Untitled - African American History

WHAT IS SLAVERY. CCxllX
law deals with men and things as they are, and whether
the negro was originally a different species, or is a de-
generation of the same,
is a matter indifferent in the in-
quiry as to his proper status in his present condition.
"We deal with him as we find him, and according to the
measure of his capacity, it is our duty to cultivate and
improve him, leaving to time to solve the problem,
whether he is capable of restoration to that pristine
equality, from which his admirers maintain that he has
fallen. 1
Mentally inferior now certainly he is. Says Law-
u The mind of the negro is inferior to that of
rence :
the European, and his organization also is less perfect." 3
And this he proves, " not so much by the unfortunate
beings who are degraded by slavery, as by every fact
in the past history and present condition of Africa. "3
Says Charles Hamilton Smith whose opportunities for
observing and judging, for ten years, on the coast of
Africa and in the West Indies (1797 to 1807), were unsurpassed,
and whose sympathies he confesses are with
the
u
negro, The typical woolly-haired races have never
invented a reasoned theological system, discovered an
alphabet, framed a grammatical language, nor made the
least step in science or art. 4
They have never compre-
1 The following curious fable is translated from the Arabic, by Rosen-
rn tiller :
" Niger in die quodam exuit vestas suas, incipit que capere
nivem et fricare cum e& corpus suum. Dictum autem ei fuit : quare
fricas corpus tuum nive ? Et dixit ille, fortasse albescam. Venitque
vir quidam sapiens qui dixit ei :
tu, ne afflige te ipsum
potest ut corpus tuum nigram faciat nivem, ipsum autem non amittet
nigredinem." Locmanni, Fabula XXIII.
As to the probability of time effecting a radical change, see Types of
: fieri enim
Mankind, p. 260, et seq.
2
Lectures on Slavery, p. 74.
3
Page 246.
4 F. Pulszky, in his Iconographic Researches, furnished Messrs. Nott
& Gliddon, for their late work on the Indigenous Races of Man, speaking
of the black race, says, " Long as history has made mention of negroes,
they have never had any art of their own. Their features are recorded by
their ancient enemies, not by themselves." p. 188.