LIBRARY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS 7 PRICE, 50 CENTS 10 IS CHEll STREET MINDEN ARMAIS THE MAN OF THE NEW RACE. A MEMOIR BY THE LATE DR. JAMIESON "THIS GENERATION SHOULD COURAGEOUSLY PACE THESE GRAVE QUESTIONS, AND NOT LEAVE THEM AS A HERITAGE FOR THE NEXT." AMERICAN PRINTING HOUSP: PUBLISHERS No. 1019 CHERRY STREET PHILADELPHIA, PA. LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA DAVIS Entered in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, in the year 1890, by CHARLES S. KEYSKR. All rights reserved. Press of Ameriean Printing House 1O19 Cherry Street MINDEN ARMAIS. i. My first acquaintance with Minden Armais was in Paris, in the winter of 1852-3. He was living at the house of M. L,avalle, a gentleman, then of large means and very consid- siderable influence, and was, as I understood, under his care. We attended lectures at one of the medical schools of that city. I was constantly with him during that winter. I left Paris in the spring of 1855, and, although I kept up an occa sional correspondence with him, did not meet him again until he sought me out here, three years afterwards. II. It seems that the Abolition movement in this country largely engrossed the attention of those with whom M. Armais associated after I left Paris, and was believed by them to rep resent a social change, not less than a political to indicate that a race with which his blood was intermingled was about to fulfill an important mission in our country. In conse quence of these views, therefore, and assured also by the strength the Abolition movement was gaining, he left France in 1858, with the determination to make this country his home. III. Some time subsequent to his arrival the following passage occurs in a diary * kept by him, from which I have taken much of the material in this memoir. It gives, it must be confessed, a very unhappy view of his condition among us. *Written in the French language ; his education had been in that language 8 MINDKN ARMAIS. 4 I observe this fact : In Europe I found human recognition ; but here, on these shores, in a great city of the Northern American States, I am absolutely ostracised from men. They refuse me a meal at their tables ; they deny me a place in the congregations of their churches ; they will not allow me to seat myself beside them in con veyances on their common highways ; in resorts of business I am looked upon as a Pariah. Even among the philanthropists, I under stand I would be used as part of a stock in trade ; and among sci entific men, my education avails me nothing. Custom, universally, and their laws also, partially, assign me a place among social out casts without education and without refinement. I am shut out from the rest of the citizens, like the old lepers, or the victims of some modern contagion. This is my position in the Northern States of America ; where I had believed that the onward tide of a broader Democracy was surging over the barriers set against the elevation of man, I find it has not even reached the door-sills of its advo cates." Diary, December loth, 1858. Again " Companionship with this people is possible in only one con dition the condition of servitude. I must learn the hard lesson that he must work humbly on the earth who would not leave his work undone. " Diary, December 25th, 1858. IV. Following the idea which he thus indicates, M. Armais sought me oiit, and through my influence secured a position as attendant on my friend, Mr. Barclay. What motive (out side of the one given in his diary) led him to assume, appar ently unnecessarily, this position, I can only surmise. It might have been through the necessity of his fortunes, although I had no reason to believe this; or it might have been one of those voluntary acceptances of the lower position of those whose condition we feel to be a rightful part of our own which we sometimes find in natures of large sympathies. The subject was a delicate one, and never alluded to in our conversations. V. I did not, I may say, invite M. Armais to my house. Notwithstanding our relations abroad, I felt that we could MINDKN ARMALS. 9 no longer stand upon the same ground. I could not intro duce him into my family upon those equal terms which we had borne towards each other. I was shut out from extend ing to him those amenities which our former associations rendered, indeed, obligatory upon me. There was, however, on his part, a tacit acquiescence and a full comprehension of the necessities which our social relations required. It was not very long, however, after his engagement, that the unnatural barrier which divided our social relations was broken down. Mr. Barclay had been, very apparently, de clining ; his condition was then critical and alarming. One evening I found Madeline sitting by his bedside, the image of despair ; her eyes were tearless, fixed vacantly on her father. I