Cotton is King, and Pro-Slavery Arguments Part 55

The question is also answered _anatomically_, by the comparatively larger size of the liver, and the smaller size of the lungs; and _physiologically_, by the _roule_ the liver performs in the negro's economy being greater, and that of the lungs and kidneys less, than in the white man. But I have not the honor to be the first to call attention to the difference in the pulmonary apparatus of the negro and the white man, and to the fact of the deficiency in the renal secretion.

The honor is due to Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States. In his Notes on Virginia, Mr. Jefferson suggested that there was a difference in the pulmonary apparatus of negroes, and that they do not extricate as much caloric from the air by respiration, and consesequently consume less oxygen. He also called attention to the fact of the defective action of the kidneys. He remarks, "To our reproach be it said, that although the negro race has been under our eye for a century and a half, it has not been considered as a subject of natural history." Another half century has pa.s.sed away, and nothing has yet been done to acquire a knowledge of the diseases and physical peculiarities of a people, const.i.tuting nearly a moiety of the population of fifteen States of the American confederacy, and whose labor, in cultivating a single plant, which no other operatives but themselves can cultivate without sacrificing ease, comfort, health and life, affords a cheap material, in sufficient abundance, to clothe the naked of the whole world. Even the little scientific knowledge heretofore acquired concerning them, has been so far forgotten, that when I enumerated a few of their anatomical and physical peculiarities, well known to the medical men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, I was supposed by some of my cotemporaries in the South to be broaching novelties and advancing speculations wild and crude. But I would not be understood as underrating the editors of the _Charleston Medical Journal_ and some other Southern writers, for mistaking anatomical facts for wild speculations, and condemning them as such in their editorial apologies for not publis.h.i.+ng the same. The fault lies not with them, but in that system of education which seems intended to keep physicians, divines, and all other cla.s.ses of men in Egyptian darkness of every thing pertaining to the philosophy of the negro const.i.tution. It is only the country and village pract.i.tioners of the Southern States (among professional men,) who appear to know any thing at all about the peculiar nature of negroes--having derived their knowledge, not from books or schools, but in the field of experience. It is the latter cla.s.s of medical men, by far the most numerous in the South, who have with great unanimity sustained my feeble efforts to make the negro's peculiar nature known, and the important fact that he consumes less oxygen than the white man. Until his defective haematosis be made an element in calculating the best means for improving the negro's condition, our Northern people ought not to wonder at finding their colored population, born to freedom by the side of the church and school-house door, in a lower species of degradation, after trying for half a century or more to elevate them, than an equal number of slaves any where to be found in the South. "Will not a lover of natural history," says Mr. Jefferson, "one who views the gradations in all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to keep those of the department of man as distinct as nature formed them?" But no effort has since been made to draw the distinctions between the black and the white races by the knife of the anatomist, but much false logic has been introduced into our books and schools, to argue down the distinctions which nature has made.

It is to anatomy and physiology we should look, when vindicating the liberty of human nature, to see that its dignity and best interest be preserved. "Among the Romans," says Mr. Jefferson, "emanc.i.p.ation required but one effort, but with us a second is necessary, unknown to history." This second belongs properly to natural history; the difference in the last not being artificial, as among the Romans, or the present Britons, requiring only an act of legislation or a revolution to efface forever, but natural, which no human laws or governmental changes can ever obliterate. The framers of our Const.i.tution were aware of these facts, and built the Const.i.tution upon the basis of natural distinctions or physical differences in the two races composing the American population. A very important difference between the two will be found in the fact of the greater amount of oxygen consumed by the one than the other. If the Const.i.tution be worth defending, surely the great truths of natural history, on which it rests as a basis, are worth being made known and regarded by our statesmen. That negroes consume less oxygen than the white race, is proved by their motions being proverbially much slower, and their want of muscular and mental activity. But to comprehend fully the weight of this proof of their defective haematosis, it is necessary to bear in mind one of the great leading truths disclosed by comparative anatomy. Cuvier was the first to demonstrate beyond a doubt that muscular energy and activity are in direct proportion to the development and activity of the pulmonary organs. In his 29th lesson, vol. vii, p. 17, D'Anatomie Comparee, he says, "_Dans les animaux vertebres cette quant.i.te de respiration fait connaitre presque par un calcul mathematique la nature particuliere de chaque cla.s.s_." In the preceding page he says,--"That the relations observed in the different animals, between the quant.i.ty of their respiration and the energy of their motive force, is one of the finest demonstrations that comparative anatomy can furnish to physiology, and at the same time one of the best applications of comparative anatomy to natural history." The slower motions of the owl prove to the natural historian that it consumes less oxygen than the eagle. By the same physiological principle he can tell that the herring is the most active among fish, and the flounder the slowest, by merely seeing the gills of each: those of the herring being very large, prove that it consumes much oxygen and is very active; while the flounder, with its small gills, consumes but little, and is very slow in its motions as a necessary consequence. Hence the habitual slower motions of the negro than the white man, is a positive proof that he consumes less oxygen. The slow gait of the negro is an important element to be taken into consideration in studying his nature.

I have the authority of one of the very best observers of mankind, that this element in the negro's economy is particularly worthy of being studied. It is no less an authority than the father of his country, the first President of the United States, the ill.u.s.trious Was.h.i.+ngton.

