by Noel Rae
“The first facts I shall examine are those which throw light on the progress made in each of these two localities in religion. Of all the evils ascribed to slavery by free men of the North, none equals, in their estimation, its deleterious tendency upon religion and morals.” And what can we learn from the census? With a white population that was almost identical (2,728,000 for the six Northern states, and 2,730,000 for the five slave states) we find that “New England has erected 4607 churches,” and the five slave states “have erected 8081 churches. These New England churches will accommodate 1,893,450 hearers; the churches of the five slave states will accommodate 2,896,472 hearers. Thus we see that these slave States, with an equal free population, have erected nearly double the number of churches, and furnished accommodation for upwards of a million more persons.”
Moving on:
“It is assumed in the North that slavery tends to produce social, moral and religious evils. This assumption is flatly contradicted by the facts of the census.” Thus “New England has 518,532 families, and 447,789 dwellings. The five slave states have 506,968 families, and 496,369 dwellings. Here we see the astonishing fact that with an equal population, New England has 11,564 more families than these five states, and that these five states have 48,580 more dwellings than New England—so that New England actually has 70,743 families without a home … It is truly painful to think of the effects upon morals and virtue which must flow from this state of things; and it is a pleasure to a philanthropic heart to think of the superior condition of the slave-holding people, who generally have homes where parents can throw the shield of protection around their offspring, and guard them against the dangers and demoralizing tendencies of an unprotected condition.”
Turning now to economics:
“It is the settled conviction of the non-slaveholding states that investments in slave labor, for agricultural purposes, is the worst of all investments, and tends greatly to lessen its profits. This has been proclaimed to the South so long by our Northern neighbors that many have been brought to believe it.” But what does the census say? “New England, with a population now numbering 2,728,016, with all the advantages of a commercial and manufacturing investment, and with the most energetic and enterprising free men on earth to give that investment its greatest productiveness, has accumulated wealth, in something over two hundred years to the amount of $1,003,466,181; while these five slave states, with an equal population, have, in the same time, accumulated wealth to the amount of $1,420,989,573.” Put another way, “the property belonging to New England, if equally divided, would give to each citizen but $367, while that belonging to the slave States, if equally divided, would give to each citizen the sum of $520.”
One consequence of this prosperity is that southern slavery “has been, and now is, a blessing to this race of people in all the essentials of human happiness and comfort. Our slaves all have homes, are bountifully provided for in health, cared for and kindly nursed in childhood, sickness, and old age; multiply faster, live longer, are free from all the corroding ills of poverty and anxious care, labor moderately, enjoy the blessings of the gospel and, let alone by wicked men, are contented and happy.” Indeed, “slavery is becoming, to this people, so manifestly a blessing that fugitives from labor are constantly returning to their masters again, after tasting the blessings, or rather the awful curse to them, of freedom in non-slaveholding States.
“The South did not seek or desire the responsibility and the onerous burden of civilizing and Christianizing these degraded savages; but God, in his mysterious providence, brought it about. He allowed England and her Puritan sons at the North, from the love of gain, to become the willing instruments to force African slaves upon the Cavaliers of the South. These Cavaliers were a noble race of men. They remonstrated against this outrage to the last … But God intended, as we now see, to bless these savages by forcing us, against our wills, to become their masters and guardians; and He has abundantly blessed us also, as we now see, for allowing his Word to be our counselor in this relation.”
To conclude the statistical argument, here are some facts quoted by David Christy in his book Cotton is King. The figures are for the year ending June 30, 1859:
Exports of the North: $45,305,541
Exports of the South: $193,399,618
The largest items of the North were “Animals and their products” ($15,262,769) and “Wheat and wheat flour” ($15,113,455). For the South the largest were “Tobacco, in leaf,” ($21,074,038) and “Cotton” ($161,434,923).