had before told her that I had scarcely any hope of a favor able change in the disease. As I entered the chamber she rose and walked towards me. "Tell me," she said, "Dr. Jamieson, is there any hope? Do not conceal the truth from me !" She had summoned up all her strength to ask this question and she could say no more. I could not answ r er her. I was, as I said, almost without a hope of her father's recovery. She sat down by the bed and buried her face in her hands. I gave M. Armais some directions about a draught which I had ordered and went home. VI. I had been sitting in my office about an hour when M. Armais was announced. I was not surprised at the visit, for I expected a summons from Mr. Barclay ; but I saw at once by his manner that the visit was personal to himself. I re ceived him with our usual reserve, but he, with a very few words of introduction, addressed me as his equal. " Doctor," he said, "Mr. Barclay will die." I answered him, much im pressed with his manner: "There is but little hope of Mr. Barclay's recovery, unless the disease takes an unexpected change." " I wish to show you," he said, " a diagnosis which I have here; will you read it?" I took the paper from his hand and read it to the end. I then said, "This is very care- 10 MINDKX ARM A IS. fully prepared." u I made it," he replied, "for my own sat isfaction ; but I have a right to address you as one physician may address another. I have come to ask you to adopt a treatment that may save Mr. Barclay's life." U I listen to you," I said, "go on." He rose from his seat; his eyes had fallen on a series of the Academy. " Permit me, Doctor," he continued, taking down a volume and looking through the index ; then, handing the open book to me, he said : "This is Mr. Barclay's case." I read the case, and replied: "You are partly right ; it is a case with features resembling those of Mr. Barclay's." " It is, pardon me," said M. Annais, " the same." "Will you permit me further, then," he continued, producing some notes, and turning them from page to page. "These effects you hoped to produce here by one course of treatment, but without satisfactory results; and here you changed the treatment, and there left the disease to itself." Now thoroughly convinced of his accurate knowledge of the case, I listened to him patiently. I took up the diagnosis, re-read it, and my mind strongly inclined to his theory. He awaited my reply. I said: "There is no one in America who would risk his reputation on the treatment you suggest ; it is not known here, and has not the approval of the faculty in Paris. " Doctor," he replied, " I have seen this treatment successful six times in Paris temporarily successful, I mean for, as I understand, there can be no absolutely permanent cure. Mr. Barclay will die if that treatment is not speedily adopted." After further reflection I replied more favorably. I was led to that more favorable answer by the hopelessness of the case, by M. Armais' intense interest, and by his clear view of the case. I yielded, in a word, to an intelligence higher than my own. I said, finally, " I will consult with an esteemed professional friend, and if we adopt your views, it shall be done after a consultation to-morrow." Before leaving me, M. Armais said : " Doctor, you will pardon this visit, and you will also promise me that our con sultation shall not be divulged?" I told him I would use such discretion as would be proper under the circumstances. MINDEN ARMAIS. II He then left me and returned to my patient's room. The consultation ended in my adopting his suggestions. With my approval, M. Armais took medicines in his hands in which he had confidence ; he followed a regimen of which he knew the assured results. The change in Mr. Barclay was slow, but certain. In the two succeeding weeks it had become apparent to all that our patient had safely passed a terrible crisis in his disease. M. Armais began to rest from that continued anxiety which wears down the body, no less than the mind, and I had taken upon me a burthen of gratitude I felt wholly unable to repay. I well remember with what feelings both Madeline and my self wrote to Henry Lamar, informing him of Mr. Barclay's dangerous illness and almost miraculous recovery, and what a great calm of joy rested on the household. There is noth ing, in the whole range of human emotions, which more in tensely rests the heart, than the change from death to life, in a sick chamber. VII. As soon as Mr. Barclay had recovered so far as to require only regular visits, I invited M. Armais to my house. I have been blamed for this personal recognition, but I had, and de sired, no alternative. It was natural, under the circumstances, whether permissible or not, at that time under any circum stances in America. M. Armais accepted the invitation. During the evening I spoke frankly to him. I said: "It would have given me much pleasure, M. Armais, could you have met here some of my professional friends ; but," I added, "you know the social conditions of the country allow me no such privilege." "Certainly, Doctor," he replied, "when I came to this country I had no anticipation of such a condi tion ; but my position here gives you assurance that I now understand and accept its disadvantages." I said : " It is but a poor compliment to ourselves that, whatever may be our scientific opinion of the relations of men, we are without the resolution to recognize, properly, individuals to whom these theories do not apply." He replied: "I believe, at last, I I2 MINDEN ARMAIS. have become willing to accept human nature as I find it to ask of men what they are willing to give, and no more. In that spirit, certainly, I have accepted the only relation to your civilization possible to me at this time the position of a menial." Some time after this interview I again invited M. Armais to my house. This second invitation he declined, with many expressions of his sense of the feelings which prompted the courtesy. The substance of social association was not possi ble, and the shadow was not acceptable to him. VIII. Under my promise to M. Armais, I did not disclose the full measure of his services, either to Mr. Barclay or to Made line. I felt, however, that his unremitting attention demanded, at least, some acknowledgment, and I therefore suggested to Mr. Barclay that he should allow him the privilege of his library. To this, with a little reluctance, however, Mr. Bar clay assented. M. Armais' duty, before a very irksome one, now became endurable. He seemed, indeed, by this privi lege, to be well satisfied with his position. The current of events in America, more than all, justified, as he believed, his purpose and made him, even had his position been less agree able, well contented to remain. IX. Some time after M. Armais was allowed the privilege of the library, he said to me : " Dr. Jamieson, I must admit my ignorance of your country in a far greater degree than I have already done. Three thousand miles away from here, Amer ica appeared to me a civilization, a nationality, a people. These words are hardly applicable to any portion of this country." I replied : " Our Government consists of States consent ing, for certain purposes, to remain together. They are represented for these purposes in a general government. We are certainly developing a civilization, although we are very far, as yet, from being a homogeneous people." MINDEN ARMAIS. 13 "I had very igiiorantly, I admit, Dr. Jamieson," he re plied, u believed it otherwise. I was crushed down with such a universal consent that it seemed to me as if one mind, one heart and one people existed here ; I reasoned that what I felt to be true as to myself, must be general ; that all races here, except the black race, had become intimately mingled together. It seems to me now that this homogeneity does not exist." I admitted this was true, and gave him, at the time, a kind of classification of the population of our cities, and many details as to the various settlements made here. These sug gestions of differences in race he made the subject, as it ap pears, of very exhaustive studies. I will give here some extracts from his diary, written about this time, which are of interest as the ground-work of theories which he came ulti mately to hold of the law of the distribution of races. ' ' Hollanders founded the City of New York. Their descend ants, though much intermingled with emigrations from other quar ters of Europe, still retain many names and characteristics of those who made their country what they have made their city here. ' ' Germans settled in large numbers in Pennsylvania. They have remained little intermingled. ' ' English immigrants settled throughout the New England States, and other English immigrants made settlements in Mary land and Virginia ; the peculiarities of these people are still very observable. " Norwegians and Swedes settled intermediate localities, and still continue coming in larger numbers to the northwestern section of this country. 1 ' Southward along the Gulf region, and in all the region further southward, French and Spanish colonies settled ; but that whole tropic belt was largely filled up with negroes. ' ' Other peoples of Southern Europe have also settled there ; their characteristics and customs still remain. A line of climate evidently divides the emigrations here. The darker races tend to ward the Equator, that region which has, in all ages, been occupied by dark races.