Treatise on the Intellectual Character and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States
by Rev. Hosea Easton
CHAPTER III.
On the Nature of the Prejudice of the White Population of the United States, in Its Malignant Exercise towards the Colored People.
MALIGNANT prejudice is a principle which calls into action the worst passions of the human heart. There are cases, however, in which the exercise of prejudice is perfectly harmless. A person may prepossess favorable opinions of another, and such opinions may be just and right. Unfavorable opinions may be formed, also, of persons whose conduct is censurable; and a just prejudice may be exercised towards them, as they stand related to their own bad conduct, without a dis-play of any malignity.
Again, prejudicial feelings may be exercised towards another, through an error of judgment, for the want of means of knowing the true character of those against whom a prejudice is indulged; in which case, it possesses nothing malignant, because its possessor entertains no purpose of injury. Great caution should be exercised, however, in judging the motives and conduct of another, especially when such conduct relates somewhat to ourselves-because it is very natural for us to be governed by our interest, or imaginary interest, which is liable to lead us into errors of the worst kind. It is also natural, on being convicted of wrong, to plead ignorance. But such a plea will not always excuse the pleader in strict justice. For if the prejudiced person has the means of knowing, or if he has any doubt with regard to the justness of his opinions of his neighbors, and still neglects to use the means of informing himself, and to solve his doubts on the subject, but persists in the exercise of his prejudice, he is equally guilty of all the mischief produced thereby, as he would be if he knew ever so well, and persisted in his wrong course in the light of that knowledge.
Prejudice seems to possess a nature peculiar to itself. It never possesses any vitiating qualities, except when it is exercised by one who has done, or intends to do, another an injury. And its malignity is heightened in proportion as its victim in any way recovers, or has a manifest prospect of recovering the injury; or if there is apparently a door open by which a superior power to that which he possesses, may bring him to an account for the wrong done to his neighbor, all have a direct tendency to heighten the malignity of prejudice in the heart of its possessor.
The colored population are the injured party. And the prejudice of the whites against them is in exact proportion to the injury the colored people have sustained. There is a prejudice in this country against the Irish, who are flocking here by thousands. Still there is nothing malignant in the nature and exercise of that prejudice, either national or personal. It grows out of the mere circumstance of their different manners and religion. The moment an Irishman adopts the maxims and prevailing religion of the country, he is no longer regarded an Irishman, other than by birth. It is to be remembered, also, that the Irish are not an injured, but a benefited party; therefore, it is not possible that the bestower of benefits could be at the same time malignantly exercising prejudice towards those he is benefiting.
There exists, therefore, no injurious prejudice against the Irish. There exists a prejudice against the Indians, but it is almost entirely national, and for the very reason that the injury they have sustained is essentially national. The jealous eye of this nation is fixed upon them as a nation, and has ever exercised the rigor of its prejudice towards them, in proportion as they attempted to recover their rightful possessions; or, in other words, just in proportion as the physical powers of the Indians, have dwindled to inefficiency, prejudice against them has become lax and passive. It revives only as they show signs of national life.
The injury sustained by the colored people, is both national and
personal; indeed, it is national in a twofold sense. In the first place, they are lineally stolen from their native country, and detained for centuries, in a strange land, as hewers of wood and drawers of water. In this situation, their blood, habits, minds, and bodies, have under-gone such a change, as to cause them to lose all legal or natural relations to their mother country. They are no longer her children; therefore, they sustain the great injury of losing their country, their birthright, and are made aliens and illegitimates. Again, they sustain a national injury by being adopted subjects and citizens, and then being denied their citizenship, and the benefits derivable therefrom—accounted as aliens and outcasts, hence, are identified as belonging to no country-denied birthright in one, and had it stolen from them in another—and, I had like to have said, they had lost title to both worlds; for certainly they are denied all title in this, and almost all advantages to prepare for the next. In this light of the subject, they belong to no people, race, or nation; subjects of no government-citizens of no country—scattered surplus remnants of two races, and of different nations—severed into individuality—rendered a mass of broken fragments, thrown to and fro, by the boisterous passions of this and other ungodly nations. Such, in part, are the national injuries sustained by this miserable people.
I am aware that most people suppose the existence of color to be the cause of malignant prejudice. Upon this supposition an argument is founded, that color is an insurmountable barrier, over which there can be no social or political relation formed between white and colored Americans. To show the folly of which, I shall lay down and sustain the following principles.
