Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Part 54

But you are not content with depriving us of all religious feelings. You a.s.sert that our slavery has also "demoralized the Northern States," and charge upon it not only every common violation of good order there, but the "Mormon murders," the "Philadelphia riots," and all "the exterminating wars against the Indians." I wonder that you did not increase the list by adding that it had caused the recent inundation of the Mississippi, and the hurricane in the West Indies--perhaps the insurrection of Rebecca, and the war in Scinde. You refer to the law prohibiting the transmission of abolition publications through the mail, as proof of general corruption! You could not do so, however, without noticing the late detected espionage over the British post office by a minister of state. It is true, as you say, it "occasioned a general outburst of national feeling"--from the opposition; and a "Parliamentary inquiry was inst.i.tuted"--that is, moved, but treated quite cavalierly.

At all events, though the fact was admitted, Sir James Graham yet retains the Home Department. For one, I do not undertake to condemn him.

Such things are not against the laws and usages of your country. I do not know fully what reasons of state may have influenced him and justified his conduct. But I do know that there is a vast difference in point of "national morality" between the discretionary power residing in your government to open any letter in the public post office, and a well-defined and limited law to prevent the circulation of certain specified incendiary writings by means of the United States mail.

Having now referred to every thing like argument on the subject of slavery, that is worthy of notice in your letter, permit me to remark on its tone and style, and very extraordinary bearing upon other inst.i.tutions of this country. You commence by addressing certain cla.s.ses of our people, as belonging to "a nation whose character is _now so low_ in the estimation of the civilized world;" and throughout you maintain this tone. Did the Americans who were "under your roof last summer"

inform you that such language would be gratifying to their fellow-citizens "having no practical concern with slaveholding?" Or do the infamous libels on America, which you read in our abolition papers, induce you to believe that all that cla.s.s of people are, like the abolitionists themselves, totally dest.i.tute of patriotism or pride of country? Let me tell you that you are grossly deceived. And although your stock-brokers and other speculators, who have been bitten in American ventures, may have raised a stunning "cry" against us in England, there is a vast body of people here besides slaveholders, who justly

"Deem their own land of every land the pride, Beloved by heaven o'er all the world beside,"

and who _know_ that at this moment we rank among the first powers of the world--a position which we not only claim, but are always ready and able to maintain.

The style you a.s.sume in addressing your Northern friends, is in perfect keeping with your apparent estimation of them. Though I should be the last, perhaps, to criticise mere style, I could not but be struck with the extremely simple manner of your letter. You seem to have thought you were writing a tract for benighted heathen, and telling wonders never before suggested to their imagination, and so far above their untutored comprehension as to require to be related in the primitive language of "the child's own book." This is sufficiently amusing; and would be more so, but for the coa.r.s.e and bitter epithets you continually apply to the poor slaveholders--epithets which appear to be stereotyped for the use of abolitionists, and which form a large and material part of all their arguments.

But, perhaps, the most extraordinary part of your letter is your bold denunciation of "_the shameful compromises_" of our Const.i.tution, and your earnest recommendation to those you address to overthrow or revolutionize it. In so many words you say to them, "_you must either separate yourselves_ from all political connection with the South, and make your own laws; or if you do not choose such a separation, you must break up _the political ascendency which the Southern have had for so long a time over the Northern States_. The italics in this, as in all other quotations, are your own. It is well for those who circulate your letter here, that the Const.i.tution you denounce requires an overt act to const.i.tute treason. It may be tolerated for an American by birth, to use on his own soil the freedom of speaking and writing which is guaranteed him, and abuse our Const.i.tution, our Union, and our people. But that a foreigner should use such seditious language, in a circular letter addressed to a portion of the American people, is a presumption well calculated to excite the indignation of all. The party known in this country as the abolition party has long since avowed the sentiments you express, and adopted the policy you enjoin. At the recent presidential election, they gave over 62,000 votes for their own candidate, and held the balance of power in two of the largest States--wanting but little of doing it in several others. In the last four years their vote has quadrupled. Should the infatuation continue, and their vote increase in the same ratio for the next four years, it will be as large as the vote of the _actual slaveholders_ of the Union. Such a prospect is, doubtless, extremely gratifying to you. It gives hope of a contest on such terms as may insure the downfall of slavery or our Const.i.tution.

