Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1853-01-29

10 your arms but death sits FORTRESS their undefended
gateways Yellow fevers, and blue plaques, and inter-
mttent posons that you can see as we'll as feel await
your approach As you ascend the rivers, pestilence
shoots from the mangoves that fringe their noble banks
and the glorious sum- which kindes all inferior nature
into eaming, bursting fe darts disease into your
guild system No, you not elected for this
tous work The Great Dspose in another branch Of his
family has chosen race descendants of this torrid
region children of this vertical sum- and fitted Them by
ages of stern discipline for the gracious achievement
From foreign realms and lands remote,
! Supported by His care
1 They pass unframed thro' burning cmes,
/ And breathe the tainted air.
Sir believe that the aupcious work is begun that
Africa will be ciylizedcivized by her offspring and de-
scendants. believe 1T because will not think that this
mighty and fertile region is to remain forever in its pre-
sent state because other agency adequate
to the accomplishment Of the work and because do be-
hold in this agency most mysterious fitness.
i aware that doubts entertained of the pract-
cabty of the work. founded in part the supposed in
capacity of the civilized of color in this country
carry undertaking of this kind, and partly the
supposed hopeless barbarism Of the native races which
is thought by persons to be gross defy the
approach of improvement believe both opinions to be
erroneous.
1t would think, be unjust to urge as proof of the
intellectual inferority Of the civilized men of color this
country that they have not made greater intellectual pro-
1t appears me that they have done quite much
could be expected under the depressing circumstances
in which they have been placed What branch of the
European family il held in the condition for two or
three centuries, would not be subject to the
the intellectual nferory of the African race as existing
in the United States. lie light have been led doubt
the justice of his conclusions by rejecting that in the
very same work he thinks it necessary vndcate the
race to which We ourselves belong from charge of de-
generacy made by ingenious French writer 1.-THE Able
Raynal) Why sir it but short time since Anglo
Americans were habtuay spoken of by brethren in
England as degenerate and inferior Within thirty
years it has been contemptuously asked in the liberal
journals of England in reference the native country Of
Franklin and Washington and Adams and Marshall and
L IpHa an1M o1,d 80
Ticknor, Bryant, and Longfellow who reads an Anne
rcan book? In the face of facts like these it becomes
us to be somewhat cautious in setting down the colorcd
race IN America as one of hopeless inferiority.
Again. sir it is doubted whether there is in the native
of Africa basis of improveabiity if may use that
word which hope Of their future civilization can be
grounded 1t said that they alone of all the tribes of
the EARTH have shown themselves incapable of improving
their condition
| Well, sir who knows that? OF the early history of
our race we know but little in any part of the globe
dark cloud hangs it. The whole north and west of
Europe, until the Roman civilization shone in upon it,
was as benighted Africa is now 1t is quite certain
that at very early period of the history Of the world
some OF the native Of Africa had attained high
degree of culture Such the case of the ancient
Egyptians dark colored race though not Of what we
call the negro type They considered the parents of
much Of the civilization of the Greeks and indeed of the
whole ancient world. As late as the fifth century before
the Christian era Plato passed thirteen years in study
ing their sacred records The massive monuments of their
cherries culture have wthsood the storms of time bet
ter than the more graceful creations of Greca art And
yet if we to judge of the capacity of the Egyptian
for improvement from the present condition Of the
native population of the valley Of the Nile, we should
have reason to place them above the inhabitants Of
valley of the Niger Races that emerged from barbarism
later than those Of Africa have with fearful vcissudes
the part of individual States acquired and maintain
ed superiority Africa but am not prepared to
say that it rests natural of fixed and abiding
character.
We are led into error by contemplating things too much
in the gross There tribes in Africa which have made
contemplate chpSo NJ
improvement On the other hand if look closely at
the condition of the Of the population in Europe
from Lisbon to Archange from the Hebrides to the Black
sea five turn from the few who possess wealth or COM
petnce, education and that orshp over Nature and all
her forces which belongs to instructed mind if we turn
from these to the benghted destitute oppressed super
stous, AFFECT millions, whose lives are passed in the
hopeless tolls of the field, the factory the mine whose
inheritance from generation to generation from father
to son. is beggary whose education is stoid ignorance
at whose daily table hunger and thirst are the stewards
whose festvity is brutal nenperance if we cond
count their numbers gather into aggregate their des
tution of the joys and lights of life and thus estimate
the full extent of the practical barbarism of the nom
nay civilized world should be inclined perhaps to
doubt the essential superiority of the present improved
European
ft be essentially superior why did it remain so long
unmproved The Africans you say have persevered in
their original barbarsm for five thousand wears Well
the race did the thing for nearly fouru
thousand years. and in the great chronology of Prov
dence thousand years but as one day. little more
than ten centuries ago. and Saxon were not
more civilized than some of the African tribes of the pre
sent day They we're savage warke peope-prates
by sea- bandits ON shoreensayed by the darkest super
sttons, worshpping dvnites dark and cruel ms them
selves The sayetrade carried on in Great Britain
Eight hundred ago the natives Of that island were
bought and sold for the South and East of Europe as
ruhessy upon the coast of Africa at the present day
But it pleased Divine Providence to pour tho LIGHT Of
Christianity upon this midnight darkness by degrees
civilization law liberty. letters arts came in and at
the end of eight centuries of the essential nborn
superiority Of the AngloSaxon race and look down with
dsdan those portions Of the human family who have
Jagged little behind in the march of civilization
Sir at the present day Africa not the abode Of utter
barbarism Here again do not discriminate we Judge
in the gross Some Of her tribes are indeed hopeessy
broken down by internal foreign slave trade
and the situation of the whole continent is exceedingly
adverse to any progress in culture But they are not s
wages The mass Of the population live by agriculture
There is traffic between the and the interior
There is rude archtecture gold dust is collected iron
is smelted weapons and utensils of husbandry and
hold use wrought cloth is manufactured and dyed
palm oil is expressed; schools are taught Among the
Mahomedan tribes the Koran is read. have seen ma
tive African in this city who had passed forty years of his
life slave in the field, who, at the age Of seventy
wrote the Arabic character with the elegance of scribe
and MuDgo Park tells that lawsuits argued with as
much ability uency, and much length in the interior
of Africa as Mt Edinburgh certainly that the
condition OF the most advanced tribes of Central Africa
wreched mainly in consequence of the slave trade which
| exists among them in the most deplorable form The
only wonder is, that with this eating into their
tails from to age any degree Of civilization exist
But think II may be said without exaggeration that
graded the ninety millions of Africa ninety millions
exist in Europe to which each country contributes her