The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863

Many persons may be disposed to receive with a large share of scepticism the affirmation that there is an aspect of the 'negro question,' which has not, within the last thirty years of ceaseless agitation, undergone a thorough discussion. Yet such an assertion would be perfectly true. There is one side of that question, at which, during all the fierce excitements of the time, we have scarcely looked; and which many, even those who have taken an active and leading part in the controversy, have not carefully studied.

The morality of our system of slavery has been fully and thoroughly discussed, and may be considered as finally and forever settled, in the judgment of all right-minded and impartial men throughout Christendom. It may henceforth be taken as the consensus omnium gentium, that men and women, with their children and their children's children forever, cannot rightfully be made, by human laws, chattels personal and articles of merchandise.

The economy of slavery has been discussed. Its relations to wealth, to industry, to commerce, manufactures, and the arts, as well as to education, public intelligence, and public morals, are so well understood, that it is not probable that the efforts even of Jefferson Davis, or the whole 'Southern confederacy,' with the aid of such transatlantic allies as the London Times, will be able, in respect to such matters as these, to change or even to unsettle the judgment of mankind.

But there is another class of questions on which the public mind is as unthoughtful and unenlightened, as in respect to these it is thoughtful and intelligent. We have pretty well considered what consequences may be expected from the continuance of slavery; but we have neglected to inquire, on the supposition of the emancipation of the negro, what will be his condition, what his future, and what his influence on our national destiny. Upon such questions as these, we have, during the controversy, dogmatized much, and thought little. They have called forth many outbursts of passion, but very little calm, thoughtful discussion.

There is no lack of earnest and confident opinions in the public mind in relation to this class of questions. It is in respect to this very side of the negro question, that prejudices the most intense and inveterate are widely prevalent; prejudices, too, which have exerted the most decisive influence on the controversy, through every stage of its progress. The masses of the American people believe in those principles of political equality upon which all our constitutions are founded. They not only believe in them, but they cherish and love them. They perceive, too, by a kind of instinct, what many a would-be philosopher has failed to see, that the application and carrying out of those principles necessarily involve the fusion of the entire mass to which they are applied, into one homogeneous whole; that we cannot have a government founded on political equality, consistently with our having an inferior and proscribed class of citizens; a class from whose daughters our sons may not take their wives, and to whose sons we are not willing, either in this or in any future generation, to give our daughters in marriage. Political equality implies that the son of any parents may be raised to the highest offices in the government, and wear the most brilliant honors which a free people can confer. And the masses of the people instinctively see, or rather feel, that it is impossible to admit to such equality a class to whom we deny, and always intend to deny all equality in the social state; and with whom we are shocked at the very thought of ever uniting our race and our blood.

I am not now saying where the moral right of this matter lies; or whether, in this inveterate hostility to a social equality with the negro, the masses of the people are right or wrong. I am only affirming, what certainly cannot be successfully denied, that while they retain and cherish it, they will never be willing to apply to him this doctrine of political equality. They will always resist it, as carrying with it, by inevitable consequence, that social equality to which they are determined never to submit. If the doctrine of political equality, so fundamental, to our system of government, is ever to be extended so as to embrace the colored man, it can only be done by overcoming and utterly obliterating this social aversion.

If it were proved to be ever so desirable to effect such a change in the tastes and prejudices of the American people, history does not lend any countenance to the belief that it is possible. Wherever one people has conquered another, the conquerors and their descendants have always asserted for themselves a political superiority for ages; and that political superiority has extended itself into all the relations of social life. This has taken place with such uniformity, as to impress upon the mind the belief that it occurs in obedience to some great law of human nature, which may be expected to baffle all attempts at resistance in the future, as it has done in the past. The testimony of history is, that equality can be the law of national life only when the nation was originally formed from equal elements. But two peoples never met on the same soil, and under the same government, under conditions so widely unequal as the European and the African populations of this country. The Europeans are, to a great extent, the descendants of the most enlightened men of the world, heirs by birth to the highest civilization of the nineteenth century. The Africans, on the contrary, are the known descendants of parents who were taken by force from their own country, and brought hither as merchandise, sold as chattels and beasts of burden to the highest bidder; and have even now no civilization except what they have acquired in this condition of abject slavery; separated, too, from the dominant class, not only by this stigma of slavery, but by complexion and features so marked and peculiar, that a small taint of the blood of the servile class can be detected with unerring certainty. If history decides anything, it is that a system of political equality cannot be formed out of such elements. The experience of the world is against it.