The South venerates the Const.i.tution, and is prepared to stand by it forever, _such as it came from the hands of our fathers_; to risk every thing to defend and maintain it _in its integrity_. But the South is under no such delusion as to believe that it derives any _peculiar_ protection from the Union. On the contrary, it is well known we incur _peculiar danger_, and that we bear far more than our porportion of the burdens. The apprehension is also fast fading away that any of the dreadful consequences commonly predicted will necessarily result from a separation of the States. And _come what may_, we are firmly resolved that OUR SYSTEM OF DOMESTIC SLAVERY SHALL STAND. The fate of the Union, then--but, thank G.o.d, not of republican government--rests mainly in the hands of the people to whom your letter is addressed--the "professing Christians of the Northern States having no concern with slaveholding,"

and whom with incendiary zeal you are endeavoring to stir up to strife--without which fanaticism can neither live, move, nor have any being.

We have often been taunted for our sensitiveness in regard to the discussion of slavery. Do not suppose it is because we have any doubts of our rights, or scruples about a.s.serting them. There was a time when such doubts and scruples were entertained. Our ancestors opposed the introduction of slaves into this country, and a feeling adverse to it was handed down from them. The enthusiastic love of liberty fostered by our Revolution strengthened this feeling. And before the commencement of the abolition agitation here, it was the common sentiment that it was desirable to get rid of slavery. Many thought it our duty to do so. When that agitation arose, we were driven to a close examination of the subject in all its bearings, and the result has been an _universal conviction_ that in holding slaves we violate no law of G.o.d,--inflict no injustice on any of his creatures--while the terrible consequences of emanc.i.p.ation to all parties and the world at large, clearly revealed to us, make us shudder at the bare thought of it. The slaveholders are, therefore, indebted to the abolitionists for perfect ease of conscience, and the satisfaction of a settled and unanimous determination in reference to this matter. And could their agitation cease now, I believe, after all, the good would preponderate over the evil of it in this country. On the contrary, however, it is urged on with frantic violence, and the abolitionists, reasoning in the abstract, as if it were a mere moral or metaphysical speculation, or a minor question in politics, profess to be surprised at our exasperation. In their ignorance and recklessness, they seem to be unable to comprehend our feelings or position. The subversion of our rights, the destruction of our property, the disturbance of our peace and the peace of the world, are matters which do not appear to arrest their consideration. When revolutionary France proclaimed "hatred to kings and unity to the republic," and inscribed on her banners "France risen against tyrants,"

she professed to be only wors.h.i.+ping "abstract rights." And if there can be such things, perhaps she was. Yet all Europe _rose_ to put her sublime theories down. They declared her an enemy to the common peace; that her doctrines alone violated the "law of neighborhood," and, as Mr.

Burke said, justly ent.i.tled them to antic.i.p.ate the "d.a.m.num nondum factum" of the civil law. Danton, Barrere, and the rest were apparently astonished that umbrage should be taken. The parallel between them and the abolitionists holds good in all respects.

