The Future of the Colored Race in America - William Aikman (e book reader .TXT) 📗

understand him, and whose prejudices keep him down, to be near a people who have grown up with him, who know him, and are better able to do him good. This consolidation of the race in one part of the land will have an important bearing on its future. Emancipation only will fully accomplish it.

Passing these characteristics, common to the race both in Africa and in this country, let us consider others, which have been superadded by the residence of the negro in America. These are marked and important. The residence of the Jewish people for some two hundred years in Egypt, had a controlling influence over the whole national character and destiny. The Hebrew would never have been the man he was, nor would he have had the after history had he not known the bondage in the land of the Pharaohs. So, we think, the negro will, in all the coming time, be a man essentially different because of these two hundred years of slavery in America. * Nor will it be a temporary or limited effect; it will probably mould all the history of the race on its native continent. Africa will in future times look back upon slavery in America much in the same way that the Jew did upon his Egyptian bondage, and will be able to trace the wonder-working power of Divine Providence in the results which have flowed from it.

*There are some curious analogies between the bondage in Egypt and slavery in America. It seems as if slavery were about to come to an end in this country after almost identically the same period of existence. As far as the best calculations can fix the time, the bondage in Egypt lasted something more than two hundred years, and it is about that time since the first cargo of African slaves were landed by the Dutch at Jamestown, in 1620. The Hebrews went out suddenly and unexpectedly, under the pressure of tremendous judgments Will it be so in America?

Strangely enough, one of the marked effects of the residence of the black in this country has been to give a new and foreign element to the mental and physical structure of the negro. It has created an admixture of blood with a superior race. The natural effect of slavery has been to infuse the best blood of the master in the veins of the slave. This fact has not, perhaps, received the attention which it deserves as having an influence upon the future of the negro race. We do not speak of it in the way of sarcasm or reproach, but as something which, while it cannot be concealed or denied, ought not to be overlooked. It cannot be when the coming history of this people is under consideration.

The intermingling of race has been extensive; so much so, that in many places the pure-blooded negro is in the minority of the whole colored population. Here is not the place to make any extended observations on the intellectual and physiological effects of the union of different races in the same people, to elevate and give them tone and character. The facts are very familiar. We can see that in the case before us these effects will be of the same general character.

In the new social order which will come into being on the abolition of slavery, this intermixture of race will be less and less frequent, but what has already taken place will tend greatly to hasten the elevation and advancement of the black. The energy, the fire, and activity, the ingenuity and perseverance of the Anglo-Saxon, joined to the plastic docility of the African, is a strange combination, yet one which may be seen every day, and which when made free and permitted to exert its unrestrained power, will be of unmeasured value. The mulatto makes a very bad slave, Anglo-Saxon blood being never intended to run in the veins of a voluntary bondman, but will be a noble freedman.

It need not be a perpetuated intermingling of race. It will not be when slavery has gone, and it is well. Physically the mulattoes are a feeble people, and destined usually to an early death; nor are they prolific. By the force of merely natural causes, in process of time, they will almost wholly disappear. The immobility of the race will assert itself. But in the meanwhile they will have done their work in assisting the rise of their brethren. It is a force imparted for a special occasion. strangely given, but not in vain. It is a spoil taken from the enemy, one of the marvellous instances in which human passions and crime go to help human progress; it is the blood of the master given to make by-and-by a speedier elevation and a more perfect manhood for the slave.

Together with this transfusion of lineage in a part of the colored population, the actual contact of the whole with the white race is another fact which must be attentively regarded. This otherwise isolated people, isolated not only by continental separation, but by color from the rest of the human family, have been brought into the closest possible relationship with one of t he foremost people of the world. They have been introduced into families, making part of the household; have, to a certain extent, been brought under the influences of the civilization and enlightenment of this white race. Upon such a susceptible people, receiving impressions so easily, and being moulded so completely by them, this association cannot but have an unmeasured influence, hastening their elevation whenever the time of freedom comes.