Was.h.i.+ngton knew better, perhaps, than any other man what the white man could do; his power of endurance and strength of wind under a given speed of motion. Yet he found that all his observations on the white race were inapplicable to negroes. To know what they could do, and to ascertain their power of endurance and strength of wind, new observations had to be made, and he made them accordingly. He made them on his own negroes. He saw they did not move like the soldiers he had been accustomed to command. Their motions were much slower, and they performed their tasks in a more dilatory manner; the amount of labor they could perform in a given time, with ease and comfort to themselves, could not be told by his knowledge of what white men could do. He therefore noted the gait or movements natural to negroes, and made observations himself of how much they could effect in a given time, under the slow motions or gait natural to them. He did this to enable him to judge of what would be a reasonable service to expect from them, and to know when they loitered and when they performed their duty. Those persons unacquainted with the important truth that negroes are naturally slower in their motions than white people, judging the former by the latter, often attempt to drive them into the same brisk motions. But a day's experience ought to be enough to teach them that every attempt to drive negroes to the performance of tasks equal to what the white laborer would voluntarily impose upon himself, is an actual loss to the master; who, instead of getting more service out of them, actually gets less, and soon none, if such a course be persisted in; because they become disabled in body and indisposed in mind to perform any service at all. Every master or overseer, although he may know nothing of the law above mentioned, discovered by Cuvier, may soon learn from experience the important fact, that there is no other alternative than to let their negroes a.s.sume, _by their own instincts_, the natural gait or movement peculiar to them, and then, like Was.h.i.+ngton, observe what can be effected in a given time by that given gait or movement, and to ask for nor expect more. In vol. ii, pages 511 to 512, (Was.h.i.+ngton's Writings, published by Jared Sparks) are recorded a few of the observations made by the father of his country on his own slaves, as an ill.u.s.tration of the preceding remarks. It is to be regretted that Mr. Sparks, out of deference to a modern species of idolatry (all fanaticism is idolatry,) which has taken deep root in Great Britain and despotic Europe, and has from thence been transplanted into our republic, particularly in the Northern portion of it, should have suppressed so much of the valuable observations of Was.h.i.+ngton on the negro race, as only to publish a small fragment of the extensive knowledge his comprehensive mind had stored up on this important subject, well known to his neighbors. The fragment informs us, that on a certain day he visited his plantations, and found that certain negro slaves there mentioned, by the names of George, Tom and Mike, had only hewed a certain number of feet--whereupon Was.h.i.+ngton sat down and observed their motions, letting them proceed their own way," and ascertained how many feet each hewed in one hour and a quarter. He also made observations on his sawyers at the same time and in the same manner. From the data thus acquired he ascertained, in the short s.p.a.ce of an hour and a quarter, how many feet would be a day's work for hewing, and how many for sawing, under their usual slow gait or movement. This hewing and sawing were of poplar. "What may be the difference, therefore," says Was.h.i.+ngton, "between the working of this wood and other, some future observations must make known." But Mr.

Sparks, out of deference to the new school of idolatry, having its head quarters in Exeter Hall, omitted, almost entirely, the publication of any more observations on the subject. It is no less idolatry to set up an anti-scriptural dogma and to make it a rule of action, than to wors.h.i.+p a block or a graven image in the place of the true G.o.d. The true G.o.d has said in the Pentateuch, the most authentic books of the Bible, "_And of the heathen shall ye buy bond-men and bond-maids_ [slaves] _and your children shall inherit them after you, and they shall be your bondmen_ [slaves] _forever._" Leviticus, chap. xxv, verses 44, 45, 46.

But the Dogma or Negro G.o.d of Exeter Hall says that "_negro slavery is sin_," and that it is contrary to the moral sense or conscience.

Medicine was anciently called the divine art; to be ent.i.tled to hold that appellation, ought it not to lend its aid to arrest in this happy republic the progress of idolatry, which is only another name for fanaticism? And will your learned correspondent help to arrest it in England? Or will he, like Prichard, Todd, and others, make science bow to the policy of his government?--To build up India at the expense of our Union? The subject of his investigations, tubercular disease, if properly studied, leads directly to that species of knowledge, enabling him to determine on physiological principles, which is the best system of ethics, that taught in the Bible, _to enslave the Canaanite_, or that taught in Exeter Hall, _to set him free_? It will lead him to the discovery, that the negro, or Canaanitish race, consume less oxygen than the white, and that as a necessary consequence of the deficient aeration of the blood in the lungs, a hebetude of mind and body is the inevitable physiological effect; thus making it a mercy and a blessing to negroes to have persons in authority set over them, to provide for and take care of them. Under the dogma or new commandment to free the Canaanite, practically exercised in Van Dieman's Land and at the Cape of Good Hope, the poor negro race have become nearly annihilated. Whereas under that system of ethics taught in the Bible and made a rule of action in the Southern States, the descendants of Canaan are more rapidly increasing in numbers, and have more of the comforts and pleasures of life, and more morality and Christianity among them than any others of the same race on any other portion of the globe. They are daily bought and sold, and inherited as property, as the Scriptures said they should be. Whereas in all those countries and places in which they are set free, in obedience to the dogma that "slavery is sin," they rapidly degenerate into barbarism, as they are doing in the West Indies, or become extinct as in Van Dieman's Land. The physiological fact that negroes consume less oxygen indicates the superior wisdom of the precepts taught in the Bible regarding those people, to any promulgated from Exeter Hall. Experience also proves the former to be the best. You hear of the poor negroes, or colored people, as you call them, being beaten with many stripes by their masters and overseers. But owing to the fact that they consume less oxygen than white people, and the other physical differences founded on difference of structure, they beat one another, when free from the white man's authority, with ten stripes where they would get one from him. They are as much in slavery in Boston as in New Orleans. They suffer more from corporeal or other punishments in the cellars and dark lanes and alleys of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, by the cruel tyranny practiced by the strong over the weak and helpless, than an equal number in Southern slavery. In slavery the stripes fall upon the evil disposed, vicious, buck negro fellows. But when removed from the white man's authority, the latter make them fall on helpless women and children, the weak and the infirm. Good conduct, so far from being a protection, invites aggression.