That remark by Stringfellow about fugitives “constantly returning to their masters again, after tasting the blessings, or rather the awful curse to them, of freedom in non-slaveholding states,” refers to one of the South’s most cherished and oft-repeated anecdotes. It had many versions; the one that follows is told by an English lady of noble birth, the Honourable Amelia Murray, who after touring Canada was now favoring this country with a visit:
“New Orleans, March 31, 1855. Last night, conversing with a very intelligent gentleman who has traveled in Canada, I remarked that the free Negroes there were in a much more degraded, suffering and irreligious state than any slaves I have seen; and that they often reproach the whites with having by false pretenses, inveigled them to their destruction. He said, ‘I will tell you a circumstance which occurred relative to that matter. A confidential black, who was treated with the greatest kindness by his master, took it into his head one day to run away, with the idea of establishing himself in Canada. When in that country I accidentally fell in with him, acting as a waiter in a hotel. We immediately recognized each other, and, with tears in his eyes, he said, “Oh, sir! Tell of the family. How is this one, how is that?” I answered his inquiries, and then asked how he got on. “I get on in the season pretty well; I make some money, but very bad in the winter. Oh sir! Beg my dear master for me; beg him to forgive, and take me back again.’” And I [that is, the Honourable Amelia Murray] feel sure that those Negroes who are not so far gone in drunkenness and profligacy as to have lost all self-respect, would generally make the same request.”
A popular argument among slave-owners was “show us some country in which slavery has been abolished, and we will abide by the experiment.” The recent history of Haiti, once “the pearl of the West Indies,” but now impoverished and turbulent, was one example. Another came when the British government abolished slavery throughout the empire. £20,000,000 was to be paid as compensation to the owners, and all slaves over the age of six were to become free on August 1, 1834. There would then be a four-to-six-year period of compulsory “apprenticeship,” but this proved hard to enforce, and was soon dropped.
Less than twenty years later, the Southern Quarterly published a review of two recent books on the topic of West Indian emancipation. “Immediately upon its passage,” wrote the reviewer, “this act was heralded to the world as the great event of the times. The British nation signalized itself in the eyes of the world by its self-gratulations and boastings upon the passage of this act, as illustrating its wisdom, justice and humanity. Brilliant results were anticipated for it; and a new era in the prosperity of her West Indian Islands, it was thought, was about to be inaugurated.” But “alas for the short-sightedness of human wisdom!” After eighteen years, all “those bright anticipations” must give way to the “melancholy realities of degradation and ruin caused by this act of folly.” The reviewer paid particular attention to the book titled Jamaica in 1850 since its author, John Bigelow, a New York lawyer and journalist, was known to be an abolitionist, and “it is natural to suppose he would be inclined to give the most favorable accounts of the results of the experiment of freedom.”
And here is some of what Bigelow found: “It is difficult to exaggerate, and yet more difficult to define, the poverty and industrial prostration of Jamaica.” The soil was so fertile that no one starved, but ever since “the Emancipation Act was passed, the real estate of the island has been rapidly depreciating in value … Out of the 653 sugar es
tates then in cultivation more than 150 have been abandoned, and the works broken up. This has thrown out of cultivation over 200,000 acres of rich land, which in 1832 gave employment to about 30,000 laborers … During the last three years the island has exported less than half the sugar, rum or ginger; less than one third the coffee; less than one tenth the molasses; and nearly two million pounds less of pimento, than during the three years which preceded the Emancipation Act.” Property values had plunged—“the Spring Valley estate in the parish of St. Mary’s, embracing 1,244 acres, had been sold once for £18,000 sterling. In 1842 it was abandoned, and in 1845 the free-hold, including works, machinery, plantation utensils and water power, was sold for £1,000. The Tremoles estate, of 1,450 acres, once worth £68,265 sterling, has since been sold for £8,400, and would not now bring half that sum.” Towns such as Kingston were also in decline: “In the busiest parts of the city, and on every block, may be seen vacant lots, on which are crumbling the foundation walls of houses long in ruins … Though Kingston is the principal port of the island, one looks and listens in vain for the noise of carts and the bustle of busy men; no one seems to be in a hurry, but few are doing anything, while the mass of the population are lounging about in idleness and rags … I could not perceive that sixteen years of freedom had advanced the dignity of labor, or of the laboring classes, one particle.”
