The republic. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1849-1853, 1853-01-19


the intellectual inferority of the civilized men Of
color in tfis cu!intry that they, have not made
gfeatef intellectual progress II appests ID 40
that they have done quite as much as could he ~
pscteds under the depressing circumstances in
which they have beeii placed. Whst branch Of Z
three C nturies, would not be spbject to the same
reproactl Nj. Jefferson, In bis Notes on TirgiEiaj
ufges tie intellectual inferiority Of the AfffGln
race an existing in the United States He might
have been led to doubt the. justice of his conclu
sions, by rejecting that, in the very same work.
he thinks 1t necessary to vindicate the race to
which We ourselves belong from charge If
degeheracy made by an ingenious French writer.
Why's cir, il is but ahoft time since We Anglo
Americans were habitualiy spoken of by our bfeth-
rem in England as a degenerate and inferior race.
Withih thirty yeata it has been ,sohtemp tuously
asked in the liberal journals of Europe, III refer
ence to the native country of Franklin and Wash
ington, and Adams and Marshall and jefferson
nor. Bryant. and Longfellow, "Who reads an
American book?" In the face of facts like these,
1t becomes us to be somewhat cautious in setting
down the colored race in America as one Of hope.
less inferiutity. H 57as 8e
Again, sir, 1t Is doubted whether there is In the
native races of Africa basis Of ifnprovabity, If
may use that word, on which hope, of their fu-
ture civilization can be gr5dndsd It Is said that
they alone of all the tribes of the earth have shown
themselves Incapable their condition.
Well, sir, VINO knows thatp Of the early history
of our race we know but little in any part OF tie
globe. dark cloud hangs over it. The whole north
and west Of Europe, until the Roman civilization
shone in upon it, was as benighted Africa il
now. 1t is quite certain that at very early Pc
riod of the history of the world some of the native
races of Africa had attained high degree of
culture. Such was the Gaze of the ancient Egyp-
tians, dark coored race, Though not of what we
call the negro type; They are considered the
parents of tuch Sf the civilization Of the Greeks;
the fifth century, before the Christian era, Plato
passed thirteen years in studying their sacred
words. The massive monuments of their cheer
less culture have withstood the storms of time better
than the more graceful creations of Grecian art.
Races that emerged from barbarism later than those
of Africa have, with fearful vicissitudes the part
of individual States, acquired and maintained
superiority over Africa; but am not prepared to
say that 1t rests on natural causes of a fixed and
abiding character. We are led into error by con :.
templating things too much in the gross. There
are tribes in Africa which have made no contempt.
BILE progress in various branches of human i'm
provement. On the other hand, if we look closely
at the condition of the mass of the population in
Europe, from Lisbon to Archangel, from the He
brides to the Black sea-if we turn from the few
who possess wealth competence, education.
culture, and that lordship Nature and all her
forces which belongs to instructed mind. If we
turn from these to the benighted, destitute, op-
pressed superstitious, abject millions whose lives
are passed in the hopeless tolls Of the field, the
factory the mine, whose inheritance is beggary,
whose education lie stoiid ignorance; at whose
daily table hunger and thirst are the stewards;
whose rare festivity 10 brutal intemperance; if we
gregate their destitution Of the joys Of life, and
thus estimate the full extent of the practical bar
barism of the nominally civilized world, we should
be inclined, perhaps, to doubt the essential supe
riority of the present improved European race
60 long unimproved? The Africans you say per
severed in their original barbarism for five thous
and years. Well, the Anglo-Saxon race did the
same thing for nearly four thousand years, and in
the great, chronology of Providence Thousand
centuries ago and our Saxon ancestors were
not more civilized than come of the African
tribes of the present day. they we're savage
warlike people-pirates by sea, bandits on shore
divinities as dark and cruel as Themselves The
slave trade was carried on in Great Britain eight
hundred years ago as ruthlessly as upon the coast
of Africa at the present day But it pleased Divine
Providence to pour the light of Christianity upon
this midnight darkness; by degrees civilization, law,
liberty, letters, arts, came in; and at the end of
eight centuries talk of the essential Unborn
periority of the Anglo Saxon race, and look down
with disdain on those portions of the human family
who have Jagged little behind us in the march Of
civilization.
Sir, at the present day Africa ia not the abode of
utter barbarian. Here again we do not discrimi
nate, we judge in the gross, Some of her tribes
are indeed hopelessly broken down by internal
wars and tho foreign slave trade; and the situation
Of the whole continent is exceedingly adverse to
any progress in culture. But they are not savages
The mass of the population live by agriculture.
There is some traffic between the coast and the in
terror. There ID rude architecture; gold dust
is collected, iron is smelted weapons and utensils
of ehan hold oht
cloth is manufactured and dyed; palm oil is ex-
pressed; schools are taught. Among the Mahom
edan tribes the Koran is used. / have seen ma
tive African in this city who had passed forty
years of his life as slave in the field, who, at
the age of seventy, wrote the Arabic character
with the elegance of a scribe; and Mungo
Park tells us that lawsuits are argued with
as much ability, fuency, and at much length
in the interior of Africa as at Edinburgh. |
certainly am aware that the condition of the
most advanced tribes of Central Africa is wretch
ed, mainly in consequence of the slave trade
which exists among them in the most deploTable
form. The only wonder is that with this cancer
eating into their vitas from age to age any degree
said without exaggeraton that degraded as are the
ninety million of Africa ninety millions exist
in Europe, to which each country contributes her
quota not much less degraded. The difference
is, and certainly all important difference, that
in Europe interminged with these ninety millions
are fifteen or twenty millions possessed of all de-
grees of culture up to the very highest; while in
All lea there is not individual who, according
to our standard, has attained high degree of in
teiectual cultivation but If obvious for this
can be shown, it is unphilosophical to infer from
it Dn essential incapacity.
But all doubts of the capacity of the African race
for self. government, and Of their impravability un
der favorable circumstances, eeem to me to be re-.
moved by what we witness at the present day,
both IN our own country and On the coast of that
continent. Notwithstanding the diaadvanta ges
OF their condition in this country,, specimens of
intellectual ability-the talent of writing nd
speaking-caPacity for busness-for the inge
MUS and mechanical arts-for accounts-for the
ordinary branches of academcal learning have
been exhibited by our colored brethren, which
would do discredit to Anglo Saxo Pau
Cutter, well recoilected in New England was
a person of great energy His father was an AT
rican slave, his mother an Indian Of the Elizabeth
islands, in Massachusetts,. have already alluded
to the extraordinary attainments Of Alderahman. A
man OF better manners or more respectable appear
snce / never The learned blacksmith of
now in Liberia, has attained celebrity
inferior to that of his white brother, known
by the same designation frequently attended the
at school in Cambridge at which
Beverley Will Jams was pupil Two youths
from Georgia and son of my own were his fellow
pupils. Beverley was born slave in Mississippi
and apparently of pure African blood; he was one
of the best the beet Latin scholar
in his class.
These are indications of intellectual ability at.
forded under discouragng circumstances thome.
On the coast of Africa, as it appears to me, the
of Liberia the creation ofthissocittv pht