The rise and progress of this fanaticism is one of the phenomena of the age in which we live. I do not intend to repeat what I have already said, or to trace its career more minutely at present. But the legislation of Great Britain will make it historical, and doubtless you must feel some curiosity to know how it will figure on the page of the annalist. I think I can tell you. Though I have accorded and do accord to you and your party, great influence in bringing about the parliamentary action of your country, you must not expect to go down to posterity as the only cause of it. Though _you_ trace the progenitors of abolition from 1516, through a long stream with divers branches, down to the period of its triumph in your country, it has not escaped contemporaries, and will not escape posterity, that England, without much effort, sustained the storm of its scoffs and threats, until the moment arrived when she thought her colonies fully supplied with Africans; and declared against the slave trade, only when she deemed it unnecessary to her, and when her colonies, full of slaves, would have great advantages over others not so well provided. Nor did she agree to West India emanc.i.p.ation, until, discovering the error of her previous calculation, it became an object to have slaves free throughout the Western world, and, on the ruins of the sugar and cotton-growers of America and the Islands, to build up her great slave empire in the East; while her indefatigable exertions, still continued, to engraft the right of search upon the law of nations, on the plea of putting an end to the forever increasing slave trade, are well understood to have chiefly in view the complete establishment of her supremacy at sea.[256] Nor must you flatter yourself that your party will derive historic dignity from the names of the ill.u.s.trious British statesmen who have acted with it.

Their country's ends were theirs. They have stooped to use you, as the most ill.u.s.trious men will sometimes use the vilest instruments, to accomplish their own purposes. A few philanthropic common places and rhetorical flourishes, "in the abstract," have secured them your "sweet voices," and your influence over the tribe of mawkish sentimentalists.

Wilberforce may have been yours, but what was he besides, but a wealthy county member? You must, therefore, expect to stand on your own merits alone before posterity, or rather that portion of it that may be curious to trace the history of the delusions which, from time to time, pa.s.s over the surface of human affairs, and who may trouble themselves to look through the ramifications of transcendentalism, in this era of extravagances. And how do you expect to appear in their eyes? As Christians, piously endeavoring to enforce the will of G.o.d, and carry out the principles of Christianity? Certainly not, since you deny or pervert the Scriptures in the doctrines you advance; and in your conduct, furnish a glaring contrast to the examples of Christ and the apostles. As philanthropists, devoting yourselves to the cause of humanity, relieving the needy, comforting the afflicted, creating peace and gladness and plenty round about you? Certainly not, since you turn from the needy, the afflicted; from strife, sorrow and starvation which surround you; close your eyes and hands upon them; shut out from your thoughts and feelings the human misery which is real, tangible, and within your reach, to indulge your morbid imagination in conjuring up woes and wants among a strange people in distant lands, and offering them succor in the shape of costless denunciations of their best friends, or by scattering among them "firebrands, arrows and death."

Such folly and madness, such wild mockery and base imposture, can never win for you, in the sober judgment of future times, the name of philanthropists. Will you even be regarded as worthy citizens? Scarcely, when the purposes you have in view, can only be achieved by revolutionizing governments and overturning social systems, and when you do not hesitate, zealously and earnestly, to recommend such measures. Be a.s.sured, then, that posterity will not regard the abolitionists as Christians, philanthropists, or virtuous citizens. It will, I have no doubt, look upon the ma.s.s of the party as silly enthusiasts, led away by designing characters, as is the case with all parties that break from the great, acknowledged ties which bind civilized man in fellows.h.i.+p. The leaders themselves will be regarded as _mere ambitious men_; not taking rank with those whose ambition is "eagle-winged and sky-aspiring," but belonging to that mean and selfish cla.s.s, who are instigated by "rival-hating envy," and whose base thirst is for _notoriety_; who cloak their designs under vile and impious hypocrisies, and, unable to s.h.i.+ne in higher spheres, devote themselves to fanaticism, as a trade. And it will be perceived that, even in that, they shunned the highest walk.

Religious fanaticism was an old established vocation, in which something brilliant was required to attract attention. They could not be George Foxes, nor Joanna Southcotes, nor even Joe Smiths. But the dullest pretender could discourse a jumble of pious bigotry, natural rights, and driveling philanthropy. And, addressing himself to aged folly and youthful vanity, to ancient women, to ill-gotten wealth, to the reckless of all cla.s.ses, who love excitement and change, offer each the cheapest and the safest glory in the market. Hence, their numbers; and, from number and clamor, what impression they have made on the world.

