference of structure in the pulmonary aparatus, which a late ingenious experimentalist, (Crawford) has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air; or obliged them, in expiration, to part with more of it.
"They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusement, to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventurous; but this may proceed from want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present; when present, they do not go through it with more coolness and steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after the female; but love seems with them more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions which render it doubtful, whether Heaven has given life to us more in mercy, or in wrath, are less felt and sooner forgotten with them. In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep, when abstracted from their diversions, or unemployed in labour. An animal, whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory, they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferiour. As I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing, and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites. And where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed, it will be right to make allowances for the difference of condition, of conversation, and of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society; yet many have been so situate, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circumstance have always been associated with the whites; some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best work from abroad. The Indians with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes, not destitute of merit and design. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germe in their minds, which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory, such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated; but never yet could I find a black, that had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration[Footnote: "Sleep hab no massa," was the answer of a sleepy negro, who was told that his massa called him.—See Edward's History of Jamaica, 2d Vol.]; never see even an elementary trait of painting, or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune, and time; and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch[Footnote: "The instrument proper to them is the banjore, which they brought here from Africa, and which is the origin of the guitar, it's chords being precisely the four lower chords of that instrument." J—— N.]. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony[Footnote: From this circumstance, I conceive our author's catch was improperly so called.], is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet: their love is ardent; but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion, or rather fanaticism, has produced a Phyllis Wheatly; but it could not produce a poet. Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more credit to the heart than the head; supposing them to have been genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be easy of investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition in life.
"The white slaves, among the Romans, were often their rarest artists; they excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their masters' children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phoedrus, were slaves. Whether further observation will, or will not, verify the conjecture, that Nature has been less bountiful to them, in the endowments of the head, I believe in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft, with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience. And it is a problem which I give the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property, were not formed for him, as well as his slave, and whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken all from him, as he would slay one that would slay him?
"That a change in the relation in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new, nor confined to the blacks; Homer tells us, it was so 2600 years ago:—'Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day makes a man a slave, takes half his worth away.' But the slaves Homer speaks of were whites.
"But to return to the blacks. Notwithstanding this consideration, which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity; and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity.
"The opinion that they are inferiour in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the anatomical knife, to optical glasses, to analysis by fire or solvents: how much more, then, when it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the senses; where the conditions of it's existence are various, and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, in a circumstance where our conclusions would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings, which their Creator may perhaps have given them! To our reproach it must be said, though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks[Footnote: Where Jefferson makes use of the word Black, in this extract, it is rigidly confined to the Negroes originally from the coast of Africa, or their descendants.], whether originally a distinct race, or made so by time and circumstances, are inferiour to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."
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Boston, December 29th, 1796.
DEAR FRIEND,
Upon my arrival here, I had once more the mortification to find myself in the neighbourhood of the yellow fever, which had lately been imported. The uncommon, early, and severe north-west winds entirely prevented it from spreading; a fortunate circumstance for the inhabitants of Boston, as, from the narrowness of their streets, great population, and other circumstances, it must have been very fatal, had it not been by this means destroyed.