And it wasn’t just Jamaica. “The other British West India islands have all been visited by equally serious, if not the same, prostrating influences, and all consider themselves ruined and helpless.”
The Southern Quarterly reviewer drew the obvious conclusions: to have expected that a race “whose natural disposition is to avoid all manner of effort or action would have been capable of appreciating” freedom, was to hope “against all reason, and in the face of all experience. The truth is, that owing to its natural inferiority, the Negro race is incapable of attaining the same high degree of civilization which belongs to the white, and can only be made to reach that lower grade of which it is capable by that process known as slavery.” Emancipation was therefore “the very worst thing for the future welfare of the Negro race. As well as causing the entire destruction of the prosperity of these islands, it removed the wholesome restraints of a civilization which had been imposed by the whites, took from it the only efficient stimulus to effort—that of compulsion—and left it abandoned to all its natural impulses and habits of idleness, soon to relapse into a condition of complete degradation.
“The results of this experiment are of the greatest importance as teaching fundamental truth upon the whole subject of Negro slavery; and to the South, of vital value as justifying and confirming the policy she has hitherto maintained, and in the future should maintain, in the government of this race. It holds up to view the picture which her condition would present under a similar experiment. She cannot therefore be too vigilant or too careful in guarding against all the insidious approaches of abolitionism.”
And then there was the appeal to science. In May, 1851, the New Orleans Medical and Surgical Journal printed a Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race, by Dr. Samuel Cartwright. As a medical student, Cartwright had studied under Dr. Benjamin Rush, a fervent abolitionist; but Cartwright was a man who thought for himself, and eventually came to a number of conclusions based on “observation in the field of experience.” Here are some of them:
“It is commonly taken for granted that the color of the skin constitutes the main and essential difference between the black and the white race; but there are other differences more deep, durable and indelible, in their anatomy and physiology, than that of mere color.” There were differences “in the membranes, the muscles, the tendons and in all fluids and secretions. Even the Negro’s brain and nerves … are tinctured with a shade of the prevailing darkness. His bile is of a deeper color and his blood is blacker than the white man’s.” On the other hand “his bones are whiter and harder than those of the white race, owing to their containing more phosphate of lime … His brain is a ninth or tenth less than in other races of men.” However, “the Negro’s hearing is better, his sight is stronger, and he seldom needs spectacles.
“The profuse distribution of nervous matter to the stomach, liver and genital organs would make the Ethiopian race entirely unmanageable if it were not that this excessive development is associated with a deficiency of red blood in the pulmonary and arterial systems, from a defective atmospherization or arterialization of the blood in the lungs,” i.e. they did not breathe in as much oxygen as white people. This, along with “a deficiency of cerebral matter in the cranium, and an excess of nervous matter distributed to the organs of sensation,” was “the true cause of that debasement of mind which has rendered the people of Africa unable to take care of themselves. It is the true cause of their indolence and apathy, and why they have chosen, through countless ages, idleness, misery and barbarism to industry and frugality.” This was also why “they always prefer the same kind of government, which we call slavery, but which is actually an improvement on the government of their forefathers, as it gives them more tranquility and sensual enjoyment.” And even if they did not prefer slavery, “yet their organization of mind is such that if they had their liberty, they have not the industry, the moral virtue, the courage and vigilance to maintain it, but would relapse into barbarism or into slavery, as they have done in Haiti. The reason for this is found in unalterable physiological laws. Under the compulsive power of the white man they are made to labor and exercise, which makes the lungs perform the duty of vitalizing the blood more perfectly than is done when they are left free to indulge in idleness. It is the red, vital blood sent to the brain that liberates their mind when under the white man’s control; and it is the want of a sufficiency of red, vital blood that chains their mind to ignorance and barbarism when in freedom.” In sum: “Anatomy and physiology have been interrogated, and the response is that the Ethiopian, or Canaanite, is unfitted … for the responsible duties of a free man, but, like a child, is only fitted for a state of dependence and subordination.”