In a state of slavery, while these influences are exerted and their power is given, yet it must be more or less a latent power. Slavery gives no opportunity for its exhibition. It is like throwing electric sparks into the Leyden jar; it might seem that as they flash and disappear, that all the power is lost, but when the proper conditions are fulfilled the unseen force, slowly gathered, puts itself forth with prodigious energy. When the impulse and opportunity is given by freedom to the American negro for advancement, the probabilities are that an example of rapid elevation will be given by them such as the world has never seen. The elements which have been working in and around them are such as have never been combined in any people before. The facts are, when thoughtfully considered, not only peculiar but wonderful. Here is an imitative and plastic people dwelling in the most intimate associations with an enlightened, energetic race, surrounded by the light of civilization, learning, art, science; it is simply impossible that they shall not partake in some degree of these great benefits. They may be seemingly excluded from them all, but a subtile power is the while going forth and is silently laying itself up in store, by-and-by to appear in their sudden development.

But beyond and above all, the negro race in America is a Christian race. Here are four millions of Christians. We mean, of course, Christian in contradistinction from any other form of religious belief. Before this one fact we may stand in silent wonder and admiration at the processes of God's great providence. If any where on earth the night of heathenism is dark, and the darkness is palpable, it is in the negro's native home. Yet here are millions of the same race maintaining their peculiar characteristics with great distinctness, yet in all essential points a Christian people, infinitely above their brethren in their original seat. The contrast in this regard between the race here and there is simply immeasurable. They have been taken out of the blackness of idolatry, and nurtured for two centuries in the light of an advance Christianity, so that heathenism has passed almost out of their traditions.

All this great result has been occasioned by slavery, sprung from cupidity and the origin of unnumbered crimes! Perhaps human history presents nowhere a more striking example of God's power to make the wickedness of man bring honor to his name.

Here, then, are a Christian people, with very much of superstition, with very much of ignorance, with, you may say, a low type of piety, but yet, after all, a Christian people. They are more, a Protestant people. Romanism has never obtained any extensive hold on them here. * May we not say that in this, that these four millions of blacks are a Protestant Christian people, there is an element of unbounded promise?

*It is very striking in this connection that Romanism has never made any progress or met with any permanent success in Africa. In the North where Mohammedanism prevails, (see Barth,) it is repudiated on account of its supposed proclivity to polytheism, and in other parts of the continent different causes have prevented its taking root. Indeed, West Africa presents the most striking instance on record of the utter failure of the Romish religion to benefit a heathen people. For more than two centuries the Portuguese had a kingdom in Congo, and for a time it was powerful and extensive in its influence. With it the Papacy sought an establishment. "It was a work," says Wilson, ( Bibliotheca Sacra, Jan . 1852), "at which successive missionaries labored with untiring assiduity for two centuries. Among these were some of the most learned and able men that Rome ever sent forth to the Pagan world. It was a cause that ever lay near the heart of the kings of Portugal, when that nation was at its climax of power and wealth. Yet before the close of the eighteenth century, indeed, for any thing we know to the contrary, before the middle of it, not only all their former civilization, but almost every trace of Christianity had disappeared from the land, and the whole country had fallen back into the deepest ignorance and heathenism, and into greater weakness and poverty than had ever been experienced even before its discovery." With a continent wonderfully kept from Romanism there, and a people preserved from it here, may we not see a divine adaptation for the future, a finger-pointing to some signal good for the church and the world?

If we throw together these characteristics and facts in regard to the negro race which we have now pointed out, we have this:--Here is a nation with good mental endowments, peculiarly distinct and seemingly destined to remain so, yet docile and ready to receive the impression of all influences surrounding them, brought not only in closest contact with one of the first races of the world, but actually receiving a transfusion of its best blood, made at least in part partakers of a very high civilization, and already Christianized in a form where there is the least play of superstition or error. Is it difficult to predict the future of such a people? Is it certainly absurd to say that there is a history before it, if not of the highest style, yet one good and even excellent; if not the noblest, as aggressive in its good upon the world, yet one sufficiently glorious for itself?

Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of this people, we think that we are justified when we say, looking over the facts in the case, that when they have removed from them the incubus of slavery, and start forth on a career of freedom, that their rise will be extremely rapid. Indeed, taking all the elements of progress which they possess into consideration, it is simply impossible that it should be otherwise.

While we give expression to these thoughts, let us not be understood as affirming that the benefits of which we speak are the legitimate results of slavery. Nothing could be farther from our intention. To substitute a cause for an occasion is a very common error: