African Slavery Regarded from an Unusual Stand-Point

by Richard Jacobs Haldeman

AFRICAN SLAVERY REGARDED FROM AN
UNUSUAL STAND-POINT.

TERRITORIAL ABSTRACTIONS IGNORED AS
NOW IMMATERIAL, AND A MORE
RADICAL ISSUE RAISED.

Address of the National Democratic Union Club of Harrisbururg,
to the Democracy of Pennsylvania.

The representatives of our party at Heading having selected a candidate and adopted a series of resolutions expressive of their views, it is now time that we, at the capital of the State, should inaugurate the campaign by a declaration of our opinions upon the issues to be battled for. The candidate chosen is unexceptionable, and the name of Henry D. Foster is everywhere accepted, from the waters of Lake Erie to the Delaware, and from the county of Wayne to that of Greene, as synonymous with the re-union of the party, and the opening of the contest under the best possible leadership; while the series of resolutions adopted by that Convention, so far as they go, receive the endorsement of every Democrat in Pennsylvania.

But we desire, in the first of the addresses that duty calls us to issue to the Democracy of Pennsylvania, to discuss the fundamental questions in dispute between the Republican and Democratic parties; questions lying deeper than touched upon by the Reading Convention. We hope that the succeeding numbers of the series will cover the whole ground. We propose to analyze and describe the position of the enemy, examining the elemental ideas which compose bis strength and ours; and as in addressing Democrats we take it for granted, that no argument is necessary to show that the Republican party is rapidly drifting into the embrace of ultra-Abolitionism, we shall proceed upon that assumption; for we have seen this black cloud of Abolitionism starting some twenty-five years ago, no larger than a man's hand, from behind the hills of New England, and spreading until it has covered one-half of the land. To this influence we have seen State after State succumb, until at this moment the Democratic party can scarcely claim to have a majority in a single northern State.

Whence is this? We discover the secret of it to consist in that vague belief in the equality of all races of men, which lies at the basis of the Republican party. This fundamental idea has been enunciated at various places by their great leaders, and although many of the party are ignorant of the principle which vivifies and controls their action, we may yet unhesitatingly assume that the force and strength of the Republican organization is derived from an undefined conception that all races of men are equal.

We have received, as a legacy from the last century, an hitherto unquestioned belief in the perfectability of human nature, and the consequent natural equality of all men. Fourth of July orations, echoing the sentiments of the author of the Declaration of Independence, and imitating the brilliant rhetoric of the great leaders of the French Revolution, have firmly indoctrinated the American mind with theoretical opinions which are at variance with all experience and practice. In the northern States this theoretical belief in the equality of all races has had peculiar opportunities of fixing itself in the public mind, owing to the comparative absence of an inferior race, which might serve as a practical proof and an immediate example of the inferiority of one numerous race, to another great race. The bulk of the people of the free States have consequently accepted, almost without question, the general dogma referred to. In addition to this vague idea, there exists in the North a natural geographical feeling of jealousy and hostility to the South. All the world over you find these sectional feeling, which are the same as patriotism under different circumstances. Indeed, as politicians, we know that there are jealousies between Eastern and Western Pennsylvania, between Northern and Southern; and in all our county conventions, we always find that there is an upper end and a lower end, a northern end and a southern end of the country, claiming certain patronage and offices, with considerable bitterness, on account of locality.

Again, there are in the Northern States and the Southern States different systems of labor, producing in each section very different social institutions and habits. The North is, to a considerable extent, manufacturing; the South is principally agricultural—the North is commercial; the South is not. Here, then, are natural passions, prejudices, feelings and interests upon which demagogues may adroitly play for their own aggrandizement; and cool-headed revolutionary leaders have done so with an effect that to-day we observe with dread.

But the idea upon which they base their greatest hopes of success is this undefined one of the equal rights, privileges and capabilities of all races. Ask them directly whether the Negro is equal to the Caucasian, and they may say no; nevertheless, their argument is based upon the assumption that the negro is fit for liberty and ought to have it. Now the Democratic party has never met them squarely in the front; on the contrary, we have interposed the Constitution between the foe and ourselves; we have appealed to the compact between equal sovereign States; we have pointed to the compromises of that instrument, but we have never undertaken to show that the fundamental ideas of the Republican party are absolutely false, both in theory and in experiment. This manner of conducting the war could necessarily result in only one way. If we must hold up a paper constitution as a reply to the arguments of their orators—if we do not attempt to controvert their principles—we virtually concede the soundness of their position. If we continue to attempt to stem the tide of fanaticism by a paper barrier, because unable to erect a barrier of reason, we will be overwhelmed—and deserve to be. If the African is fit for liberty and has a right to it, then John Brown was a greater man than Lafayette, and deserves the brilliant eulogies pronounced upon him by the great Republican orator, Wendell Phillips, with whom we would unite in inscribing his name as hero, martyr, saint, in the azure sky, far, far above the greatest patriots and heroes of all time. We repeat, that if we can only reply to the appeals to passion and feeling in which the Opposition speakers and editors indulge, in reference to the Constitution, that the people will tear to pieces a paper obstacle, and that it should be so treated. But we consider the idea, or principle, or theory, which is at the basis of the Opposition party, to be radically unsound. We hold that this excitement is founded upon an error; that this modern idea of the equality of the races of men is disproved by the experience of the world and sound science. We propose to meet this fundamental error of the Opposition with the antagonistic fundamental truth; to their belief in the equality of all races of men, and consequently their right to equal political privileges, to reply by the proof that such an idea is the conception of moon-struck theorists and builders of castles in the air.

We will, first, show the manner in which this incorrect theory originated, and then briefly refute it. France may claim the credit of it, and in the eighteenth century it gained force. Then arose a group of literary men who have given direction to public opinion throughout the world. Jean Jacques Rosseau was perhaps the most conspicuous author who prepared the way for the French Revolution and the great social and political changes which succeeded it. The fundamental idea of Rousseau and his school was the equality of all men, in a state of nature. This equality, he asserted, was lost through unjust laws and vicious social customs. He held up, in every way, the state of nature as the desirable one, and looked upon arts, science, and government as tending to debase human character, and make distinctions between men when God had intended that all should be perfectly equal. The natural rights of man were the texts of most of his writings, and he insisted that all societies, however constituted, had robbed humanity of its rights. His magic pen, with the assistance of almost the whole literary class of his day, brought the civilized world to look upon society as defective and seek some means of amelioration. Thus arose the Socialists, the Saint Simonians, the Fourierites, the Red Republicans and different organizations which believed in the necessity of destroying society as it then existed, to found it upon some basis which should be in accordance with the natural equality of men. These ideas gradually impregnated all the educated classes of Europe. Despots, like Frederick the Second, of Prussia, and the slave-holding aristocracy of France and Europe, united with literateurs who did not possess a sou, in adopting those attractive ideas, while all amused themselves with essays upon the subject. The result was the French Revolution, which became a triumph of all those idealogues who were determined at any cost to reconstitute society. They were radical, for they cut off the heads of the great and noble; they dethroned the Deity and substituted the goddess of reason; they established a new system of government, in accordance with a very logical paper constitution, even changing the length of the week, the names of the months and the number of the years. They were determined to commence their reformation of society unencumbered by traditions or customs or ancient ideas. From the establishment of the French Republic upon the basis of liberty, equality, and fraternity, was to date a new era—perhaps the inauguration of the miilenium. Against this general madness which had pervaded France, the monarchs of Europe and ministry of Great Britain organized immense armies, but the French Directory inspired the troops of France with their fanatical ideas of liberty, equality, and fraternity, and met successfully the shock of the world in arms. Upon the eagles of France these principles were carried to every corner of Europe, and the whole civilized world became snore or less indoctrinated.

About the time when this leaven was fermenting and spreading, the American Revolution was fought with the assistance of a French army, the officers of which were so imbued with enthusiastic ideas of universal liberty that men of the highest rank and fortune, in this capacity, were ready to cross the seas and assist a nation of different blood, religion and language in its struggle. At such a time they necessarily assisted in spreading their ideas among those whom they came to assist, and many of our public men became enthusiastic admirers of French literature, and imbued with its philosophy. Jefferson, himself, was especially inoculated with the notions then prevalent in Paris, and looked forward to a speedy regeneration of mankind. His great genius and powerful common sense preserved him from the extravagancies of the French philosophy, and the practical errors flowing from the doctrine, that all races of men are created free and equal. However, this abstract opinion was adopted by the nation, and a vague belief in the equality of all races has heated through the national mind of America from that day to this, as also in Europe and throughout the world. Until with in a few years, it, has been impossible to properly discuss the question, because the necessary materials could not be obtained. Until recently, history has been written as if there were only kings and nobles on the earth. Historians never examined into the social condition of a people—the origin of the races, their customs or their habits. All literature and civilization was confined to the favored few who surrounded the different courts, while the great mass of the people were serfs or slaves. No one attempted a history of the races or a scientific examination of their peculiarities. Scientific travelers had not yet brought back from all the quarters of the globe correct descriptions of what they had seen; the literature of India and China were yet sealed; the hieroglyphics of Egypt and the inscriptions of Nineveh had not yet been interpreted; the different sciences had not yet reached that stage of development which would enable men to enter upon the study of the sciences of races; but such are the immense materials now afforded for the study of this science, that we can trace back the races of the earth to the very morning of time, and solve many of the problems which have hitherto baffled the statesmen, as well as the professor. We can show that the same races have ever been distinguished by the same characteristics—some superior morally, some physically, some intellectually—some exhibiting maritime tastes, others agricultural, others pastoral. Every race has its own modes of thinking; every race has its own civilization, in which it cannot educate another. The European cannot win the Asiatic to his mode of thinking; he cannot give his civilization to the Australian or to the negro. This difference of race has been practically shown since the commencement of time, and is now witnessed in every country of the world, and even among; races which are nearly allied to each other. The masses of the people in India have been in turn subjected by more than six different races, gliding with the English; the Tartars, at this time, rule China; one race in Asia now commands six or eight others; a German tribe in Austria rules the Italian, the Tyrolean, the Bohemian—which is a Tchudic race,—the Selavonians, the Hungarian Magyars and the Hungarian Selavonians; (and it is a remarkable fact that the Magyars and the Selavonians have been inhabiting the same country in almost equal numbers for one thousand years without losing their peculiarities of language, of habits, of pursuits. The Magyars are the dominant race, and would have succeeded in their revolutionary struggle were it not that the Selavonians sympathized with their kindred in blood—the Russians—so that the most bitter scenes of that war occurred between these neighbors of a thousand years.) Until recently, the Frankish race or Germanic, composing the aristocracy, ruled the mass of the French, who were Celtic; and to-day the Normans of England domineer, as aristocrats, over the ancient Britons, the Welsh and the Irish Celts. It is scarcely necessary for us to advert to the fact that the wars of modern times spring from this question of race; that even the somewhat mixed race of Italy is striving for Italian unity and nationality; that in the war between Russia and Turkey, the Selavonian provinces of Austria, of Prussia, and of Italy, all exhibited the strongest leaning toward their brethren in Russia; that the revolution now progressing in China is a war between the Chinese and their Tartar masters; that, in fine, the tendency throughout the whole world is towards an instinctive national unity. Thus we might go over the whole world, showing that races of nearly kindred blood ruled, the one over the other, but it is unnecessary. These different races have been so commingled in the United States that we have merely a struggle between all the branches of the great Caucasian family on the one, hand, and the African race on the other—between the highest and lowest, races of the earth. But the subject is with us much simplified, for it is between the white race and the black, and we do not find it necessary to enter into the subject of the original unity or diversity of the origin of men. Whether the Bible be interpreted, to say that we are all descended from Adam and Eve or not, or whether, if so descended, there were some natural laws, since ceasing to exist, which, in antediluvian ages, produced changes in the races of men, it is not necessary to inquire. It is sufficient tor us that for four or five thousand years there have existed the same differences between different races of mankind, as are now observed; and we hold that if there have been no material changes produced in five thousand years, that it will certainly require some thousands of years to destroy these distinctions. If we can show that the negro has been the slave of every other race with whom he came in contact, for five thousand years, it is fair to argue that it will require some thousands of years to elevate him to an equality with those races. By means of monumental history as well as written, through the aid of the sciences of philology, craniology and the other branches of learning, which go to make up the science of ethnology, we can trace back the history of the races now inhabiting the earth to a period nearly five thousand years before Christ, at which time Europe and Asia seem to have been in the condition which we shall describe. The black race had strayed from its own country up even into the mountains of India and China, as to-day certain tribes, there lost, indicate.

When the black race, yielding to the yellow and the white, receded into Africa, the white race was in occupation of the great plateaus of Central Asia, surrounded to the north, east, and west by the yellow race. To these two races the African yielded in turn. As he receded from Europe, civilization followed, and the great empires of Assyria, of Babylon, and of Egypt were close upon his retreating footsteps. He withdrew into the land of the sun and his birth—Africa—leaving behind him no marks of culture, no civil institutions, no temples built in honor of the Deity, no legacies of learning, or science, or art, for the benefit of humanity; and in Africa, in India, in China, and in Asia Minor, to-day, as five thousand years ago, he is without religion, without organized society, without civil equality—a rude idolater—lowest in the scale of human beings. We have representations of the negro by six different nations of antiquity; by the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Etruscans, the Persians, Greeks, and Romans—pictures of him, delineated at periods varying from twenty-five hundred years B. C., downwards toward our own era, and invariably he is represented just as we see him now, and almost always with the distinctive badges of servitude. In the tombs of kings who reigned in Egypt before Moses, we have seen accurate representations of the negro, with the same dress, the same figure, the same color which he possesses, as we see him gaily chattering in the slave marts of Cairo. The same he appears in the monument of the Persian king of Cyrus. The Etruscan vases equally portray the negro, in still another country of the world, as the slave of a superior race. And, just as in the earliest period of recorded history, the negro is found to have been subject to any other race with which he came in contact, so we find him now in many lands. In Algeria, in Tunis, in Tripoli, in Egypt, in Asia Minor, in Turkey, in Russia, in Greece, and in Italy, wherever we have seen him, we have found him the virtual slave of the white, just as he is in the southern States, in the Indian territories, or in the northern States of this Republic; for he is a slave to-day among us as unequivocally as in South Carolina. The great difference between his status in one of the southern States and one of the northern is here; there he is a slave of individuals, here he is the slave of society. Only certain occupations are permitted to this inferior class, which cannot vote, which cannot bear arms, which cannot hold office, and which cannot intermarry with the whites. From the border of many States it is ignominiously excluded; and many enthusiastic Black Republican States, while making war upon the South for holding this race in bondage, yet cruelly exclude them from the enjoyment of even the Heaven-given franchises of earth, air and water. We have then to deal with a race that in times past has had many opportunities of civilization, which came in contact with the first great civilization that the world knew—with India—and melted away before it; which, when the Chinese empire commenced to be great, was found among them, but soon retreated, as though before something uncongenial; and in the course of time, as the Nigritian race retreats in a southerly direction, there follows close upon its heels the empires of Babylon and of Ninevah, the civilizations of Phœnicia, of the Jews, of Egypt, and of Carthage.

But from none of these did the black race absorb learning or the arts. It left no trace behind it in works beneficial to the human family; and if we follow the path which it took in its southward march, until we reach the highest peak in the Abyssinian mountains, to then turn our gaze northward, we can see nothing which the African has added to the stock of human learning; not an iota which it has bequeathed for the advancement of the human race; not the faintest trace of an addition to the happiness or comfort of mankind which it has made. If we cast our gaze to the south, we shall behold at least fifty millions of negroes sunk in the profoundest ignorance and barbarism, inhabiting their own home in the same condition they were when they had the best opportunity of receiving civilization from India, from China, from Asia, from Asia Minor, or from Egypt. Now, although not prepared to say with the poet, that "whatever is, is right," we yet hold that whatever has been from the beginning is founded on some natural law, and that it is the peculiar duty of statesmen to deal with things as they are, while not imitating the madness of those architects of ruin in the last French Revolution, who sought to cut and trim society with the aid of the guillotine, in accordance with their abstract ideas of what is good and right. If the negro has always been subject to the races in juxtaposition with which lie was found, we must take note of the, fact and deal accordingly. How different has it been with the other great races we find in this country! The Caucasian, starting from the plateaus of Central Asia, has in turn inoculated all the great empires of the world with it civilization. The Brahmins of India, the founders of the Chinese Empire, the greatness of Babylon and of Ninevah, the glory of Tyre and of Sidon, the pride of Egypt, the wealth of Carthage, and the power of Rome, in fact all the civilizations, as you follow the Caucasian tribes westward through Germany, France, England, and to this country, are owing to the great Arian or Teutonic stock. To them is the world indebted for its budget of ideas, for its material comforts, for its religion.

As we have, now, face to face, in this country, the Africans on one side, the different branches of the Teutonic race on the other, we ask whether the superior is to be sacrificed to the inferior; whether in a fanatical rage for an equality which does not exist; whether with an insane idea of elevating the negro to a level which he has never reached, a vital stab is to be given to the civilization of the world? The abolitionists of this country wish to do nothing less for the negro than Robespierre sought to do for a branch of the white race in France. They wish, by the aid of John Brown's pikes, to do what the French convention sought to effect by the guillotine. The effort in France resulted in anarchy and blood without attaining the object. How evident, then, the insanity of those who are drifting toward that same sea of blood in behalf of a race upon which the creator has stamped an eternal inferiority. But while holding these views, it does not warrant any ill treatment of this faithful, good-hearted, simple-minded people. They are here. We must do that which is best for them and us under all the circumstances. But we would not be excused in bearing from the soil and clime to which God has created them, these children of another land and another sun. It is a crime against nature to steal them from the soil and clime of Africa, to carry them through the untold horrors of "the middle passage," to a continent where they cannot have the development which the divinity fore-ordained. As each race has its own civilization, so we may hope that in the good time of Providence there may yet develop in Africa the civilization which belongs to the negro. Thousands of years hence, they may yet astonish the world by a civilization corresponding to their active imagination, their acute physical senses and their peculiarities of obedience and devotion. Meanwhile we—who are as the sands of the sea-shore, and who are as the flies that are born in the morning and in the evening die—we, creatures who exist but for a moment of time upon earth, must deal with things as they are now—must take the negro as we find him—must do the best possible for him, and for us, when we find ourselves without act of our own, in juxtaposition. This is the rational and practical mode of dealing with the subject, but it is not that selected by the leaders of the opposition. The brains of this party we find in Boston; regarding Wendall Phillips, Emerson, Theodore Parker, Whipple and others, as the teachers of the Republican party. They are somewhat in advance, to be sure, but they are leaders. Thirty years ago they occupied a position which has been since officially assumed by the Republican party. Twenty years hence the Republican party will occupy the advanced positions now held by these brilliant leaders. Thirty years ago a practical abolitionist could scarcely lecture in any town or city of this country, without the whole population exhibiting its rage. Now the lecture rooms of the North ring with the most classical appeals in behalf of the African and against their Caucasian masters. Wendell Phillips preaches not only the equality of all races, but the equality of sexes; and he seems to be looking forward to a millennium, when all men and all women shall hug and kiss under the broad banner of "liberty, fraternity and equality." It is this idea of universal liberty and equality which is at the basis of the Republican party. We have all of us received something of it from our ancestors, who inherited it from France and the literature of the last century. The falsity of it has not been examined into, but hereafter we may expect that true science will teach the world much more correct ideas in reference to races.

R. J. HALDEMAN,

Chairman Executive Committee.

Harrisburg, March, 1860.

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