First. Effects, according to their numerous laws, partake of their
parent cause in nature and quantity; i.e. the amount of effect produced, will exactly agree with the amount of efficiency the cause contains which produced it; and their legitimacy claims for them, the nature of their parent. Apply this rule to the subject under consideration, and it will be seen, that, if color were the cause of prejudice, it follows, that just according to the variegation of the cause, {color) so would the effect variegate-Le. the clear blooded black would be subject to a greater degree of prejudice, in proportion as he was black-and those of lighter caste subject to a less degree of prejudice, as they were light. Now it is well known that the exercise of prejudice, is as intense towards those who are in fact whiter than a clear blooded American, as it is against one who is as black as jet, if they are identified as belonging to that race of people who are the injured party.
Again. That which cannot be contemplated as a principle, ab-stractly, cannot be an efficient cause of any thing. A principle which is not subject to dissection, having body and parts-a principle of config-uration is not capable of being an active cause; therefore, it only exists as a passive principle, depending entirely on an active principle for its existence. Now, if animal color can be contemplated as a cause, it must possess configurative properties; and if it possess these proper-ties, then it is an independent principle, capable of living and acting after the man is dead, or decomposed. If it is argued that each compo-nent part of the man becomes independent when decomposed, and that animal color is one of the component parts, then I would ask, why we cannot comprehend its existence, the same as other matter of which the body was made? If this cannot be done, then it cannot be regarded other than a passive principle in which there is no power of action. Color, therefore, cannot be an efficient cause of the malignant prejudice of the whites against the blacks; it is only an imaginary cause at the most. It serves only as a trait by which a principle is identified.
The true cause of this prejudice is slavery. Slavery partakes of the nature and efficiency of all, and every thing, that is bad on earth and in hell. Its effect in the character of prejudice, as displayed towards the colored people, fully sustains my position-that effects partake of their parent cause, both in nature and quantity; for certainly, nothing short of every thing evil on earth and in hell, in the form and character of slavery could be capable of producing such prejudicial injuries, as those under which the colored people are doomed to suffer. It must be admitted, that slavery assumes a most vicious character’ in its exercise towards them. Never could a people exist under greater injuries, than those under which this people have existed in this country; slavery, in its worst form, is the cause of all injury sustained by them. The system of slavery in its effects, is imposed on the injured party in two forms, or by two methods. The first method is, by a code of laws, originating in public sentiment, as in slave states. The other is, prej-udice originating in the same, as it exists in free states. The first method is prejudicial, and partakes of the corruptions of public senti-ment, which is corrupted by prejudice; but prejudice, in that case, assumes the form of law, and, therefore, is not capable of inflicting such deep injuries, as when it exists without law. Because to all law there is a limitation, whether good or bad; hence, so far as the laws of slave states are concerned, a limitation of suffering may be contem-plated, even under their direct influence. However severe slave laws may be, and however faithfully executed according to their letter and spirit-though by them the cup of injury be lavished out in full mea-sure upon the objects of its abuse to the extent of its power, still, the innate principles of the human mind, will cause it to transcend such legal abuse, where a limitation can be comprehended.
Legal codes, however oppressive, have never as yet been able to crush the aspiring principles of human nature. The real monster slavery, cannot long exist, where it is sustained by legal codes only; it is forced to stand off, and is capable of imposing its shadow only, in comparison to what it is capable of doing by collateral aid. When public sentiment, therefore, has become so morally, civilly, and politically corrupted by the principles of slavery, as to be determined in crushing the objects of its malignity, it is under the necessity of calling prejudice to its aid, as an auxiliary to its adopted formal code of wickedness, clothed like a semi-devil, with all the innate principles of the old dragon himself. This auxiliary, is all powerfully capable of accommodating itself to local circumstances and conditions, and appearing with all the nature of the old beast, slavery; it is always ready to destroy every aspiration to civil, political and moral elevation, which arises in the breast of the oppressed. There is no pretext too absurd, by which to justify the expenditures of its soul-and-body-destroying energies. The complexion, features, pedigree, customs, and even the attributes and purposes of God, are made available to its justification.
By this monster, the withering influence of slavery is directed to the very vitals of the colored people—withering every incentive to improvement—rendering passive all the faculties of the intellect—subjecting the soul to a morbid state of insensibility—destroying the body—making one universal wreck of the best work of nature’s God.
Such is its effect at the south, and scarcely less destructive at the north. The only difference is this: at the north, there is not so formal a code of laws by which to direct the energies of prejudice as at the south; still the doctrine of expediency full well makes up the deficiency of cruel laws, giving prejudice as full toleration to exercise itself, and in lavishing out its withering influence, as law at the south.
