Treatise on the Intellectual Character and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States
by Rev. Hosea Easton
CHAPTER I.
On the Intellectual Character of the Colored People of these United States of America.
IN THIS country we behold the remnant of a once noble, but now heathenish people. In calling the attention of my readers to the subject which I here present them, I would have them lose sight of the African character, about which I have made some remarks in my introduction. For at this time, circumstances have established as much difference between them and their ancestry, as exists between them and any other race or nation. In the first place the colored people who are born in this country, are Americans in every sense of the word. Americans by birth, genius, habits, language, &c. It is supposed, and I think not without foundation, that the slave population labor under an intellectual and physical disability or inferiority. The justness of these conclusions, however, will apply only to such as have been subject to slavery some considerable length of time.
I have already made some remarks with regard to the cause of apparent differences between nations. I shall have cause to remark again, that as the intellectual as well as the physical properties of mankind, are subject to cultivation, I have observed that the growth or culture depends materially on the means employed to that end. In those countries in which the maxims and laws are such as are calculated to employ the physical properties mostly, such as racing, hunting, &c., there is uniformly a full development of physical properties.
We will take the American Indian for example. A habit of indolence produces a contrary effect. History, as well as experience, will justify me in saying that a proper degree of exercise is essential to the growth of the corporeal system; and that the form and size depends on the extent and amount of exercise. On comparing one who is brought up from his youth a tradesman, with one who is brought up a farmer, the difference is manifestly apparent according to the difference of their exercise. Change of public sentiment indirectly affects the form and size of whole nations, inasmuch as public sentiment dictates the mode and kind of exercise. The muscular yeomanry who once formed a majority of our country’s population, are now but seldom found; those who fill their places in society, in no way compare with them in that respect. Compare our farmer’s daughters, who have been brought up under the influence of country habits, with those brought up under city habits, and a difference is most manifest.
But there is another consideration worthy of notice. Education, says D. D. Hunter,* on the part of the mother, commences from the moment she has the prospect of being a mother. And her own health thenceforth is the first duty she owes to her child. The instructions given to the wife of Manoah, and mother of Sampson, the Nazarite, (Jud. 13, 4:) ‘Now, therefore, beware, I pray thee, drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any unclean thing,’ are not merely arbitrarily adapted only to a particular branch of political economy, and intended to serve local and temporary purposes; no, the constitutions of nature, reason, and experience, which unite in recommending to those who have the prospect of being mothers, a strict attention to diet, to exercise, to temper, to every thing, which affecting the frame of their own body or mind, may communicate an important, a lasting, perhaps indelible impression, to the mind or body of their offspring. A proper regimen for themselves, is therefore the first stage of education for their children. The neglect of it is frequently found productive of effects which no future culture is able to alter or rectify.
These most just remarks confirm me in the opinion, that the laws of nature may be crossed by the misconduct or misfortune of her who has the prospect of being a mother. Apply these remarks to the condition of slave mothers, as such, and what are the plain and natural inferences to be drawn. Certainly, if they are entitled to any weight at all, the intellectual and physical inferiority of the slave population can be accounted for without imputing it to an original hereditary cause. Contemplate the exposed condition of slave mothers-their continual subjection to despotism and barbarity; their minds proscribed to the narrow bounds of servile obedience, subject to irritation from every quarter; great disappointment, and physical suffering themselves, and continual eye-witnesses to maiming and flagellation; shrieks of woe borne to their ears on every wind. Indeed, language is lame in the attempt to describe the condition of those poor daughters of affliction. Indeed, I have no disposition to dwell on the subject; to be obliged to think of it at all, is sufficiently harrowing to my feelings. But I would inquire how it can be possible for nature, under such circumstances, to act up to her perfect laws?
The approbrious terms used in common by most all classes, to describe the deformities of the offspring of these parents, is true in part, though employed with rather bad grace by those in whom the cause of their deformity originates. I will introduce those terms, not for the sake of embellishing my treatise with their modest style, but to show the lineal effects of slavery on its victims. Contracted and sloed foreheads; prominent eye-balls; projecting under-jaw; certain dis-tended muscles about the mouth, or lower parts of the face; thick lips and flat nose; hips and rump projecting; crooked shins; flat feet, with large projecting heels. This, in part, is the language used by moderns to philosophize, upon the negro character. With regard to their mind, it is said that their intellectual brain is not fully developed; malicious disposition; no taste for high and honorable attainments; implacable enemies one to another; and that they sustain the same relation to the ourang outang, that the whites do to them.
Now, as it respects myself, I am perfectly willing to admit the truth of these remarks, as they apply to the character of a slave population; for I am aware that no language capable of being employed by mortal tongue, is sufficiently descriptive to set forth in its true character the effect of that cursed thing, slavery. I shall here be under the necessity of calling up those considerations connected with the subject, which I but a little time since entertained a hope that I should be able to pass by unnoticed; I have reference to a mother who is a slave, bringing into the world beings whose limbs and minds were lineally fashioned for the yoke and fetter, long before her own immortal mind was clothed in materiality.
I would ask my readers to think of woman as the greatest natural gift to man-think of her in delicate health, when the poor delicate fabric is taxed to the utmost to answer the demands of nature’s laws-when friends and sympathies, nutricious [sic] aliments, and every other collateral aid is needed. 0 think of poor woman, a prospective mother; and when you think, feel as a heart of flesh can feel; see her weeping eyes fixed alternately upon the object of her affections and him who accounts her a brute-think how she feels on beholding the gore streaming from the back, the naked back, of the former, while the latter wields the accursed lash, until the back of a husband, in-deed the whole frame, has become like a loathsome heap of mangled flesh. How often has she witnessed the wielding club lay him prostrate, while the purple current followed the damning blow. How the rattling of the chain, the lock of which has worn his ankles and his wrists to the bone, falls upon her ear. 0, has man fallen so far below the dignity of his original character, as not to be susceptible of feeling. But does the story stop here. I would that it were even so. But alas! this, the ornamental production of nature’s God, is not exempt, even in this state, from the task of a slave. And, as though cursed by all the gods, her own delicate frame is destined to feel the cruel scourge. When faint and weary she lags her step, the overseer, as though de-creed to be a tormenting devil, throws the coiling lash upon her naked back; and in turn, the master makes it his pleasure to despoil the works of God, by subjecting her to the rank of goods and chattels, to be sold in the shambles. Woman, you who possess a woman’s nature, can feel for her who was destined by the Creator of you both, to fill the same sphere with yourself. You know by experience the claims of nature’s laws-you know too well the irritability of your natures when taxed to the utmost to fulfill the decree of nature’s God.
I have in part given a description of a mother that is a slave. And can it be believed to be possible for such a one to bring perfect chil-dren into the world. Ifwe are permitted to decide that natural causes produce natural effects, then it must be equally true that unnatural causes produce unnatural effects. The slave system is an unnatural cause, and has produced its unnatural effects, as displayed in the deformity of two and a half millions of beings, who have been under its soul-and-body-destroying influence, lineally, for near three hundred years; together with all those who have died their progenitors since that period.
But again, I believe it to be an axiom generally admitted, that mind acts on matter, then again, that mind acts on mind; this being the case, is it a matter of surprise that those mothers who are slaves, should, on witnessing the distended muscles on the face of whipped slaves, produce the same or similar distensions on the face of her offspring, by her own mind being affected by the sight; and so with all other deformities. Llke causes produce like effects. Ifby Jacob’s plac-ing ring-streaked elder in the trough where Laban’s flocks drank, caused their young to be ring-streaked and speckled, why should not the offspring of slave mothers, who are continually witnessing excit-ing objects, be affected by the same law; and why should they not be more affected, as the mother is capable of being more excited.
From the foregoing I draw the following conclusions, with regard to the different degrees of effect produced by slavery. Compare slaves that are African born, with those who are born in slavery, and the latter will in no wise compare with the former in point of form of person or strength of mind. The first and second generation born in this country are generally far before the fourth and fifth, in this respect. Compare such as have been house servants, as they are called, for several generations with such as have been confined to plantations the same term of time, and there will be a manifest inferiority in the latter. Observe among the nominally free, their form of person, features, strength of mind, and bent of genius, fidelity, &c., and it will evidently appear that they who sustain a relation of no further than the third generation from African birth, are in general far before those who sustain a more distant relation. The former generally ac-quire small possessions, and conform their habits of life and modes of operation with those common where they live, while those who have been enslaved for several generations, or whose progenitors in direct line were thus enslaved, cannot be induced to conform to any regular rule of life or operation. I intend this last statement as general fact, of which, however, there are exceptions; where there is a mixture of blood, as it is sometimes called, perhaps these remarks may not ap-ply. I suppose, however, that in case of a union between a degraded American slave of the last order spoken of, and a highly intelligent free American, whether white or colored, that the offspring of such parents are as likely to partake of the influence of slavery through the lineal medium of the slave parent, as to receive natural intelligence through the medium of the other.
So far as I understand, nature’s law seems not to be scrupulously rigid in this particular: there appears to be no rule, therefore, by which to determine the effect or lineal influence of slavery on a mixed race. I am satisfied with regard to one fact, however, that caste has no influence whatever: for a union between a highly cultivated black and a degraded one, produces an exact similar effect. Whatever complex-ion or nation parents thus connected may be of, the effect produced would be the same, but it would not be certain that their children would occupy a midway region between the intelligent and degraded parent, as in other cases part of a family may be below mediocrity, and part above, in point of form and intellect. One thing is certain, which may have some bearing in the case; that when nature has been robbed, give her a fair chance and she will repair her loss by her own operations, one of which is to produce variety. But to proceed further with any remarks on this point, I feel myself not at liberty. In view of what I have said on this subject, I am aware of having fallen short of giving a full description of the lineal influence and effects slavery has upon the colored population of this country. Such is the nature of the subject, that it is almost impossible to arrange our thoughts so as to follow it by any correct rule of investigation.
Slavery, in its effects, is like that of a complicated disease, typifying evil in all its variety-in its operations, omnipotent to destroy-in effect, fatal as death and hell. Language is lame in its most successful attempt, to describe its enormity; and with all the excitement which this country has undergone, in consequence of the discussion of the subject, yet the story is not half told, neither can it be. We, who are subject to its fatal effects, cannot fully realize the disease under which we labor. Think of a colored community, whose genius and temperament of minds all differ in proportion as they are lineally or personally made to feel the damning influence of slavery, and, as though it had the gift of creating tormenting pangs at pleasure, it comes up, in the character of an accuser, and charges our half destroyed, discordant minds, with hatred one towards the other, as though a body composed of parts, and systematized by the laws of nature, were capable of continuing its regular configurative movements after it has been decomposed.
When I think of nature’s laws, that with scrupulous exactness they are to be obeyed by all things over which they are intended to bear rule, in order that she may be able to declare, in all her variety, that the hand that made her is divine, and when, in this case, I see and feel how she has been robbed of her means to perform her delightful task-her laws trampled under feet with all their divine authority, despoiling her works even in her most sacred temples-I wonder that I am a man; for though of the third generation from slave parents, yet in body and mind nature has never been permitted to half finish her work. Let all judge who is in the fault, God, or slavery, or its sustainers?
Public domain.