* Purer white races distribute themselves through the temperate regions of this continent. The passions of the South- * Appendix, VI , VTT , VIII. I4 MIXDKN ARMAIS. ern races strengthen as they journey southward. The endurance of the Germanic races develops as they journe}- northward." March yth, 1859. Again 'Here, amid these colder atmospheres, where the black race weakens, the white race refuses him all rights and privileges, rises above him, ostracises him. In tropic regions, where the energies of the Saxon waste, the black race thrusts him aside, destroys him. Nature tends to give the one race here, the other there, exclusive power. It results slowly, but surely, that the black race here, and the white race there, must be destroyed, or they must intermingle. They must continue to exist whitening generations here, and dark ening generations there, or they must lie, both here and there, in internecine graves. ' ' April 3d, 1859. These suggestions are pursued and appear in many pages of his diary at this time. He arrives, by slow degrees, at a definite conclusion. He looks up from his studies then to the actual life around him, and questions, with a spirit of de termination, the condition of affairs. With the same spirit in which we questioned the rights of the black race here, he questioned the rights of the white race through the middle land of the continent. Against the slaveholders of this coun try, as the most immediate barrier to the elevation of the black race, his feelings were most strongly directed. He believed the whole fabric of their social system was untrue, and tottering to its fall. I quote again from his diary. "What right has a man of white lineage, to impose bondage upon one of the darker race, in that vast region which is the black man 's rightful heritage ? What right have those white slaveholders, effete, existing only by the sufferance of nature, to claim a mastery over the black race ? The time is coming when shall be erased this error of centuries, when, with one short struggle, that race will pos sess the semi-tropic land of this continent. The white race only exists, the black race lives, there ; what to the former is a malaria house, is to the latter a sure dwelling place. The white man exists there only through the black man. He maj T solemnize his marriage there with his own race ; it is the black race gives increase to his loins. The strong arms of the black race which uplift the chair of his authority, may, at will, set it down. They have a higher iiiis- MINDEN ARMAIS. 15 sion ; they await the master's coming which shall give them free dom which shall give them, also, power." April 8th, 1859. X. While M. Armais had assumed, very naturally, with me a position of equality of intercourse, he still was not regarded in any other light than that of a menial by Madeline, or Mr. Barclay. I seldom conversed with him ; there was little to call their attention to him in any other than that relation. With Madeline, however, during the first year of his residence, he assumed, unconsciously to himself, the natural relations in which, before he came to this country, he had lived with all others. The immediate occasion of this change interested me not a little at "the time. Madeline and myself had been attending the sessions of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions. One of the speakers addressing these meetings introduced, at considerable length, and not without opposition, the question of the African Slave Trade. During his harangue he men tioned the fact of the receipt of a letter from a missionary on the west coast of Africa to the Board, in which it was stated that a large French ship arrived there the day the letter was written, for a cargo of four or five hundred slaves, or, as they were termed, "emigrants;" and that two other vessels would be there soon, to engage in the same traffic. Expatiating on this, the speaker added that twelve vessels were fitted out, annually, from New York, Boston and Baltimore thirty-six vessels, in all to engage in that trade, and that of the 24,000 negroes brought annually from Africa, 15,000 had been im ported directly into the United States during the preceding year. He also stated that the desire of profiting in this trade induced the petty princes of Africa to keep up a constant war upon each other. With no reason whatever based upon reality, these suggestions turned the imagination of Madeline into this channel : there were petty princes warring with each other, and 15,000 of the victims of these wars were thrown annually upon the shores of America ; and there was an un derground railroad running from the Southern States north- 16 MINDF.N ARMAIS, ward. M. Armais was certain!}' a fugitive slave ! Madeline's idea was not an unnatural one. All the salable romances then were founded upon such adventures as slaves crossing the Ohio on large chunks of ice, and their hegiras in mer chandise boxes. Not unnaturally was it, therefore, for her to suppose that a fugitive slave was in her father's house. Having arrived at this conclusion, she determined to speak to M. Armais, as a theoretic man and brother. Per fectly free in this way to address him, she found an oppor tunity to do so soon after ; she had been sitting in the library, M. Annais chanced to enter and was about to retire, when she called him. Looking with a proper degree of compas sion on the poor "fugitive," she said: "Minden, I want to ask you a question. You need feel no fear In answering me, as I will not betray you." "Will Mademoiselle Madeline be pleased to ask the question?" he replied, and his answer was so very much in repose, so much unlike fugitives in novels, that Madeline, having, as she felt, descended from her social level to gratify a woman's curiosity, found herself, in conse quence, obliged to rise at least as high as the natural level of a man. His manner, unconsciously to himself, placed their relations out of equipoise. Unhesitatingly however, and with the infinite tact women have, concealing this impression, and in turn placing M. Armais, by her manner, where he should have stood in a novel, she said: "Did you come here from the Southern States?" "I did not, Mademoiselle Madeline," he replied. After a pause, notwithstanding the shock she had re ceived, she continued, " Minden, you need not answer me now if you do not wish" and then she stopped. M. Annais said : " Mademoiselle Madeline would not ask of her servant a question which he should not answer. I will answer whatever questions Mademoiselle Madeline will ask." Madeline then said, with an expression of sympathy in her voice : "You are a fugitive slave, Minden?" He looked at her steadily, and replied : MINDEN ARMAIS. 17 " Mademoiselle Madeline, I am neither a fugitive, nor a slave/' XI. What manner of man M. Armais was, and under what a debt of gratitude we all lay to him Madeline little surmised, but he was to her no longer, in the sense in which he had been before, a menial; there was something in his manner, his voice, his whole bearing, which changed their relations. His answer convinced her that the supposition was errone ous. His manner convinced her of the existence of a much more serious error. It is a fact in human experience that mind and manner assert their unquestionable power under the most seamed, distorted and erased lineaments of manhood that culture and the unalterable kingliness of a noble nature, sooner or later, under all disguises, command recognition among men. When Madeline confided to me this interview, and questioned me earnestly, as she did, of M. Armais' for mer life, I was not surprised; nor do I think that I was blamable, when I frankly told her what he was, and with what surroundings of luxury I had known him in Paris. I could do no less than reconcile what was true of M. Armais there, with what was true here, intelligence under servile employment, and a proud spirit with a servant's role. He had already in fact, beyond any power of mine to control^ unconsciously, but authoritatively, asserted himself. His darkness, indeed, had denied him this right, but the shadow does not change the substance ; he could be no less himself. XII. M. Armais, throughout this period, had but little in terest with us in common. He was controlled by the thought that a race, cognate with his own, was being borne on by a power beyond itself, and beginning to assume a place of authority among us On turning to his diary, I find that it contains reflec tions upon the great throng of lecturers appealing for the rights of the black race, and the writings issuing from the press i8 MIXDKN ARMAIS. in furtherance of its advancement. The memorable insur rection, which marked the Fall of 1859, interested him in tensely. From the day that that old man raised his hand at Harper's Ferry until the day he died on the gallows tree in Charlestown, M. Annais' diary reads rather like that of some devotee, laid away, centuries ago, in dust and bones, than like the diary of one in whose veins flowed proud, passionate blood. Day after day he waited and watched to see whether that old man would be true or false to what he came upon the earth to do ; and in his calm and heroic death he believed he saw a vicarious sacrifice. On the night following that ignominious death, and while the execrations of the mob and the moans of the bereaved woman were ascending together, I find these words, written by him in the profoundest sense of sympathy and assurance of the future. "A broad path of desolation through the land opens before me. His ghostly hands uplifted, beckon me onward." Diary, December 2nd, 1859. He wrote again ' ' The rage of the multitude followed thee ; the ministers of God accused thee ; the slaveholders condemned thee to an ignominious death. But not the rage of the multitude, nor all the power of ministers and religions, nor all the power of these mightier States themselves shall keep the seal unbroken on thy grave. We shall see, once more, thy haggard face. Thy soul shall lift thy wasted limbs from the grave. Deliverance shall come through thee, and thou shalt walk upon the earth again to break the power of our enemies." Diary, December 3rd, 1859. And again " Let them ask no mercy that showed no mercy. Let them be destroyed." Diary, December I3th, 1859. XIII. That event marked an era in M. Armais' life as it does in the history of our nation. It gave him a clear view of the future. He was as one from whom a burden had been lifted. MINDEN ARMAIS. 19 Our intercourse became more unrestrained. Conversa tions began between M. Armais, Madeline, and myself, which grew in interest more and more. The impression produced on me by these conversations was singular and enduring. From the interests that bounded our first acquaintance he had journeyed a long way beyond me ; my profession had limited me to narrower feelings and duties ; his advantages, and the peculiar nature of his mind, had given him a broader insight into the future ; his studies enabled him, also, to grasp it with a more y profound comprehension. The impression produced on Madeline was no less than on myself. XIV. But while these conversations endeared M. Armais to us very greatly, they also, as I feared, proved to Mr. Barclay, a source of annoyance. Mr. Barclay, as you remember, while just, and even generous, was a man of strong prejudices of caste and formal religious views. There was none of that dreamy vagueness, so beautiful in woman, in his exact mind, nor any of that broader grasp of thought which distinguishes the philosophic from the business mind. There was a social barrier fixed between himself and M. Armais, and not the less, therefore, against any allowance of that equality of in tercourse which made these hours so pleasant for us. They wounded his pride. As, when he allowed M. Armais the use of his library, it brought home to him the unpleasant reversal of position which mind affects in social relations, so also, in these conversations, Mr. Barclay felt M. Armais was intellectually his superior, although without the social right of superiority ; and he could not accept the position which M. Armais must gain, month after month, while he remained in the house. He supposed, moreover, that his place could be easily supplied, and he determined that the relation should cease. I have been blamed for the part I took, in causing M. Armais to remain. I do not believe, under the circumstances, it would have been justifiable for me to have done otherwise. I give, however, the interview, the only one, I may say, be- 20 MINDEN ARM A IS. tween Mr. Barclay and myself in regard to M. Armais at this time. XV. When Mr. Barclay consulted me about obtaining another attendant, I answered him, I admit, in a very decided man ner. I could recommend no other. I said: "Mr. Barclay, what I will now say to you is not on M. Annals' account, (although he has claims on me which society forbids me to repay) but on your own. Your determination has now as sumed a settled form. I have made such a promise to M. Armais as enables me, under the present circumstances, to communicate to you what I would have no right to do to another. You were lying, last Spring a year ago, very dan gerously ill ; all that I could do had been done without any favorable result. It was this sad occasion, one of the saddest of my life, which brought M. Armais, uninvited, to my office." I then repeated to Mr. Barclay the interview be tween M. Armais and myself the night he came to my office. "That you are living, Mr. Barclay, is the result of that in terview. Your life has been prolonged, I hope and believe, for many years. You require only attention and care ; but a relapse brings the same necessity to you and to me." Mr. Barclay, I need not say, was painfully agitated dur ing this recital. "It is to you, Dr. Jamieson, and to M. Armais, that I owe my life," he said. " Can I ever repay the debt of gratitude I owe to you both? You saved then, sir, two lives, my own, and Madeline's a life far dearer to me than my own." "Mr. Barclay," I replied, "it was the sense of that, it was the heart-rending scene of distress between me and Made line, I believe, that forced M. Armais to do what he did." Mr. Barclay then said to me : " You have saved me from an immeasurable depth of ingratitude ; am I precluded from mentioning this to him, am I precluded from thanking him, as I should thank a man who has saved my life?" "M. Armais," I replied, "has saved your life and he is such a man as I have said. But you cannot thank him as MINDKN ARMAIS. 21 he should be thanked ; you cannot recognize him before the world." Mr. Barclay replied, "At this hour, it seems to me, that I could, that I should do so." " That is impossible," I said. " Neither of us can bring him into social relations with our own people ; still less either of us give him that whole recognition, without which there is no recognition." "But is there no other course possible ?" Mr. Barclay asked. "There is not," I continued. "I invited him to my house, but I could not invite my professional brethren to meet him. We spoke freely about this, and he said to me, that he had become well acquainted with the fact, although he did not surmise it when he came to this country. He also said that he had now accepted it, and he declined a further hospitality which he and I knew would be a source of unpleasantness to both, from the chance visits of my friends. I could not invite him to a seat at my table, and he would very properly, under no circumstances, have accepted the in vitation." "That is very true," said Mr. Barclay. "What, then, can I do?" I replied, "It is not necessary to do any more than you are already doing. It is hardly worth while to give our selves any trouble about the theories he has, of what he takes to be a revolutionary condition of the country, involv ing social changes in the relation of the races here. We do not propose to be the pioneers of these theories, and so, that matter ends." Mr. Barclay then said to me, " I cannot, after what you have told me, treat him as before." "You must then be governed by your own feelings, Mr. Barclay," I replied. "Of this you may be certain; he asks for nothing more than the treatment of one in his position." Mr. Barclay recalled his notice for M. Armais' dismissal, and requested him to remain. 22 MINDEN ARMAIS. Mr. Barclay's grateful sense of M. Armais' services moved him very sensibly. The result was what we all desired. Could we have seen the future, it would, I admit, have been far better otherwise. In life we are blind guides leading the blind. XVI. From this time forward M. Armais was forced, in a measure, into that socialization which he believed was about to become universal for the black race in America. He be came, in fact, as one with us. The barrier of race between us ultimately broke entirely down, and was forgotten. Os tensibly he held a menial's place ; in reality he was no other than one with ourselves. Beyond Mr. Barclay's family and my own, M. Armais neither sought nor desired recognition. A certain rudeness in our civilization, the tone of feeling ex isting against the black race, made him shrink from observa tion. Beyond the circle of our families he was, as he desired to be, without acquaintance, and so continued to remain. XVII. Let me now give you some account of his political views and social opinions, from his diary. 1 ' There can be no doubt that whatever repulsiveness is felt against the black race here, within the tropic and semi-tropic line it has no existence whatever. The little white child born there, in whatever condition, willingly clings to his black foster-mother. The white boy is conscious of no feeling of aversion, as he sits all the Ion** summer day with his negro slave boy ; the young master feels none when the sultry light of the slave girl's eye touches first his senses; the aged man, leaning on his negro's arm is uncon scious of it; the children listening to the old granny's stories, though she be most ancient of the whole plantation, show none of that sense of repulsion. No relation, in fact, of this dominant popu lation, south of a well denned line, shrinks from contact with, and no affection nor passion of the one people exists there, that has not, to some extent at least, sympathy with, and passion or affection for the other." * Diary, April 5th, 1860. Appendix III. MINDEN ARMAIS. 23 XVIII. While M. Armais at all times expressed the most entire confidence in the intelligence and energy of out race, he found it very difficult, with his limited personal experience, to comprehend the practical workings of our system of Gov ernment. He found, he said, so many contradictions that he felt like giving up in despair the idea of arriving at a clear intelligence of the subject. When he ascertained from me that every man of the white race, irrespective of his in telligence or his property, had an equal voice with every other in the selection of our rulers, he was disposed to believe that those rulers would not be selected with that proper dis crimination which would result in the choice of men suitable to conduct our affairs ; and when I told him further that men of property, as also those of large commercial, mercantile or professional influence, did not generally exercise the elective franchise, that it was practically in the hands of those with out property and in no way remarkable for intelligence, he was even more perplexed than before. He ascertained from me, however, in the course of our conversations, that the ex ercise of this franchise had but little effect on the selection of the men who were to be the officers of our Government; that the choice was determined at what were called our pri mary elections ; then he seemed to see in this, a solution of the difficulty. But when I further