Dr. Cartwright’s best-known contribution to medical science was to identify and diagnose two ailments peculiar to the Negro. The first of these was Drapetomania, “the disease causing slaves to run away.” (Cartwright invented the term himself, the first part coming from the Greek word drapetes, meaning a runaway slave.) “The cause, in the most of cases, that induces the Negro to run away from service is as much a disease of the mind as any other species of mental alienation, and much more curable.” The disease had two causes. Either the white man “attempts to oppose the Deity’s will by trying to make the Negro anything else than the submissive knee-bender, (which the Almighty declared he should be,) by trying to raise him to a level with himself.” Or the white man “abuses the power which God has given him over his fellow-man, by being cruel to him or punishing him in anger.” If a Negro becomes “sulky and dissatisfied” it is a symptom of the onset of drapetomania. Inquiries should be made, and if there are legitimate grounds for the sulkiness they should be removed. If there are no such ground then he prescribed “whipping them out of it, as a preventive measure against absconding or other bad conduct.”
Cartwright’s other breakthrough was to define Dysaesthesia Aethiopis, or “hebetude of mind and obtuse sensibility of body.” Its main symptoms are “stupidness of mind and insensibility of the nerves.” These cause those infected to “break, waste and destroy everything they handle … tear, burn or rend their own clothing … steal to replace what they have destroyed … wander about at night and keep in a half-nodding sleep during the day … slight their work … cut up corn, cane, cotton or tobacco when hoeing, as if for pure mischief … raise disturbances with their overseers and fellow servants without cause.” Doctors in the North “have noticed the symptoms, but not the disease from which they spring. They ignorantly attribute the symptoms to the debasing influence of slavery on the mind,” whereas quite the opposite was the case, for “the di
sease is the natural offspring of Negro liberty—the liberty to be idle.”
Fortunately, “the complaint is easily curable, if treated on sound physiological principles.” The first step was “to stimulate the skin” by having the patient “well washed with warm water and soap, then to anoint him all over with oil, and to slap the oil in with a broad leather strap; then to put the patient to some kind of hard work in the open air and sunshine that will compel him to expand his lungs, as chopping wood, splitting rails, or sawing.” This would “vitalize the impure circulating blood by introducing oxygen and expelling carbon.” Patients should take frequent rests and “drink freely of cold water or some cooling beverage, as lemonade, or alternated with pepper tea sweetened with molasses.” Food should be wholesome, and bedding clean and warm. Every morning more oil should be slapped in. The result of this course of treatment “is often like enchantment. The Negro seems to be awakened to a new existence, and to look grateful and thankful to the white man whose compulsory power, by making him inhale vital air, has restored his sensation and dispelled the mist that clouded his intellect. His intelligence restored and his sensations awakened, he is no longer the bipedum nequissimus, or arrant rascal, he was supposed to be, but a good Negro that can hoe or plow and handle things with as much care as his other fellow-servants.”
A final thought: “Dysaesthesia Aethiopis adds another to the many ten thousand evidences of the fallacy of the dogma that abolitionism is built on; for here, in a country where two races of men dwell together, born on the same soil, breathing the same air, and surrounded by the same external agents—liberty, which is elevating the one race of people above all other nations, sinks the other into beastly sloth and torpidity; and slavery, which the one would prefer death rather than endure, improves the other in body, mind and morals; thus establishing the truth that there is a radical, internal or physical difference between the two races, so great in kind as to make what is wholesome and beneficial for the white man, as liberty, republican or free institutions, etc., not only unsuitable to the Negro race, but actually poisonous to its happiness.”