But what connection have these observations, you may say, with the subject of Dr. Hall's inquiries, and what light do they throw on tubercular disease? They show that there exists an intimate connection between the amount of oxygen consumed in the lungs and the phenomena of body and mind. They point to a people whose respiratory apparatus is so defective, that they have not sufficient industry and mental energy to provide for themselves, or resolution sufficiently strong to prevent them, when in freedom, from being subjected to the arbitrary, capricious will of the drunken and vicious of their own color, who may happen to have greater physical strength and more cunning; they show that Phthisis is a disease of the master race, and not of the slave race--that it is the bane of that master race of men, known by an active haematosis; by the brain receiving a larger quant.i.ty of aerated blood than it is ent.i.tled to; by the strong development of the circulating system; by the energy of intellect; by the strength and activity of the muscular system; the vivid imagination; the irritable, mobile, ardent and inflammatory temperament, and the indomitable will and love of freedom.

Whereas the negro const.i.tution, being the opposite of all this, is not subject to Phthisis, although it partakes of what is called the scrofulous diathesis. In the negro const.i.tution, as the Frenchman would say, "_l'arbre arteriel cede sa prominance a l'arbre veineuse_,"

spreading coldness, languor and want of energy over the entire system.

The white fluids, or lymphatic temperament, predominating, they are not so liable as the fair race, to inflammatory diseases of the lungs, or any other organ; but from the superabundant viscidities and mucosities of their mucous surfaces, they are more liable to engorgements and pulmonary congestions than any other race of men. In proof of which I beg leave to refer your correspondent to a standard work ent.i.tled "Observations sur les Maladies des Negres, par M. Dazille. Paris, 1776."

Pneumonia, without subjective symptoms, is very common among them.

Diphtheretic affections, so common among white children, are very rare among negroes. Intercurrent Pneumonia is more common among them than any other cla.s.s of people. It is met with in Typhoid fevers, Rheumatism and hepatic derangements, to which they are very liable in the cold season.

The local malady requires a different treatment, to correspond with the general disorder. Bad, vicious, ungovernable negroes are subject, to what might properly be termed, s...o...b..tic Pneumonia--a blood disease, requiring anti-s...o...b..tics. s...o...b..tic negroes are always vicious or worthless. A course of anti-s...o...b..tics will reform their morals, and make good negroes out of worthless ones. They are liable to suffocative orthopna after measles, and die unless bled and purged. But purgatives are injurious in almost all their other affections involving the respiratory organs, except such as act especially on the liver. They check expectoration, says Dazille, and lay the foundations of those effusions and depots of matter so often mistaken for genuine Phthisis.

Auscultation cannot well be made available with them. The nose pleads to the eye and touch to form the diagnosis, without calling into requisition the ear. A single examination by auscultation, in persons abounding with so much phlegm, is not sufficient to arrive at a correct diagnosis. Repeated examinations in various postures are too tedious in execution, and too offensive to the auscultator, to come into general use in diagnosing the diseases of the Melanic race. This valuable mode of exploration, so useful in many cases, as practiced by experts, has of late years been carried to a ridiculous extreme, in being made to deceive and delude more pract.i.tioners than it enlightens, from the haste and inexperience of those who practice it. With negroes it is unnecessary, except in some rare instances. Their diseases, like their pa.s.sions, have each its peculiar expression stamped in the countenance.

They are like young children in this respect. They cannot disguise their countenance like white people. An intelligent and observant observer can tell from their countenance when they are plotting mischief, or have committed some crime; when they are satisfied or dissatisfied; when in pleasure or in pain; when troubled or disturbed in mind; or when telling a falsehood instead of the truth. An observant physician has only to bring the old science of prosoposcopia, so much used by Hippocrates in forming his diagnosis, to bear upon negroes, to be able, by a little experience, to ascertain the most of them at a glance by the expression of their countenance.

They are very subject to fevers, attended with an obstructed circulation of air and blood in the pulmonary organs. Their abundant mucosities often prevent the ingress of air into the air cells, bloating their lips and cheeks, which are coated with a tenacious saliva. A cessation of digestion from too full a meal, or some hepatic or other derangement, is soon attended with such a copious exudation of mucosities, filling the air cells and tracheal pa.s.sages, as to cause apoplexy, which with them is only another name for asphyxia. The head has nothing to do with it.

So abundant are the mucosities in negroes, that those in the best health have a whitish, pasty mucus, of considerable thickness on the tongue, leading a physician not acquainted with them to suppose that they were dyspeptic, or otherwise indisposed. The lungs of the white man are the main outlets for the elimination of carbonic acid formed in the tissues.

Negroes, however, by an instinctive habit of covering their mouth, nose, head and face with a blanket, or some other covering, when they sleep, throw upon the liver an additional duty to perform, in the excretion of carbonic acid. Any cause, obstructing the action of the liver, quickly produces with them a grave malady, the retention of carbonic acid in the blood soon poisoning them.