This deeply seated aversion to the recognition of the equality of the white man and the black man is a potent force, which has been incessantly active in all our history, and furnishes the only satisfactory explanation of the fact that slavery did not perish, at least from all the Northern slave-holding States, long ago. There is, especially in the Border Slave States, a large non-slave-holding class, who know that the existence of slavery is utterly prejudicial to their interests and destructive of their prosperity as free laborers. They are so keenly sensible of this, that they regard with almost equal hatred the system of slavery, the negro, and the slave owner. But one consideration, which is never absent from their minds, always prevails, even over their regard for their own interests, and receives their steady and invariable coöperation with the slave owner in perpetuating the enslavement of the colored man. That consideration is the dread of negro equality. If, say they, the colored man becomes a freeman, then why not entitled to all the privileges and franchises which other freemen enjoy? And if admitted to political, then surely to social equality also.

And to many it seems perfectly clear that the universal emancipation of the negro carries with it by inevitable necessity his admission to the full enjoyment of all equality, political and social, and his becoming homogeneous with the mass of the American people; and the fact that they think so is the only adequate explanation of the inflexible energy of will with which they resist all measures which are supposed to tend in the smallest degree toward emancipation. And they think themselves able to give unanswerable reasons for the bitterness with which they note everything which is expressed by the word 'abolitionism.' They assume it for a fact, which admits no contradiction, that the natural increase of the negro race in this country is more rapid than that of the white man. So far as my observation extends, the great majority of the people believe this with an undoubting faith. It is constantly asserted in conversation, and in the most exaggerated form in newspaper paragraphs; although (as I shall presently show) a mere glance at our census tables disproves it. It is also assumed, with a faith equally undoubting, that if the slaves were all emancipated, the negro race would still increase as rapidly in freedom as in slavery. Emancipation, it is said, would at once cast upon the country four millions and a half of free negroes; and by the rapidity of their increase, they would, at no distant day, become a majority of the whole population.

If then, it is further argued, you emancipate them, and yet withhold from them a full participation in all our political privileges, they will be hostile to our government, a great nation of aliens in the midst of us, who would be the natural enemies of our institutions. An internecine war of races, it is said, must follow. Even here it would be well for persons who entertain such gloomy apprehensions, to remember that if these assumptions were all true (though I will show in the sequel that they are not), even then, emancipation could not make of the negroes more dangerous enemies to our institutions than slavery has made of the masters. It is also said that the only possible mode of escaping all these horrible results, would be to admit the negro, if he must be freed, to all the privileges and franchises of the Constitution, and amalgamate him entirely with the mass of American society. Thus it is taken for proved that emancipation would carry with it the equality of the negro and the white man in all their relations.

I believe it to be true beyond reasonable doubt, that the great majority of the American people do at this time accept this substantially as their creed on the question of emancipation. They do not mean to justify slavery; they abhor and hate it; they regard it as economically, socially, politically, and morally wrong. But they regard emancipation as tending directly and inevitably to incorporate the negro into the mass of American society, and compel us to treat him as homogeneous with it. To such a solution of the question they feel an unconquerable aversion. It shocks their taste; it violates their notions of propriety and fitness; they resist it by a sort of instinct, rather than from set conviction and purpose.

Nor is there one man in a thousand of us, who is not conscious in himself of a certain degree of sympathy with this view of the subject, however much we may think that we morally disapprove it. With enslaving the negro, and reducing him to an article of merchandise, or depriving him of one of those moral rights which God has given him as a man, we have no sympathy. But if, in full view of a proposition to break down all the social barriers which now divide the races, so that our descendants and those of the colored man shall form one homogeneous people, we interrogate our own consciousness, we shall discover that we, even those of us who have most eloquently and indignantly denounced 'prejudice against color,' are compelled to own ourselves in sympathy with the great mass of the American people, in utter and unconquerable aversion to such an arrangement.

It is probable that this article may fall into the hands of some friends of mine whose judgment I greatly respect, and whose feelings I should be most reluctant to wound, to whom these sentiments will at first view be far from agreeable. But for many years I have entertained them with undoubting confidence of their truth; and at this solemn crisis of our nation's destiny it becomes us to lay aside all our prejudices, and to endeavor to reach the truth on this momentous question. I repeat it: this side of the subject has not been fairly met and considered in this discussion. The time has come when we must meet it. Emancipation is an indispensable condition of the restoration and perpetuity of the Union, perhaps even of our continued national existence. The one great objection to emancipation, in the minds of the people, North and South, is the belief, so confidently and even obstinately entertained, that it carries with it as an inevitable consequence, either an internecine war of races, which would destroy us, or the amalgamation of our race and blood with that of the negro. If we mean, as practical men and statesmen, to seek our country's salvation by means of emancipation, we must, in some way, relieve the national mind from the pressure of this objection. Till we do so, the masses of the people will say to us: 'We do not approve of slavery; we abhor it; but if we are to have the negro among us, we believe in keeping him in slavery.' All of us, who are in the habit of talking with the people on this subject, know that almost in these very words we are met at every street corner. We must answer it, or in some form slavery will still continue to be the curse of our country, and to hurry it on to an untimely and ignominious end.