It is a remarkable fact that the moment the colored people show signs of life—any indication of being possessed with redeeming principles, that moment an unrelenting hatred arises in the mind which is inhabited by that foul fiend, prejudice; and the possessor of it will never be satisfied, until those indications are destroyed; space, time, nor circumstance, is no barrier to its exercise. Transplant the object of its malignity to Africa, or Canada, or elsewhere, and its poison is immediately transferred from local into national policy, and will exert all possible means it possesses, to accomplish its fell design. It always aims its deadly fangs at the noble and active principles of the immortal mind, which alone enables man to stand forth pre-eminent in all the works of God. (Take Hayti for an example.)
Let the oppressed assume the character of capable men in business, either mercantile, mechanical, or agricultural, —let them assume the right of exercising themselves in the use of the common privileges of the country-let them claim the right of enjoying liberty, in the general acceptation of the term—let them exercise the right of speech and of thought—let them presume to enjoy the privileges of the sanctuary and the Bible, let their souls be filled with glory and of God, and wish to bow the knee at the sacred altar, and commemorate the dying love of Christ the Lord—let them seek a decent burial for their departed friend in the church yard-and they are immediately made to feel that they are as a carcass destined to be preyed upon by the eagles of persecution. Thus they are followed from life’s dawn to death’s-doom.
I have no language wherewith to give slavery, and its auxiliaries, an adequate description, as an efficient cause of the miseries it is capable of producing. It seems to possess a kind of omnipresence. It follows its victims in every avenue oflife.
The principle assumes still another feature equally destructive. It makes the colored people subserve almost every foul purpose imagin-able. Negro or nigger, is an opprobrious term, employed to impose contempt upon them as an inferior race, and also to express their deformity of person. Nigger lips, nigger shins, and nigger heels, are phrases universally common among the juvenile class of society, and full well understood by them; they are early learned to think of these expressions, as they are intended to apply to colored people, and as being expressive or descriptive of the odious qualities of their mind and body. These impressions received by the young, grow with their growth, and strengthen with their strength. The term in itself, would be perfectly harmless, were it used only to distinguish one class of society from another; but it is not used with that intent; the practical definition is quite different in England to what it is here, for here, it flows from the fountain of purpose to injure. It is this baneful seed which is sown in the tender soil of youthful minds, and there culti-vated by the hand of a corrupt immoral policy.
The universality of this kind of education is well known to the
observing. Children in infancy receive oral instruction from the nurse. The first lessons given are, Johnny, Billy, Mary, Sally, (or whatever the name may be,) go to sleep, if you don’t the old nigger will carry you off; don’t you cry-Hark; the old nigger’s coming-how ugly you are, you are worse than a little nigger. This is a specimen of the first lessons given.
The second is generally given in the domestic circle; in some fam-
ilies it is almost the only method of correcting their children. To in-spire their half grown misses and masters to improvement, they are told that if they do this or that, or if they do thus and so, they will be poor or ignorant as a nigger; or that they will be black as a nigger; or have no more credit than a nigger; that they will have hair, lips, feet, or something of the kind, like a nigger. If doubt is entertained by any, as to the truth of what I write, let them travel twenty miles in any direction in this country, especially in the free States, and his own sense of hearing will convince him of its reality.
See nigger’s thick lips—see his flat nose—nigger eye shine—that slick looking nigger—nigger, where you get so much coat?—that’s a nigger priest—are sounds emanating from little urchins of Christian villagers, which continually infest the feelings of colored travellers, like the pestiferous breath of young devils; and full grown persons, and sometimes professors of religion, are not unfrequently heard to join in the concert.
A third mode of this kind of instruction is not altogether oral. Higher classes are frequently instructed in school rooms by referring them to the nigger-seat, and are sometimes threatened with being made to sit with the niggers, if they do not behave.
The same or similar use is made of nigger pews or seats in meeting-houses. Professing Christians, where these seats exist, make them a test by which to ascertain the amount of their humility. This I infer from their own language; for, say they, of the colored people, if we are only humble enough, we should be willing to sit any where to hear the word. If our hearts were right we should not care where we sit-I had as lief sit there (meaning the nigger pew,) as any where in the world. This, I admit, is all very good, but comes with rather bad grace. But, as I above observed, this kind of education is not altogether oral. Cuts and placards descriptive of the negroe’s deformity, are every where displayed to the observation of the young, with corresponding broken lingo, the very character of which is marked with design.