Hence with white people a moderate degree of hepatic obstruction, by a residence in swampy districts, is often found beneficial in diminis.h.i.+ng the exalted sensibility and irritability of phthisical patients. Viscous engorgements of the lungs destroy more negroes than all other diseases combined. They are distinguished from inflammatory affections by the pyrexial symptoms not being strongly marked, or marked at all--by the puffy or bloated appearance of the face and lips--by the slavering mouth--the highly charged tongue--and by the torpor of mind and body. In a word, all the symptoms point to a deficient aeration of the blood, or a kind of half way asphyxia. A torpid state of the system, listlessness and inactivity almost approaching to asphyxia from the diminished quant.i.ty of oxygen consumed by the lungs of the negro, form a striking contrast with the energetic, active, restless, persevering Anglo-Saxon, with a tendency to phlogosis and phthisis pulmonalis, from the surplus quant.i.ty of oxygen consumed by his lungs. Blistering the nape of the neck, so irritating in nearly all of the diseases of the Saxon race, is almost a sovereign remedy or specific for a large proportion of the complaints that negroes are subject to; because most of them arise from defective respiratory action. Hence whipping the lungs to increased action by the application of blisters over the origin of the respiratory nerves, a remedy so inexpedient and so often contra-indicated in most of the maladies of the white man, has a magic charm about it in the treatment of those of the negro. The magic effect of a blister to that part of the Ethiopian's body, in a large cla.s.s of his ailments, although well known to most of the planters and overseers of the Southern States, is scarcely known at all to the medical profession beyond those boundaries. Even here, where that portion of the profession who have had much experience in the treatment of their diseases, and are aware of the simple fact itself, do not profit by it in many cases where it is indicated; because they do not perceive the indication clearly, so long as the rationale of the remedy remains unexplained.

Your asking for the proofs of my a.s.sertion, "that the negro consumes less oxygen than the white man," has led me into a new, extensive and unexplored field of science, where the rationale of that and many other important facts may be found springing up spontaneously. We have medical schools in abundance teaching the art of curing the ailments, and even the most insignificant sores, incident to the half-starved, oppressed pauper population of Europe--a population we have not got, never had and never can have, so long as we have negro slaves to work in the cane, cotton and rice fields, where the white man, from the physiological laws governing his economy, _can not labor and live_: but where the negro thrives, luxuriates and enjoys existence more than any laboring peasantry to be found on the continent of Europe; yet we have no schools or any chair in our numerous inst.i.tutions of medical learning to teach the art of curing and preventing the diseases peculiar to our immense population of negro slaves, or to make them more efficient and valuable, docile and manageable; comfortable, happy and contented by still further improving their condition, which can only be done by studying their nature, and not by the North and South bandying epithets--not by the quackery which prescribes the same remedy, the liberty elixir, for all const.i.tutions. The two races, the Anglo-Saxon and the negro, have antipodal const.i.tutions. The former abounds with red blood, even penetrating the capillaries and the veins, flus.h.i.+ng the face and illuminating the countenance; the skin white; lips thin; nose high; hair auburn, flaxen, red or black; beard thick and heavy; eyes brilliant; will strong and unconquerable; mind and muscles full of energy and activity. The latter, with mola.s.ses blood sluggishly circulating and scarcely penetrating the capillaries; skin ebony, and the mucous membranes and muscles partaking of the darker hue pervading the blood and the cutis; lips thick and protuberant; nose broad and flat; scalp covered with a coa.r.s.e, crispy wool in thick naps; beard wanting or consisting of a few scattering woolly naps, in the "_bucks_,"

provincially so called; mind and body dull and slothful; will weak, wanting or subdued. The study of such opposite organizations, the one p.r.o.ne to Phthisis and the other not, can not fail to throw some light on tubercular disease, the subject of your correspondent, Dr. Hall's present investigation. In contrasting the typical white man, having an excess of red blood and a liability to inflammatory and tuberculous complaints and disorders of the digestive system, with the typical negro, deficient aerated blood, and abounding in mucosites, having an active liver and a strong digestion, and a proclivity strongly marked to fall into congestions, or cold humid engorgements approaching asphyxia, I hope he will be able to find in this unpolished communication something useful.

I have the honor to be, with great respect, SAML. A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D.

_New Orleans, July 19th, 1852._

APPENDIX.

NATURAL HISTORY OF THE PROGNATHOUS SPECIES OF MANKIND.

It is not intended by the use of the term Prognathous to call in question the black man's humanity or the unity of the human races as a _genus_, but to prove that the species of the genus h.o.m.o are not a unity, but a plurality, each essentially different from the others--one of them being so unlike the other two--the oval-headed Caucasian and the pyramidal-headed Mongolian--as to be actually prognathous, like the brute creation; not that the negro is a brute, or half man and half brute, but a genuine human being, anatomically constructed, about the head and face, more like the monkey tribes and the lower order of animals than any other species of the genus man. Prognathous is a technical term derived from _pro_, before, and _gnathos_, the jaws, indicating that the muzzle or mouth is anterior to the brain. The lower animals, according to Cuvier, are distinguished from the European and Mongol man by the mouth and face projecting further forward in the profile than the brain. He expresses the rule thus: _face anterior, cranium posterior_. The typical negroes of adult age, when tried by this rule, are proved to belong to a different species from the man of Europe or Asia, because the head and face are anatomically constructed more after the fas.h.i.+on of the simiadiae and the brute creation than the Caucasian and Mongolian species of mankind, their mouth and jaws projecting beyond the forehead containing the anterior lobes of the brain. Moreover, their faces are proportionally larger than their crania, instead of smaller, as in the other two species of the genus man. Young monkeys and young negroes, however, are not prognathous like their parents, but become so as they grow older. The head of the infant ourang outang is like that of a well formed Caucasian child in the projection and hight of the forehead and the convexity of the vertea.