Such, I am persuaded, is the light in which the abolitionists will be viewed by the posterity their history may reach. Unless, indeed--which G.o.d forbid--circ.u.mstances should so favor as to enable them to produce a convulsion which may elevate them higher on the "bad eminence" where they have placed themselves.

I have the honor to be Your obedient servant, J. H. HAMMOND.

THOMAS CLARKSON, Esq.

NOTE.--The foregoing Letters were not originally intended for publication. In preparing them for the press, they have been revised.

The alterations and corrections made, however, have been mostly verbal.

Had the writer felt at liberty to condense the two letters into one, and bring up the history of abolition to the period of publication, he might have presented a more concise and perfect argument, and ill.u.s.trated his views more forcibly, by reference to facts recently developed. For example, since writing the first, the letter of Mr. Clarkson, as President of the British Anti-Slavery Society, to Sir Robert Peel, denouncing the whole scheme of "Immigration," has reached him; and after he had forwarded the last, he saw it stated, that Mr. Clarkson had, as late as the first part of April, addressed the Earl of Aberdeen, and declared, that all efforts to suppress the African slave trade had fully failed. It may be confidently expected, that it will be ere long announced from the same quarter, that the "experiment" of West India emanc.i.p.ation has also proved a complete abortion.

Should the terms which have been applied to the abolitionists appear to any as unduly severe, let it be remembered, that the direct aim of these people is to destroy us by the most shocking of all processes; and that, having a large portion of the civilized world for their audience, they daily and systematically heap upon us the vilest calumnies and most unmitigated abuse. Clergymen lay aside their Bibles, and females uns.e.x themselves, to carry on this horrid warfare against slave holders.

FOOTNOTE:

[256] On these points, let me recommend you to consult a very able Essay on the Slave Trade and Right of Search, by M. Jollivet, recently published; and as you say, since writing your Circular Letter, that you "burn to try your hand on another little Essay, if a subject could be found," I propose to you to "try" to answer this question, put by M.

Jollivet to England: "_Pourquoi sa philanthropie n'a pas daigne, jusqu'

a present, doubler le cap de Bonne-Esperance?_"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

SLAVERY

IN THE LIGHT OF ETHNOLOGY.

BY

S. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D.

OF LOUISIANA.

SLAVERY

IN

THE LIGHT OF ETHNOLOGY.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE NEGRO CONSt.i.tUTION, ELICITED BY QUESTIONS PROPOUNDED BY DR. C. R. HALL, OF TORQUAY, ENGLAND, THROUGH PROF. JACKSON, OF Ma.s.sACHUSETTS MEDICAL COLLEGE, BOSTON, TO SAML. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D., NEW ORLEANS.

[Reprinted from the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal.]

To PROF. JACKSON, Boston:--

_Dear Sir:_--The paper of mine, alluded to by your London correspondent, Dr. Hall, which he saw in the medical work you mention, is not, as he supposes, "_The Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race_," the physicians of Louisiana, in convention a.s.sembled, appointed me to make; but only some additional observations intended for students and those persons whose want of knowledge of Comparative Anatomy prevented them from understanding the Report. The Appendix, intended for students, was published in the _Charleston_ (South Carolina) _Medical Journal_, and also in the work you mention, under the caption of the original Report to the Medical Convention, and _the Report itself was omitted_ by the editors of those works under the erroneous impression, that the Appendix for students contained the substance of that paper; whereas it does so only in the sense that the four first rules contain the substance of the arithmetic. No wonder your intelligent correspondent should not find, in the Appendix of the Report, the information he was seeking, and hence the questions he asks you to refer to me for solution. I herewith beg leave to send you a copy of the "_Report on the diseases and physical peculiarities of the Negro race_," which the Louisiana physicians appointed me to make to the State Medical Society. In that paper your correspondent will find most of the questions he asks already answered.

