active 1850-1869 David Quinn

“ He commenced in an English pulpit, in the name of philanthropy, and from thence spread his fire through kings and nobles, and by degrees to commoners, until finally reaching the tory mind of America, he let forth the full volumes of his hate and his crushing powers, until he saw the blood of the nation gushing from a million of streams, and liberty weltering and struggling beneath the grinding weight of an insurmountable national debt. Thus has America fallen and her enemies triumphed through deception and design. ”

“ Why should not such propositions be investigated, and facts determined, before a country is torn to atoms by a madness built on the assumption of universal equality, without regard to race or species? But men seeking power through deception—the churchman seeking dominion over other sects—the tory, the ascendency of the British crown—the half-starved politician, the spoils of office—the vain, a strap or two of tinsel, and the covetous trader, the plunder of a camp—may find negro equality as convenient as any other device. ”

“ To what cause, then, are we to impute the greater development of the Anglo-American at those particular times, and in those particular localities, than to the institution of negro slavery?
But this development of the Americanized Caucasian under the relation of white master and negro slave, though a commanding fact in determining the application of laws to localities, is nevertheless but little, if any thing, more than a story half told; for in addition to the greater physical proportions of the individual man, the institution has given us our loftiest shoots of intellectual power. ”

“ Men, women and children mingle together in unbroken nudity, bask in their sands, feed on bugs and reptiles, and even on the flesh of one another. The men strut as warriors, though slaves to petty princes, and the women bend to their lots as bearers of burdens. Are these nature’s arguments in favor of negro with white equality before the law!
With all these facts before us, it is scarcely possible for us to conceive of any two species of the same genus being more opposite to each other than the white man and the negro. ”

“ You have assumed a general equality of all the human races, and the equal adaptability of all localities to their propagation and development. These are both false, and in their falsity is to be found the great volume of that disorder which has converted our States into antagonisms, drawn the sword of the father upon the son, sent a million of our young men to untimely graves, and burdened the living with a national debt which is, even now, grinding them into the ground.
The superiority of mankind, we readily concede, is not determined by shades and shadows; the standard is much higher. ”

“ You have destroyed our own kindred that you may give their lands away to immigrants from abroad—to a people of another continent, who even now darken the seas with their numbers, on their ways to receive and appropriate to themselves homes made desolate by your destruction of American men, women, and children. You will not deny the impeachment, but will interpose your plea of loyalty—the plea of the tory over three quarters of a century ago—but can you hide the fact that, had there been no abolitionists there would have been no secessionists or secession? ”

“ What but an inferiority of mentality, coupled with a peculiarity of instinct, divides him thus from the loftier outshoots of the Caucasian mind? And as the division is fundamental, why is it not specific?
The Malay alone runs a muck. Why does he do so, if there be not implanted in his nature a latent madness which belongs to no other division of man? And as it so exists as a peculiarity, does it not mark a specific division as effectually as does the scent of one hound divide him from the sighting proclivities of another? ”

“ The negro, as a slave, is contented with his lot, and, under it, is the freest as well as the happiest man in the world; for he is freed from the cares of life, and particularly from the cares of state, which, on the civilized plane, he has ever found himself unable successfully to manage.
His subordination as a race of man pertains to him alone; and yet we have a very marked parallel within the very limits of our own species. We are males and females; but to the male alone belongs the desire of dominion. Our women reject the right of suffrage and official position in the state. ”

“ The problem, by your theory of a general equality of the genus homo, ignoring the distinction of races, can not be solved, nor can peace and happiness return to the nation while legislation and nature are at war. You must concede the division of inequality of species, and upon that division frame your laws. Then may true civil liberty be assigned to all.
Nature, though our greatest friend, is, at the same time, our greatest oppressor; for she keeps us in a constant struggle for life. We must be fed, and clothed, and sheltered, and, to be happy, must have many other wants supplied. ”

“ Where the white man’s nature craves for dominion, his craves for protection, and as that point is not attained short of an absolute surrender, he gives up self-dominion that he may receive, in return, that shelter which his nature desires. When this is done—when he has made the surrender and secured the protection, then has he attained to his time measure of civil liberty: then his cares of the future are thrown upon his master, and, as a consequence, he can sing, and dance, and chatter, regardless alike of what is or is to be, and live out his life in accordance with his own nature. ”

“ They experiment because they know not of the experiments which have gone before them.
Africa is as old as Europe, Asia or America—her days as bright, her years as long, and her seasons as refreshing. Why, then, does she linger behind them? They educated themselves; why has she not also done like them? If her children be claiming an equality before the law, should they not be required to show us their equality behind it? ”

“ Labor, in the conflict of life, draws to itself the capital of that country in which its productions are used, or to the hands which produce them; consequently, when a society is composed of two kinds, or divisions of people, one of whom are better, or more enduring laborers than the other, that division, so favored, will, sooner or later, obtain the property, and with it political and social dominion of the nation. ”

“ They do not want to be voters, or legislators, or officers in command, nor do they even want the position of suitors in our courts of law; because such rights to them are burdens, therefore do they reject them, and find their civil liberty, not by accepting, but by rejecting those very rights which alone make their husbands freemen. Why is this so? It is because, in nature, the woman is subordinate to the man, as is also the negro to the Caucasian species.
This is almost a parallel case. The woman has not the rights which make the man free. But does this make her a slave? ”