Many of the popular book stores, in commercial towns and cities, have their show-windows lined with them. The barrooms of the most popular public houses in the country, sometimes have their ceiling literally covered with them. This display of American civility is under the daily observation of every class of society, even in New England. But this kind of education is not only systematized, but legalized. At the south, public newspapers are teeming through the country, bear-ing negro cuts, with remarks corresponding to the object for which they are inserted.
But this system is not carried on without deep design. It has hitherto been a settled opinion of philosophers that a black man could endure the heat better than a white man. Traders in human flesh have ever taken the advantage of that opinion, by urging it as a plea of justification of their obtaining Africans, as laborers in warm climates; hence, we may naturally expect, that in a slave country like this, it would be a universally admitted axiom; and the more readily admit-ted, as it is easily construed into a plea to justify their wicked purposes. If the black can endure the heat, and the white cannot, say they, it must be that God made him on purpose for that; hence, it is no harm for us to act in accordance with the purposes of God, and make him work. These are the simple inferences drawn from the philosophical premises, the justness of which I shall hereafter examine.
The arguments founded on these premises, are many. Cotton, rice, indigo, tobacco, and sugar, are great blessings to the world, say they, and they may as well be made to make them as not; for they are a lazy crew at the best, and if they are not made to work for us, they will not work at all, &c. But to come at the truth, the whole system is founded in avarice. I believe the premises to be the production of modern philosophy, bearing date with European slavery; and it has been the almost sole cause of the present prevailing public sentiment in regard to the colored population. It has given rise to the universal habit of to the colored population. It has given rise to the universal habit of thinking that they were made for the sole end of being slaves and underlings. There could be nothing more natural, than for a slave-holding nation to indulge in a train of thoughts and conclusions that favored their idol, slavery. It becomes the interest of all parties, not excepting the clergy, to sanction the premises, and draw the conclusions, and hence, to teach the rising generation. What could accord better with the objects of this nation in reference to blacks, than to teach their little ones that a negro is part monkey?
‘The love of money is the root of all evil’; it will induce its votaries to teach lessons to their little babes, which only fits them for the destroyers of their species in this world, and for the torments of hell in the world to come. When clergymen, even, are so blinded by the god of this world, as to witness the practice of the most heinous blasphemy in the house, said to be dedicated to God, for centuries, with-out raising their warning voice to the wicked, it would not be at all surprising if they were to teach their children a few lessons in the science of anatomy, for the object of making them understand that a negro is not like a white man, instead of teaching them his catechism.
The effect of this instruction is most disastrous upon the mind of the community; having been instructed from youth to look upon a black man in no other light than a slave, and having associated with that idea the low calling of a slave, they cannot look upon him in any other light. If he should chance to be found in any other sphere of action than that of a slave, he magnifies to a monster of wonderful dimensions, so large that they cannot be made to believe that he is a man and a brother. Neither can they be made to believe it would be safe to admit him into stages, steam-boat cabins, and tavern dining-rooms; and not even into meeting-houses, unless he have a place prepared on purpose. Mechanical shops, stores, and school rooms, are all too small for his entrance as a man; if he be a slave, his corporeality becomes so diminished as to admit him into ladies’ parlors, and into small private carriages, and elsewhere, without being dis-gustful on account of his deformity, or without producing any other discomfiture. Thus prejudice seems to possess a magical power, by which it makes a being appear most odious one moment, and the next, beautiful-at one moment too large to be on board a steam-boat, the next, so small as to be convenient almost any where.
But prejudice is destructive to life. The public have been frequently told the operation of the slave system is destructive to the life of its victim; this statement is intended generally to be confined to those parts where slavery is legalized; and what has been said relative to the subject is but a beginning of the story. Indeed, I may say the publishers of the horrible effects of slavery in this country, have not generally had the means of knowing one half of its enormity. The extent of it will probably remain a secret until the great day of eternity. Many of us who are conversant with fugitive slaves, on their arrival to the free states, have-an opportunity of hearing a tale of woe, which for the want of adequate language, we are not able to describe. These stories are told with so much native simplicity as to defy the most stubborn incredulity of the incredulous. But, though slavery in this way is car-rying its thousands into eternity, in the southern states, yet it is doing hardly less so in the free states, as it displays itself in the character and form of prejudice.