The brain appears to be larger than it really is, because the face, at birth, has not attained its proportional size. The face of the Caucasian infant is a little under its proportional size when compared with the cranium. In the infant negro and ourang outang it is greatly so.

Although so much smaller in infancy than the cranium, the face of the young monkey ultimately outgrows the cranium; so, also, does the face of the young negro, whereas in the Caucasian, the face always continues to be smaller than the cranium. The superfices of the face at p.u.b.erty exceeds that of the hairy scalp both in the negro and the monkey, while it is always less in the white man. Young monkeys and young negroes are superior to white children of the same age in memory and other intellectual faculties. The white infant comes into the world with its brain inclosed by fifteen disunited bony plates--the occipital bone being divided into four parts, the sphenoid into three, the frontal into two, each of the two temporals into two, which, with the two parietals, make fifteen plates in all--the vomer and ethmoid not being ossified at birth. The bones of the head are not only disunited, but are more or less overlapped at birth, in consequence of the largeness of the Caucasian child's head and the smallness of its mother's pelvis, giving the head an elongated form, and an irregular, knotty feel to the touch.

The negro infant, however, is born with a small, hard, smooth, round head like a gourd. Instead of the frontal and temporal bones being divided into six plates, as in the white child, they form but one bone in the negro infant. The head is not only smaller than that of the white child, but the pelvis of the negress is wider than that of the white woman--its greater obliquity also favors parturition and prevents miscarriage.

Negro children and white children are alike at birth in one remarkable particular--they are both born _white_, and so much alike, as far as color is concerned, as scarcely to be distinguished from each other. In a very short time, however, the skin of the negro infant begins to darken and continues to grow darker until it becomes of a s.h.i.+ning black color, provided the child be healthy. The skin will become black whether exposed to the air and light or not. The blackness is not of as deep a shade during the first years of life, as afterward. The black color is not so deep in the female as in the male, nor in the feeble, sickly negro as in the robust and healthy. Blackness is a characteristic of the prognathous species of the genus h.o.m.o, but all the varieties of all the prognathous species are not equally black. Nor are the individuals of the same family or variety equally so. The lighter shades of color, when not derived from admixture with Mongolian or Caucasian blood, indicate degeneration in the prognathous species. The Hottentots, Bushmen and aborigines of Australia are inferior in mind and body to the typical African of Guinea and the Niger.

The typical negroes themselves are more or less superior or inferior to one another precisely as they approximate to or recede from the typical standard in color and form, due allowance being made for age and s.e.x.

The standard is an oily, s.h.i.+ning black, and as far as the conformation of the head and face is concerned and the relative proportion of nervous matter outside of the cranium to the quant.i.ty of cerebral matter within it, is found between the simiadiae[257] and the Caucasian. Thus, in the typical negro, a perpendicular line, let fall from the forehead, cuts off a large portion of the face, throwing the mouth, the thick lips, and the projecting teeth anterior to the cranium, but not the entire face, as in the lower animals and monkey tribes. When all, or a greater part of the face is thrown anterior to the line, the negro approximates the monkey anatomically more than he does the true Caucasian; and when little or none of the face is anterior to the line, he approximates that mythical being of Dr. Van Evrie, a _black white man_, and almost ceases to be a negro. The black man occasionally seen in Africa, called the _Bature Dutu_, with high nose, thin lips, and long straight hair, is not a negro at all, but a Moor tanned by the climate--because his children, not exposed to the sun, do not become black like himself. The typical negro's nervous system is modeled a little different from the Caucasian and somewhat like the ourang outang. The medullary spinal cord is larger and more developed than in the white man, but less so than in the monkey tribes. The occipital foramen, giving exit to the spinal cord, is a third longer, says Cuvier, in proportion to its breadth, than in the Caucasian, and is so oblique as to form an angle of 30 with the horizon, yet not so oblique as in the simiadae, but sufficiently so to throw the head somewhat backward and the face upward in the erect position. Hence, from the obliquity of the head and the pelvis, the negro walks steadier with a weight on his head, as a pail of water for instance, than without it; whereas, the white man, with a weight on his head, has great difficulty in maintaining his centre of gravity, owing to the occipital foramen forming no angle with the cranium, the pelvis, the spine, or the thighs--all forming a straight line from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot without any of the obliquities seen in the negro's knees, thighs, pelvis and head--and still more evident in the ourang outang.

The nerves of organic life are larger in the prognathous species of mankind than in the Caucasian species, but not so well developed as in the simiadiae. The brain is about a tenth smaller in the prognathous man than in the Frenchman, as proved by actual measurement of skulls by the French savans, Palisot and Virey. Hence, from the small brain and the larger nerves, the digestion of the prognathous species is better than that of the Caucasian, and its animal appet.i.tes stronger, approaching the simiadiae but stopping short of their b.e.a.s.t.i.a.lity. The nostrils of the prognathous species of mankind open higher up than they do in the white or olive species, but not so high up as in the monkey tribes. In the gibbon, for instance, they open between the orbits. Although the typical negro's nostrils open high up, yet owing to the nasal bones being short and flat, there is no projection or prominence formed between his...o...b..ts by the bones of the nose, as in the Caucasian species. The nostrils, however, are much wider, about as wide from wing to wing, as the white man's mouth from corner to corner, and the internal bones, called the turbinated, on which the olfactory nerves are spread, are larger and project nearer to the opening of the nostrils than in the white man. Hence the negro approximates the lower animals in his sense of smell, and can detect snakes by that sense alone. All the senses are more acute, but less delicate and discriminating, than the white man's. He has a good ear for melody but not for harmony, a keen taste and relish for food but less discriminating between the different kinds of esculent substances than the Caucasian. His lips are immensely thicker than any of the white race, his nose broader and flatter, his chin smaller and more retreating, his foot flatter, broader, larger, and the heel longer, while he has scarcely any calves at all to his legs when compared to an equally healthy and muscular white man. He does not walk flat on his feet but on the outer sides, in consequence of the sole of the foot having a direction inwards, from the legs and thighs being arched outwards and the knees bent. The verb, from which his Hebrew name is derived, points out this flexed position of the knees, and also clearly expresses the servile type of his mind. Ham, the father of Canaan, when translated into plain English, reads that a black man was the father of the slave or knee-bending species of mankind.