“ But natural liberty—the power of one to do whatever he sees fit to do, subject only to the laws of nature—may have an existence, as by a man placed alone on a mountain, in a desert, or, like Selkirk, on an island in the ocean, for then, there are none his rights to dispute. ”

“ When we have done this, then have we found the true measure of our civil liberty. But, as species differ, both in their abilities and in their instincts, no two find their measures [Pg 22] at the same point, but are scattered all along the line from the lowest to the highest endowment of intellectual man. The white man, in obedience to the demands of his own nature, must reserve dominion over himself, for the moment he surrenders it, he loses his liberty. But it is not so with the negro, for he is differently endowed, and a being of different wants. ”

“ Take for elucidation, of American commerce and production, any one year, when nature was unobstructed by the clash of arms, and it will unfold, not only the suicidal nature of your policy, but the great fountain out of which has flown American wealth and prosperity. ”

“ But nature rises by degrees, and, in the harmony of her adjustments, divides and subdivides her divisions, as by the walls of a prison, from which there can be no escape. She has classified her works into orders, genera and species, and to each fixed a boundary as immutable as are the stars and the hills. Education may improve, but it never can pass the specific or generic barriers which nature has erected through all her works. ”

“ Shall we, like stupid toads, lend a suppliant ear to the siren songs of distant royalty, and extinguish ourselves in an apish effort to duplicate some other people? Or shall we not rise, in the dignity of our Revolutionary independence, and conform our society to the requisitions of nature at home. ”

“ But if it be held that all men sprung from a common progenitor, and that countries and climates have divided them into races or species, why, then, are we not now in a transition from the Caucasian to the Indian? But as no such tendency is apparent, and our sphere of action is limited to things, not as they were, or as they may have been, but to that form in which we now actually find them, we need not linger on probabilities so remote and indefinable. Ours is the present time, and elements ours only as they exist. ”

“ He is the man who sees all national perfections abroad, and all imperfections at home; the man who tells you that “England did so and so”—that England abolished slavery—that England has a great national debt—that England has a subjugated Ireland, and that we, of necessity, to be great must be just like England. These points alone mark the tory. ”

“ It was this institution which gave lofty manhood to the American mind, and threw the glove of defiance at the feet of the great Herculian English power. It gave birth to a nation of freemen, and when cut down in its limits by Northern folly, fanaticism, and design, its remaining noblemen, with but one third of the republic in population, for half a century gave direction to it all. ”

“ It is the undeniable fact, that the Anglo-American man has not the same endurance, as a drudge or laborer, that pertains to the European—that he is less enduring, and, as a consequence, in labor’s conflict, loses ground. He is more fleet, and may do more for a time, but at the end of the year the European will, as a general rule, subject, of course, to its exceptions, make the best report. ”

“ The American Indian shuns the cultivated field and populous city, and clings to his native forest. There, though his fare be humble, all the other wants of his nature are best supplied. Thus do his instincts act to their end. He finds a restraint in civilization which drives him to the forest, as heat drives the whale and the walrus to polar seas. This instinct is the opposite of the Caucasian’s, and, as a consequence, points to a specific line. ”

“ If he were honest he would here pause; but the deception is the very thing which alone sweetens the morsel to his tongue: for, by saying “colored people,” he may so work on the imagination of some fool, as to make him believe, that all that divides the negro from the Caucasian is merely the exterior shade or color of his skin. ”

“ Europe, with reference to humanity, is the great positive pole of the world. Her waves radiate from a center, and have swept, and will continue to sweep around the earth, unless, in the combination of elements, new barriers be formed that will break her surges and roll back her billows. This has been done in America, and, by its power, forced the dominion of European kings from American shores. It was done by the unity of two elements directly opposite in their natures—the Caucasian and the negro ”

“ Our Northern system—now made national—is but the European system in all its material phases, and under its present character—equality of whites and blacks, States reduced to dependencies, power centralized, bond-holding lords sapping the labor of the people, and the foreign mind controlling interior forces—is probably little, if any thing, more or less than the European system botched or spoiled. ”

“ But no design was tangible until the American plantations called for laborers, and the negro was found fitted for the demand. Then opened there, upon the minds of civilized nations, a secret which until then had been wrapped up among the mysteries of the world. It was then seen that the negro as a slave, and the white man as a master, could be united for each other’s good. ”

“ Her star is the polar star of all wise legislation, but from it you have turned aside, and inclined your ears to the siren songs of countries beyond the seas until you are transformed into beasts, and become the destroyers of your own kindred and kind. You have joined your enemies in their false cry of liberty—a device invented for your ruin ”

“ Malpractice may be covered by a shroud, and the remains of African experiments overgrown with brambles; but such stupendous monuments of folly or of spite, or ulterior design, are not easily overlooked by men not interested in keeping them from public view. The negro you have started on a rapid down-hill march to the grave, and will so find his movement written in every succeeding census that will hereafter be taken in the United States. ”