Mind acts on matter. Contemplate the numerous free people of color under the despotic reign of prejudice—contemplate a young man in the ardor of youth, blessed with a mind as prolific as the air, aspiring to eminence and worth—contemplate his first early hopes blasted by the frost of prejudice—witness the ardor of youth inspiring him to a second and third trial, and as often repelled by this monster foe—hear him appealing to the laws of the land of his birth for protection—the haughty executives of the law spurning him from the halls of justice. He betakes to the temple of God—the last alternative around which his fading, dying hopes are hovering-but here, also, he receives a death thrust, and that by the hand of the priest of the altar of God. Yes—hear ye priests of the altar—it is the death thrust of slavery carried to the hearts of its victims by you. Yes—let it be known to the world, that the colored people who have been stolen, and have lost all allegiance to Africa, are sold in the shambles, and scouted from every privilege that makes life desirable. Under these discouragements they betake themselves to those who are called to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison doors to them that are bound, and they are set at nought by them also. The effect of these discouragements are every where manifest among the colored people.
I will venture to say, from my own experience and observation, that hundreds of them come to an untimely grave, by no other disease than that occasioned by oppression. And why should it be otherwise? They are virtually denied all possessions on earth, and how can they stay without a place whereon to rest.
I, as an individual, have had sufficient opportunity to know something about prejudice, and its destructive effects. At an early period of my life, I was extensively engaged in mechanism, associated with a number of other colored men of master spirits and great minds. The enterprise was followed for about twenty years, perseveringly, in di-rect opposition to public sentiment, and the tide of popular prejudice. So intent were the parties in carrying out the principles of intelligent, active free men, that they sacrificed every thing of comfort and ease to the object. The most rigid economy was adhered to at home and abroad. A regular school was established for the instruction of the youth connected with the factory, and the strictest rules of morality were supported with surprising assiduity; and ardent spirits found no place in the establishment. After the expenditure of this vast labor and time, together with many thousand dollars, the enterprise ended in a total failure. By reason of the repeated surges of the tide of preju-dice, the establishment, like a ship in a boisterous hurricane at sea, went beneath its waves, richly laden, well manned, and well man-aged, and all sunk to rise no more. Such was the interest felt by the parties concerned, and such was their sense of the need of such an establishment for the benefit of colored youth, that they might acquire trades and a corresponding education, that they exerted every nerve to call it into the notice of the public, that the professed friends of the colored people might have an opportunity to save it from becoming a wreck; but all in vain; prejudice had decreed its fate. It fell, and with it fell the hearts of several of its undertakers in despair, and their bodies into their graves.
With the above, I could record the names of scores whose dissolu-tion can be traced to a cloud of obstructions thrown in their way to prevent enterprise.
I should proceed no farther with this tale of woe, were I satisfied I had done my duty in the case. But the condition of the colored people is such, even in the free states, that every effort, however feeble, should be made to redeem them from the influence of that dreadful monster-prejudice. I have recently travelled among them as a missionary, and their condition is truly lamentable. Their immortal interests, as well as their temporal, are in many places almost entirely disregarded; and in others, their warmest friends seem not to comprehend their true condition. I found several hundreds in some places, who, though the bowl of knowledge was overflowing around them, were not permitted to partake, without they receive it from the cup of contempt, the thought of which, to sensitive minds, is like a draught of wormwood and gall.
Slavery, in the form and character of prejudice, is as fatal, yea, more fatal than the pestilence. It possesses imperial dominion over its votaries and victims. It demands and receives homage from priests and people. It drinks up the spirit of the church, and gathers blackness, and darkness, and death, around her brow. Its poison chills the life blood of her heart. Its gigantic tread on the Sabbath day, pollutes the altars of the sanctuary of the Most High. It withholds the word of life from thousands of perishing immortals, and shuts the gate of heaven alike upon those whose hearts it possesses, and those marked out for its victims. It opens wide the way to hell; and as though pos-sessed with more than magic power, coerces its millions down to the pit of woe in defiance of the benevolence of a God, and the dying groans of a Saviour. 0 Prejudice, thou art slavery in disguise! and couldst thou ascend to heaven, thy pestiferous breath would darken and poison that now healthful and happy clime; and thou wouldst make its inhabitants feel the pains of the lowest hell. If there are degrees of intensity to the misery of the damned, that being must feel it in eternity, in whose heart prejudice reigned in this world. 0 Preju-dice, I cannot let thee pass without telling thee and thy possessors, that thou art a compound of all evil-of all the corrupt passions of the heart. Yea, thou art a participant in all the purposes of the wicked one-thou art the very essence of hell.
Public domain.