The blackness of the prognathous race, known in the world's history as Canaanites, Cus.h.i.+tes, Ethiopians, black men or negroes, is not confined to the skin, but pervades, in a greater or less degree, the whole inward man down to the bones themselves, giving the flesh and the blood, the membranes and every organ and part of the body, except the bones, a darker hue than in the white race. Who knows but what Canaan's mother may have been a genuine Cus.h.i.+te, as black inside as out, and that Cush, which means blackness, was the mark put upon Cain? Whatever may have been the mark set upon Cain, the negro, in all ages of the world, has carried with him a mark equally efficient in preventing him from being slain--the mark of blackness. The wild Arabs and hostile American Indians invariably catch the black wanderer and make a slave of him instead of killing him, as they do the white man.

Nich. Pechlin, in a work written last century ent.i.tled "De cute Athiopum," Albinus, in another work, ent.i.tled "De sede et causa coloris Athiop," as also the great German anatomists, Meiners, Ebel, and Smmering, all bear witness to the fact that the muscles, blood, membranes, and all the internal organs of the body, (the bones alone excepted,) are of a darker hue in the negro than in the white man. They estimate the difference in color to be equal to that which exists between the hare and the rabbit. Who ever doubts the fact, or has none of those old and impartial authorities at hand--impartial because they were written before England adopted the policy of pressing religion and science in her service to place white American republican freemen and Guinea negroes upon the same platform--has only to look into the mouth of the first healthy typical negro he meets to be convinced of the truth, that the entire membraneous lining of the inside of the cheeks, lips and gums is of a much darker color than in the white man.

The negro, however, must be healthy and in good condition--sickness, hard usage and chronic ailments, particularly that cachexia, improperly called consumption, speedily extracts the coloring matter out of the mucous membranes, leaving them paler and whiter than in the Caucasian.

The bleaching process of bad health or degeneration begins in the blood, membranes and muscles, and finally extracts so much of the coloring pigment out of the skin, as to give it a dull ashy appearance, sometimes extracting the whole of it, converting the negro into the albino. Albinoism or cucosis does not necessarily imply hybridism. It occurs among the pure Africans from any cause producing a degeneration of the species. Hybridism, however, is the most prolific source of that degeneration. Sometimes the degeneration shows itself by white spots, like the petals of flowers, covering different parts of the skin. The Mexicans are subject to a similar degeneration, only that the spots and stripes are black instead of white. It is called the pinto with them.

Even the pigment of the iris and the coloring matter of the albino's hair is absorbed, giving it a silvery white appearance, and converting him into a clairvoyant at night. According to Professors Brown, Seidy and Gibbs, the negro's hair is not tubular, like the white man's, but it is eccentrically elliptical, with flattened edges, the coloring matter residing in the epidermis, and not in tubes. In the place of a tube, the shaft of each hair is surrounded with a scaly covering like sheep's wool, and, like wool, is capable of being felted. True hair does not possess that property. The degeneration called albinoism has a remarkable influence upon the hair, destroying its coa.r.s.e, nappy, wooly appearance, and converting it into fine, long, soft, silky, curly threads. Often, the whole external skin, so remarkably void of hair in the healthy negro, becomes covered with a very fine, silky down, scarcely perceptible to the naked eye, when transformed into the albino.

Mr. Bowen, the celebrated Baptist missionary, [see his work ent.i.tled Central Africa and Missionary Labors from 1849 to 1856, by T. J. Bowen, Charleston, Southern Baptist Publication Society, 1857,] met with a great many cases of leucosis in Soudan or Negroland, back of Liberia, and erroneously concluded that these people had very little, if any negro blood in them, and would be better subjects for missionary labors than the blacks of the same country. They are, however, nothing but _white_ black men, a degeneration of the negro proper, and are even less capable of perpetuating themselves than the hybrids or mulattoes. Mr.

Bowen is at a loss to account for the depopulation, which he verifies has been going on in Soudan the last fifty years, threatening to leave the country, at no distant time, bare of inhabitants, unless roads be constructed by the Christians of the Southern States for commercial intercourse, and double exertions made to civilize and Christianize the waning population of Central Africa before it entirely disappears. The good missionary, though sent out from Georgia, was evidently taught in that British school which a.s.sumes that there is only a single species in the genus h.o.m.o, in opposition to the Bible, that clearly designates three. That school quotes the references in the sacred volume, implying unity in the genus--a unity which no one denies--to disprove the existence of distinct species, and upon this fallacy builds the theory that negro, Indian and white men are beings exactly alike, because they are human beings. _Ergo_, the liberty so beneficial to the white man, would be equally so to the negro--disregarding as a fable those words of the Bible expressly declaring that the latter _shall be servant of servants_ to the former--words which would not have been there if that kind of subordination called slavery was not the normal condition of the race of Ham. To expect to civilize or Christianize the negro without the intervention of slavery is to expect an impossibility.