I thank you for the opportunity thus afforded me of supplying an omission in the Southern works above alluded to, of a paper, very imperfect and defective, it is true, yet embodying in a small s.p.a.ce the results of the experience and observation of a Southern pract.i.tioner, extending through a period of active service of a third of a century's duration, and which had the honor to meet with the approbation of the physicians generally of the South. To the few questions not answered therein I propose to reply, and at the same time to extend my remarks on that branch of the subject more directly connected with the particular object of your correspondent's investigations.

To the question, "Is not Phthisis very common among the slaves of the slave States and unknown among the native Africans at home?" I reply in the negative, that Phthisis, so far from being common among the slaves of the slave States, is very seldom met with. As to the native Africans at home, little or nothing is known of their diseases. They have no science or literature among them, and never had. The word Consumption, is applied to two very different diseases among negroes. The Cachexia Africana, Dirt-eating of the English, and Mal d'Estomac of the French, commonly called Negro Consumption, is a very different malady from Phthisis Pulmonalis, properly so called. The Cachexia Africana, like other spanmic states of the system, may run into Phthisis, or become complicated with it. Dr. Hall asks, in what does the peculiarity of Negro Consumption consist? It consists in being an anmatosis and not a tuberculosis. Not having seen my Report, he may have inferred that it was a tubercular disease--whereas it is an erythism of mind connected with spanmia. Negroes, however, are sometimes, though rarely, afflicted with tubercula pulmonum, or Phthisis, properly so called, which has some peculiarities. With them it is more palpably a secondary disease than it appears to be among white people. European physicians are just beginning to see and acknowledge the truth taught by our Rush in the last century, that what is called Phthisis Pulmonalis is not a primary, but a secondary disease; the tubercles of the lungs not being a cause, but an effect of the primary or original vice of blood origin, or as he called it, general debility. For half a century the attention of the medical profession has been directed to the special and ultimate results of Phthisis, instead of the primary condition of the system causing the formation of tubercles. The new knowledge, derived from the stethoscope, by detecting those abnormal deposits of abortive nutrition, called tubercles, has been received for more than its worth, and has greatly served to keep up the delusion of treating effects instead of causes. The tubercular deposits, revealed by auscultation, are not only the effects of abortive nutrition, but the latter is itself the effect of some derangement in the digestive and respiratory functions, vitiating the nutritive fluids, and producing what Rush called general debility. The defect in the respiratory organs arises from the fact, long overlooked, that in a great many persons, particularly the Anglo-Saxons, the lungs are inadequate to the task of depurating the superabundant blood, which is thrown upon them at the age of maturity, unless aided by an occasional blood-letting, active and abundant exercise of the muscles in the open air, and a nutritious diet, as advised by the American Hippocrates, Benjamin Rush. White children sometimes have Phthisis, but here, as everywhere, it is a rare complaint before maturity (twenty-one in the male and eighteen in the female.) The lymphatic and nervous temperament predominating until then, secures them against this fell destroyer of the master race of men. Phthisis is, par excellence, a disease of the sanguineous temperament, fair complexion, red or flaxen hair, blue eyes, large blood vessels, and a bony encas.e.m.e.nt too small to admit the full and free expansion of the lungs, enlarged by the superabundant blood, which is determined to those organs during that first half-score of years immediately succeeding p.u.b.erty.

Well-formed chests offer no impediment to its inroads, if the volume of blood be out of proportion to the expansibility and capacity of the pulmonary organs. Hence it is most apt to occur precisely at, and immediately following, that period of life known as matureness, when the sanguineous system becomes fully developed and gains the mastery, so to speak, over the lymphatic and nervous systems. With negroes, the sanguineous never gains the mastery over the lymphatic and nervous systems. Their digestive powers, like children, are strong, and their secretions and excretions copious, excepting the urine, which is rather scant. At the age of maturity they do not become dyspeptic and feeble with softening and attenuation of the muscles, as among those white people suffering the ills of a defective system of physical education, and a want of a wholesome, nutritious diet.

Your correspondent asks, "_Do the slaves consume much sugar, or take rum in intoxicating quant.i.ties?_"

They do not consume much sugar, but are occasionally supplied with mola.s.ses. Their diet consists princ.i.p.ally of pickled pork and corn bread, rice, hominy, beans, peas, potatoes, yams, pumpkins and turnips.