Let it be distinctly borne in mind that it is not the moral equality of the negro to the white man, which is under consideration. That indeed is only indirectly assailed by the inveterate national prejudice of which I speak. Those masses of the people who have no pecuniary interest in slavery, trample on the moral rights of the colored man only because they are made to believe themselves placed under the hard necessity of doing so, in order to resist any approach toward that political and social equality with him to which they are determined never to submit. Show them how they can concede to him the former without conceding the latter, and they will gladly do it. For myself, nothing can be added to the intensity of my conviction not only that the colored man must be protected in the full enjoyment of all the moral rights of humanity, as a condition of our prolonged national existence; but that the masses of the people never will consent to a political and social equality with the negro race.

How then can the public mind be assured that to emancipate the enslaved race, to confer on them all the moral rights of humanity, does not involve by any necessity or even remote probability, either an internecine war of races on our own soil, or the fusion of the two races into one homogeneous people? One answer, which satisfies many, is, the freedmen must be colonized in some unoccupied region of the earth, where they may be separated from the white man, and build up for themselves an independent and homogeneous nationality. I have no controversy with this proposed solution of the difficulty, or with the excellent men who are advocating and promoting it, with an earnest patriotism worthy of all honor. But I have grave doubts of the adequacy of this solution to meet the momentous exigencies of the present crisis. At least, I feel no necessity of resting the whole cause upon it, when there is another solution at hand, which certainly is adequate, furnished by the very laws of nature which the Creator has established, and so certain in its operation, that we have only to strike the fetters from the limbs of the poor slave, and recognize his manhood, and God will take care of the rest, and protect our country from the evils we have so much dreaded.

That solution is found in a great law of population. It is necessary, therefore, that I should state this law, and prove its reality, and its adequacy to meet all the necessities of the case in hand.

Whenever two peoples, one of which is little removed from barbarism, and the other having the full strength of a mature civilization, are placed in juxtaposition with each other, on terms of free labor and free competition, the stronger will always either amalgamate itself with the weaker, or extinguish it. In the former case, civilization undergoes an eclipse, almost an extinction. The homogeneous people resulting from such a union, occupies a position in the scale of civilization much nearer to that of their barbarous than that of their civilized parents. Numerous and conclusive examples of this have occurred in the progress of the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies in proximity to the various native tribes of this continent. They have generally amalgamated freely with their savage neighbors; and a deep eclipse of civilization has in every instance resulted. When that eclipse is to end, we have not the foresight to determine.

The English colonies, on the other hand, in all parts of the world, have steadily refused to enter into any marriage relations with their barbarous neighbors, or to recognize as belonging to their community any half-breeds springing from licentious and illicit connection with them. Here, too, the results are almost entirely uniform. The extinction of such barbarous tribes brought within the sphere of their competition has been rapid and almost if not absolutely invariable; while the English colonies themselves have preserved the civilization of the parent stock in almost undiminished vigor.

A mere general view of the history of European colonization in barbarous regions of the earth, does therefore afford a very striking proof of the truth of my proposition. And it is much to our purpose here to remark, that the very aversion to incorporating the negro into our nationality, which is so firmly fixed in the minds of the masses of the people, is no new thing in our history, and no outgrowth of slavery. It is the same national characteristic which, in all parts of the world, has prevented the English colonist from intermarrying with his barbarous neighbor. Call it by what hard name you please, call it 'prejudice against color,' and denounce it as eloquently and indignantly as you may, it is one of the most remarkable and one of the most respectable features of the English colonies wherever found, and one of the chief causes of their preëminence over those of other European nations, in civilization, wealth, and power. But what it is chiefly to our purpose to remark is, that while it is to the colonies themselves the cause of unequalled prosperity and rapidity of growth in all the elements of national greatness, to their savage neighbors it is the cause of rapid and certain extinction.

Precisely in such relations to each other will the white and colored populations of the United States be placed by an act of universal emancipation, the substitution of free labor and free competition for the compulsory power of the master. And while on the one hand the history of the colonial off-shoots of England shows that the amalgamation of the races will not follow, it shows with equal clearness and certainty that the rapid extinction of the colored race will follow. Here I might rest the whole argument, with a high degree of assurance of the soundness and certainty of my conclusion, that the result of emancipation must be, not the amalgamation of the races, not an internecine war between them, but the inevitable extinction of the weaker race by the competition of the stronger. I say the competition of the stronger, because, to avoid extending this article to a very unreasonable length, I must assume that the reader is sufficiently versed in American history to know that even the Indian perishes, for the most part, not by the sword or the rifle of the white man, but by the simple competition of civilization with the Indian's means of subsistence.