Mr. Bowen's experience and natural good sense occasionally got the better of his theoretical views. Thus, at page 90, we find him confessing that "the native African negroes ought to have masters in obedience to the demands of natural justice." At page 149 he lets us into the secret of the depopulating process which has been going on in Central Africa the last fifty years. While standing among some negroes in Ikata, a town in Central Africa, a capricious mulatto chief sent some officers among the company, who singled out a poor fellow who had offended the chief by saying that as he let a white man into town, he might let in a Dahomey man also, and presented him with an empty bag with the message: "_The king says you must send me your head._" The Rev.

missionary, who was present at the beheading, made no comment further than to state the fact. But he might have added that the blood of that negro, and millions of others, will be required at the hands of Victoria Regina and the United States for having officiously destroyed the value of negro property in Africa by breaking up the only trade that ever protected the native Africans against the butcheries, cruelties and oppressions of their mulatto, Moorish and Mahommedan tyrants. It is these butcheries and cruelties, and the little care taken of the black man in Africa, the last fifty years, since he became valueless through British and American philanthropy, that lie at the root of the depopulating process which is going on in the dark land of the Niger.

Empty bags are now filled with heads instead of cowries. Mr. Bowen was surprised to see so few black men in Soudan, where, half a century ago, he says they were so numerous. But he rather regards it as a fortunate circ.u.mstance, as he has no hope of Christianizing the typical negro, except through slavery to Christian masters--and that idea is abhorrent to the school in which he was taught; but he has more hope from the mixed races, and these, he confesses, can not be effectually Christianized until civilized. He deplores the bad example of the black race, among them, their polygamy, etc., as greatly in the way of civilizing the mulattoes. But he has overlooked the important fact, as many do, that the existence of the hybrids themselves depends upon the existence of the typical Africans. The extinction of the latter must, of necessity, be soon followed by the extinction of the former, as they can not, for any length of time, propagate among themselves.

Mr. Bowen inferred that the negroes of Central Africa, although diminis.h.i.+ng in numbers, are rising higher in the scale of humanity, from the very small circ.u.mstance that they do not emit from their bodies so strong and so offensive an odor as the negro slaves of Georgia and the Carolinas do, nor are their skins of so deep a black. This is a good ill.u.s.tration of the important truth, that all the danger of the slavery question lies in the ignorance of Scripture and the natural history of the negro. A little acquaintance with the negro's natural history would prove to Mr. Bowen that the strong odor emitted by the negro, like the deep pigment of the skin, is an indication of high health, happiness, and good treatment, while its deficiency is a sure sign of unhappiness, disease, bad treatment, or degeneration. The skin of a happy, healthy negro is not only blacker and more oily than an unhappy, unhealthy one, but emits the strongest odor when the body is warmed by exercise and the soul is filled with the most pleasurable emotions. In the dance called _patting juber_, the odor emitted from the men, intoxicated with pleasure, is often so powerful as to throw the negro women into paroxysms of unconsciousness, vulgo hysterics. On another point of much importance there is no practical difference between the Rev. missionary and that clear-headed, bold, and eccentric old Methodist, Dr. McFarlane.

Both believe that the Bible can do ignorant, sensual savages no good; both believe that nothing but compulsatory power can restrain uncivilized barbarians from polygamy, inebriety, and other sinful practices.

The good missionary, however, believes in the possibility of civilizing the inferior races by the money and means of the Christian nations lavishly bestowed, after which he thinks it will be no difficult matter to convert them to Christianity. Whereas the venerable Methodist believes in the impossibility of civilizing them, and therefore concludes that the Written Word was not intended for those inferior races who can not read it. When the philosophy of the prognathous species of mankind is better understood, it will be seen how they, the lowest of the human species, can be made partakers, equally with the highest, in the blessings and benefits of the Written Word of G.o.d. The plantation laws against polygamy, intoxicating drinks, and other besetting sins of the negro race in the savage state, are gradually and silently converting the African barbarian into a moral, rational, and civilized being, thereby rendering the heart a fit tabernacle for the reception of Gospel truths. The prejudices of many, perhaps the majority of the Southern people, against educating the negroes they hold in subjection, arise from some vague and indefinite fears of its consequences, suggested by the abolition and British theories built on the false a.s.sumption that the negro is a white man with a black skin. If such an a.s.sumption had the smallest degree of truth in it, the more profound the ignorance and the deeper sunk in barbarism the slaves were kept, the better it would be for them and their masters. But experience proves that masters and overseers have nothing at all to fear from civilized and intelligent negroes, and no trouble whatever in managing them--that all the trouble, insubordination and danger arise from the uncivilized, immoral, rude, and grossly ignorant portion of the servile race. It is not the ignorant semi-barbarian that the master or overseer intrusts with his keys, his money, his horse or his gun, but the most intelligent of the plantation--one whose intellect and morals have undergone the best training. An educated negro, one whose intellect and morals have been cultivated, is worth double the price of the wild, uncultivated, black barbarian of Cuba and will do twice as much work, do it better and with less trouble.

The prejudice against educating the negroes may also be traced to the neglect of American divines in making themselves acquainted with Hebrew literature. What little the most of them know of the meaning of the untranslated terms occurring in the Bible, and the signification of the verbs from which they are derived, is mostly gathered from British commentators and glossary-makers, who have blinked the facts that disprove the Exeter Hall dogma, that negro slavery is sin against G.o.d.