Soups, tea, coffee and slops, are seldom used by those in health, and they object to all such articles of diet, as making them weak. They prefer the fattest pork to the lean. In the Atlantic States salted fish is subst.i.tuted for or alternated with pork--the shad, mackerel and herring, princ.i.p.ally the latter. In Cuba pickled beef is used, but they prefer pork. Their diet is of the most nutritious kind, and they will not labor with much effect on any other than a strong, rich diet. With very few exceptions, they do not take rum or other intoxicating drinks, except as a medicine, or in holiday times. Something equivalent to the "_Maine Liquor Law_," (which you can explain to your correspondent,) has long been in practical operation on all well regulated Southern plantations. The experience of two centuries testifies to the advantages of restraining the black population, _by arbitrary power_, from the free use of intoxicating poisons. Man has no better natural right to poison himself or his neighbor, than to maim, wound or kill himself or his neighbor. In regard to intoxicating drinks, the negroes of the South are under wiser laws than any other people in the Union--those of Maine excepted. But these wise unwritten laws do not so well protect those negroes who reside in or near towns and villages, and are not under proper discipline. The Melanic race have a much stronger propensity to indulge in the intemperate use of ardent spirits than white people. They appear to have a natural fondness for alcoholic drinks and tobacco. They need no schooling, as the fair skin races do, to acquire a fondness for either. Nearly all chew tobacco or smoke, and are not sickened and disgusted with the taste of that weed as white men always are when they first begin to use it. As an instance of their natural love for ardent spirits, I was called to a number of negro children, who found a bottle of whisky under a bed, and drank it all without dilution, although it was the first they had ever tasted. It contained a.r.s.enic, and had been placed where they found it by the father of some of the children, with a view of poisoning a supposed enemy. But with that want of forethought, so characteristic of the negro race, he did not think of the greater probability of his own children finding and drinking the poison than the enemy he intended it for.

I am asked, "_If I have determined by my own observation the facts in regard to the darker color of the secretions, the flesh, the membranes and the blood of the negro than the white man--or is the statement made on the authority of others?_"

The statement is made on the authority of some of the most distinguished anatomists and physiologists of the last century, confirmed by my own repeated observations. The authorities to which I particularly refer are Malpighi, Stubner, Meckel, Pechlin, Albinus, Smmering, Virey and Ebel.

Almost every year of my professional life, except a few years when abroad, I have made post mortem examinations of negroes, who have died of various diseases, and I have invariably found the darker color pervading the flesh and the membranes to be very evident in all those who died of acute diseases. Chronic ailments have a tendency to destroy the coloring matter, and generally cause the mucous surfaces to be paler and whiter than in the white race.

I now come to the main and important question--the last of the series, and the most important of all, viz: "_How is it ascertained that negroes consume less oxygen than white people?_"

I answer, by the spirometer. I have delayed my reply to make some further experiments on this branch of the subject. The result is, that the expansibility of the lungs is considerably less in the black than the white race of similar size, age and habit. A white boy expelled from his lungs a larger volume of air than a negro half a head taller and three inches larger around the chest. The deficiency in the negro may be safely estimated at 20 per cent, according to a number of observations I have made at different times. Thus, 174 being the mean bulk of air receivable by the lungs of a white person of five feet in height, 140 cubic inches are given out by a negro of the same stature. It must be remembered, however, that great variations occur in the bulk of air which can be expelled from the chest, depending much upon the age, size, health and habits of each individual. But, as a general rule, it may be safely stated, that a white man, of the same age and size, who has been bred to labor, is, in comparison to the negro, extra capacious. To judge the negro by spirometrical observations made on the white man, would indicate, in the former a morbid condition when none existed. But I am free to confess that this is a subject open to further observations. My estimate may be under or over the exact difference of the capacity of the two races for the consumption of oxygen.