The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1869-12-28
SPIRIT OF TIE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions Of the Leading Journals
Upon Current TOpics-COmpIied Every
Day for the Evening Telegraph.
MAN OR BEAST {?

be safety, provided always there is no ethnol-
Dgist among them, and the point to be con-
ddered is not the simple humanity of black
people, But given the great facial-angle ques-
Ion, with its shin-bone corollaries, and given
also disputants learned in the history of races,
md the confguration of the human form di-
vine, and we have at once q muddle of asser-
zion and rejoinder sufficient to disturb the
equilibrium of the most accurately poised in
tellect. We have in our time read forty or
fifty treatises-mostly of the pamphlet de-
scription-whioh were intended to demon
strate by copious citations from Rollins An
cient History and the Book of Genesis that q
<'nigger" is ''nigger' and that white man
is a white man, although these appear to be
pair of self-evident facts in little or no need
either of proposition or of proof. Lately
the tedium of the investigation is somewhat
alleviated by the new question of "What is
an Albino ?" What is the proper social and
political status of creature the pupils of
whose eyes are pink the hair of whose head
is 'preternsturally white, whose skin is of
a light color with dark spots or of a dark
color with light spots? Is human being
thus varjegated to be considered as still
under the curse of Canaan? These are
matters which might well arrest the attention
of Dr. Joseph Jones, of New Orleans, Secre-
tary of the Southern Historical Society, Pro-
fessor of Chemistry in the University of Lou
isiana, and late Professor of Physiology and
Pathology in the University of Nashville.
The Professor has had brought to his notice
some remarkable cases of purely negro pa
rentage, of children whose skins were per-
fectly white and free from any African tinge,
while every feature, except that of the skin,
was Enthusiastically that of the negro" Still
O more serious and extraordinary case coming
under DR.. Joseph Jones observation was that
of full-blooded negro, who, not having the
fear of the ethnologist before him,
gradually turned white," until he
was nearly as white all over as the
editor of the EgpreSs. Indeed, Albinos are
rather common than otherwise; they are
found among all races of men, they were we'll
known to the ancients and may have assisted
at the building of the Tower of Babel; and
there are Albino animalsa both wild and do
mestic. In Africa the Albinos are very nu-
merous, and his Majesty the King of Loango,
as well as his Majesty the King of Ashantee,
employs them as the ornamental attendants
of his person. These are facts which give
rise to variety of conjectures, but we con-
tent ourselves with a simple point of casuis-
try, viz.:-Whether black man having be-
come by some mysterious process white,
thereby escapes the curse pronounced upon
his race by the Almighty? But we are forced
to admit that this is problem which we are
not learned enough in sacred science to
solve; and as the hard-headed race of pro-
slavery divine doctors has pretty much died
out, we fear that the matter must remain
unsettled and a collegiate distraction through
all the ages.
The Investigations of DIR. Joseph Jones
have, however, had one valuable and practi-
cal result. "He finds" does the Doctor,
<'that between the epidermis of the white
and colored races there is an identity of
structure, and no such organic difference as
indicates diversity of origin and species of
the different races" This is a dreadful blow
to the writers of the sixpenny pamphlets,
with their weighty logic and their polyglot
knowledge of cuticular tints before the flood
and after it, and with their fine theory of the
general influence of the shinbone upon the
moral character. Over and over again, these
gentlemen have proved both the justice and
the necessity of slavery by arguments drawn
from the hair, the eyes, the cuticle, the nose,
the teeth, the hands and the feet of the slave.
They were anatomical in their politics. They
were physiological in their religion. They
sought to color legislation by setting
up a radical and fundamental difference
between Americans and Africans. The gorilla
was unto them god-send. The chimpanzee
was installed the ally of the Federal Constitu-
lion, as they were eager to understand it, and
here comes Dr. Joseph Jones, of Louisiana,
and denies diversity of origin and species of
the different races. Cruel DIR. Jones He
even reaches the narrowing conclusion, ''from
microscopical and physiological investigation,
That the hair of the negro possesses all the
characteristics of hair, and is not WOOL" Not
wool Why, this not only demolishes many
beautiful theories, bat it takes the point out
of innumerable jokes. 1t establishes an iden-
tity between the flowing locks of patriarch
and the frizzled capillary arrangements OF
<'Uncle Ned" before his lamentable badness.
This will never do! We can give up
S'the eboe Shin" we can admit that the
chromatic cuticle is indecisive; we can
allow that thick lips and flat noses prove
nothing; but if we surrender the total, abso
lutte, and all-important difference of hair, WI
can but feel that even at this late day Canaan
is getting rather the better of us, and tina
our Caucasian pre-eminence is in danger. Il
the head-covering of the black is not wool
there is an end of everything-of essays il
4he E9pyeSS, of engravings in Mr.. Pomeroy'
newspaper, of one of the chief attraction
,ffered by ''minstrels,' of all resemblance
ietween white men and the golden-hairet
phobus, between black men and his Satani
pajesty If this be the finale of controversy
he Ethiopian and the Anglo-Saxon are indee
men and brethren. Prejudice is palsied SO
phistry is silenced; and hard-hearted cham
pions of ''caste" will be compelled to abando
one of the most pungent peculiarities of thei
arrogant and brawling rhetoric.
If we had ever supposed that any man con
scientiously believed the white only to b
man, and the black to be brute and beast
we might have treated this topic more seri
ously. But these slanderers of their kind di
not need the refutations of DIR. Jones half S
much as they pretended to- They knew tn,
they were chattering folly and mouthing falls