Hence, even in the South, the important Biblical truth, that the white man derives his authority to govern the negro from the Great Jehovah, is seldom proclaimed from the pulpit. If it were proclaimed, the master race would see deeper into their responsibilities, and look closer into the duties they owe to the people whom G.o.d has given them as an inheritance, and their children after them, so long as time shall last.

That man has no faith in the Scriptures who believes that education could defeat G.o.d's purposes, in subjecting the black man to the government of the white. On the contrary, experience proves its advantages, to both parties. Aside and apart from Scripture authority, natural history reveals most of the same facts, in regard to the negro that the Bible does. It proves the existence of at least three distinct species of the genus man, differing in their instincts, form, habits and color. The white species having qualities denied to the black--one with a free and the other with a servile mind--one a thinking and reflective being, the other a creature of feeling and imitation, almost void of reflective faculties, and consequently unable to provide for and take care of himself. The relation of master and slave would naturally spring up between two such different species of men, even if there was no Scripture authority to support it. The relation thus established, being natural, would be drawn closer together, instead of severed, by the inferior imitating the superior in all his ways, or in other words, acquiring an education.

FOOTNOTE:

[257] Monkey tribes.--_Editor._

ON THE CAUCASIANS AND THE AFRICANS.

SEVERAL years ago we published some original and ingenious views of Dr. Cartwright, of New Orleans, upon the subject of negroes and their characteristics. The matter is more elaborately treated by him in the following paper:--_De Bows Review._

THE Nilotic monuments furnish numerous portraits of the negro races, represented as slaves, sixteen hundred years before the Christian era.

Although repeatedly drawn from their native barbarism and carried among civilized nations, they soon forget what they learn and relapse into barbarism. If the inherent potency of the prognathous type of mankind had been greater than it actually is, sufficiently great to give it the independence of character that the American Indian possesses, the world would have been in a great measure deprived of cotton and sugar. The red man is unavailable as a laborer in the cane or cotton field, or any where else, owing to the unalterable ethnical laws of his character. The white man can not endure toil under the burning sun of the cane and cotton field, and live to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The African will starve rather than engage in a regular system of agricultural labor, unless impelled by the stronger will of the white man. When thus impelled, experience proves that he is much happier, during the hours of labor in the sunny fields, than when dozing in his native woods and jungles. He is also eminently qualified for a number of employments, which the instincts of the white man regard as degrading. If the white man be forced by necessity into employments abhorrent to his instincts, it tends to weaken or destroy that sentiment or principle of honor or duty, which is the mainspring of heroic actions, from the beginning of historical times to the present, and is the basis of every thing great and n.o.ble in all grades of white society.

The importance of having these particular employments, regarded as servile and degrading by the white man, attended to by the black race, whose instincts are not repugnant to them, will be at once apparent to all those who deem the sentiment of honor or duty as worth cultivating in the human breast. It is utterly unknown to the prognathous race of mankind, and has no place in their language. When the language is given to them they can not comprehend its meaning, or form a conception of what is meant by it. Every white man, who has not been degraded, had rather be engaged in the most laborious employments, than to serve as a lacquey or body servant to another white man or being like himself.

Whereas, there is no office which the negro or mulatto covets more than that of being a body servant to a real gentleman. There is no office which gives him such a high opinion of himself, and it is utterly impossible for him to attach the idea of degradation to it. Those identical offices which the white man instinctively abhors, are the most greedily sought for by negroes and mulattoes, whether slave or free, in preference to all other employments. North or South, free or slave, they are ever at the elbow, behind the table, in hotels and steamboats; ever ready, with brush in hand, to brush the coat or black the shoes, or to perform any menial service which may be required, and to hold out the open palm for the dime. The innate love to act as body servant or lacquey is too strongly developed in the negro race to be concealed. It admirably qualifies them for waiters and house servants, as their strong muscles, hardy frames, and the positive pleasure that labor in a hot sun confers on them, abundantly qualify them for agricultural employment in a hot climate.

Hence, the primordial cell germ of the Nigritians has no more potency than what is sufficient to form a being with physical power, when its dynamism becomes exhausted, dropping the creature in the wilderness with the mental organization too imperfect to enable him to extricate himself from barbarism. If Nature had intended the prognathous race for barbarism as the end and object of their creation, they would have been like lions and tigers, fierce and untamable. So far from being like ferocious beasts, they are endowed with a will so weak, pa.s.sions so easily subdued, and dispositions so gentle and affectionate, as readily to fall under subjection to the wild Arab, or any other race of men.

Hence they are led about in gangs of an hundred or more by a single individual, even by an old man, or a cripple, if he be of the white race and possessed of a strong will. The Nigritian has such little command over his own muscles, from the weakness of his will, as almost to starve, when a little exertion and forethought would procure him an abundance. Although he has exaggerated appet.i.tes and exaggerated senses, calling loudly for their gratification, his will is too weak to command his muscles to engage in such kinds of labor as would readily procure the fruits to gratify them. Like an animal in a state of hibernation, waiting for the external aid of spring to warm it into life and power, so does the negro continue to doze out a vegeto-animal existence in the wilderness, unable to extricate himself therefrom--his own will being too feeble to call forth the requisite muscular exertion.

His muscles not being exercised, the respiration is imperfect, and the blood is imperfectly vitalized. Torpidity of body and hebetude of mind are the effects thereof, which disappear under bodily labor, because that expands the lungs, vitalizes the blood, and wakes him up to a sense of pleasure and happiness unknown to him in the vegeto-animal or hibernating state. Nothing but will is wanting to transform the torpid, unhappy tenant of the wilderness into a rational and happy thing--the happiest being on earth, as far as sensual pleasures are concerned.