I might, I say, leave my argument here; but to do so would be great injustice to the subject. There are abundant and unquestionable facts, which show to a demonstration, that the case of the negro in his relations to the European population of this country is embraced in the law just stated.

In the first place, the two races are not amalgamated. Intermarriages between them are so rare, that few of the readers of this article can remember ever to have known one. Such marriages are regarded as monstrous and disgraceful, though the law should, as in some of the States, recognize them. One sentiment in respect to them pervades the whole community, and that a sentiment of aversion. Those half-breeds which spring from licentiousness, or even from the very few lawful marriages which have occurred, are not accepted as standing in any nearer relations to the white man than the pure-blooded African. In those States where slavery has been longest extinct, and the colored man has been relieved from all legal disabilities, the line between the two races is as sharply drawn to-day as it was two hundred years ago. On such a question two hundred years and more is long enough for an experiment. The experiment already tried does prove that the Anglo-American and African populations of this country cannot be amalgamated, either by freedom or slavery; and those who pretend to fear it, are either trying to deceive others for selfish and criminal purposes, or else they are wofully deceived themselves.

Nor are the apprehensions of those who dread the rapid increase of the negro, at all sustained by facts. That fear of a coming internecine war of races, in case the colored man is emancipated, which haunts some minds, has no foundation except in ignorance of the real facts. In no portion of our history has our colored population ever increased with a rapidity nearly so great as the white population. From 1790 to 1860 the colored population increased in the ratio of 1 to 5.86; and the white population in the ratio of 1 to 8.50. If we compare them for any shorter period, we shall always find that the white population increased the more rapidly of the two. From 1790 to 1808, we might perhaps expect to find it otherwise; for during that period the slave trade was in full activity, and tens of thousands of Africans were imported as articles of merchandise. But from 1790 to 1810, while the colored population increased in the ratio of 1 to 1.81, the white population increased in the ratio of 1 to 1.84, although during that period the white population of the country was very little increased by immigration. How it has happened that this point, which our tables of population make so entirely plain, has been so much misapprehended, and why the prevailing notions respecting it are so erroneous, is not easy to explain. The above estimate also reckons all half breeds as belonging to the colored population. (See De Bow's 'Compendium of the United States Census of 1850,' Tables 18, 42, and 71.)

But this is not all. A careful examination of Tables 42 and 71 of the volume above referred to, will show that the increase of the colored race in freedom is certainly not half so great as in slavery. Indeed there is great reason to doubt whether our colored population has ever increased at all, except in slavery. From 1790 to 1800 the free colored population almost doubled, evidently by the emancipation of slaves; for during that period the slave population of Connecticut, Delaware, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont was greatly diminished, while that of New Jersey and Maryland was very little increased. In the last mentioned the increase of her slave population was only 2½ per cent. in ten years, while the increase of her free colored population was 143½ per cent. in the same period. These figures leave no room for doubt that the rapid increase of the free colored population in all that decade was caused by the fact that the great mass of the people were honestly opposed to slavery, and therefore the work of emancipation went on with rapidity.

From 1800 to 1810 the increase of the free colored population was 72 per cent., under the continued though somewhat slackened operation of the same cause. From 1810 to 1820 the increase had declined from 72 to 25 per cent.; for the very obvious reason that most of the Northern States had now no slaves to emancipate, while the Southern States were holding to the system of slavery with increased tenacity, and emancipation was becoming less frequent. From 1820 to 1830 the ratio of increase was again raised to 37 per cent. in ten years. By referring again to Table 71, it will be seen that in that decade, New York and New Jersey emancipated more than 15,000 slaves, adding them to the free colored population. From 1830 to 1840 the rate of increase declined to 21 per cent., and from 1840 to 1850 to only 12¼ per cent., and to 10 per cent. from 1850 to 1860.

These figures prove that from 1790 to 1840 the increase of the free colored population depended chiefly on the emancipation of slaves, and leave no reason to believe that its own natural increase ever exceeded 12¼ per cent. in ten years; while the average increase of the slave population is nearly 28 per cent. in ten years, and of the white population 34 per cent. in ten years. Thus, beyond controversy, the reproductive power of the colored population, always greatly inferior to that of the white population, is yet not half so great in freedom as in slavery. This difference is to be accounted for in great measure by the wicked and beastly stimulus applied to the increase of slaves, that the chattel market may be kept supplied.