informed him that they were held generally at night, in obscure places, and attended by such persons as those who desire to be selected for our rulers requested to be present, he seemed to be without chart or compass to guide him to a comprehension of this anomaly, as he termed it, in human affairs. He was at a loss to com prehend the magnificent results and the enthusiasm which surrounded the progress which I asserted was the evidence of the success of our Government. Nor was his ignorance dispelled when I gave him a clear insight into the personal qualities of the candidates themselves when 1 informed him that the politician in America was a man, turned out, as it were, upon the public commons, a man broken down i:i 24 MINDKX ARMAIS. business, an unsuccessful lawyer, or physician, sometimes even a clergyman relieved from the care of his parish by un- fitness for his parochial charge. He said to me, endeavoring to reconcile these difficulties, " I presume, however, that by long terms of service they acquire fitness for the new duties assigned them by the people." But when I told him on the contrary, that hardly were they properly installed into their several offices before their successors relieved them from the sphere of their usefulness, he said to me that it seemed to him quite impossible for them to lend any practical service to the public affairs. I pointed him, however, in imanswer- able reply, to the magnificent results and general approval of our system. He seemed, I remember, utterly bewildered. When I told him that our judges were selected in the same manner with our representatives, and for like brief periods, he said that in other countries, where laws are voluminous, there could hardly be time for them to learn the routine of their office, but here, he said, he presumed our laws were so concise and well arranged as to meet that difficulty. But when I told him that so far as my own personal experience went they seemed much confused and very numerous, that the system, as I understood it, was, that w 7 hen corporations or private individuals desired laws for their advantage, such laws were, at all times, procurable, he professed himself as incapable of comprehending the greatness of the results or the stability of our institutions. But all these inquiries he held subsidiary to -his own theories ; he believed that our form of government was but a transition stage to another and more intelligible system of thought and action'; he accepted our system only as a transition condition, he failed to recon cile its contrarieties, and he looked forward to another phas? in its development when it should embrace not only all the white populations but also be extended from the three-fifths of, to the entire black population, with a comprehension in the system of women and children also, so that, as he ex pressed it, when the great Governor should come and assume his rightful power here among us, he might be able to chal- MINDEN ARMAIS. 25 lenge for the position he would assume the most general approbation. It was in vain I endeavored to make him understand that our system did not comprehend the idea of a great governor ; that it had as its basis a condition of ser vitude in the ruler, that he must be no more than the equal and must assert himself to be the servant, of those he gov erned, that by the very working of the system it enforced a continual change from man to man and from theory to theory ; he utterly failed to master my thought ; to a certain point only he could follow me. He would say: "Certainly, until the country solidifies into a nationality this must be the practical working of your system, but," he continued, "that system would lose, notwithstanding its apparent success, all its advantages to you if it failed to eliminate a man having a hold sufficient upon the affections of every man, woman and child and every race among you, and with a brain large enough to comprehend all their necessities. Such a man certainly will be evolved from your race ; and you, a people characterized by intelligence, will not fail to do, in a matter of 'government what you would do in you/ private affairs keep him in the place assigned him by you as worthiest to rule; and if not," he would say, "such a man, by the very authority of his nature and the power which he will gather around him, will continue to rule." Beyond this conclusion I could not lead him in our auguries of the future or in a comprehension of our system of government. The following extract from his diary gives his views more fully of the result of, as he understood, or rather as he failed to understand > the practical workings of our system. " When that event shall come, to which this system of govern ment tends, he would say what a power will it exert for the happi ness of its own citizens and the welfare of mankind. By a univer sal consent like that which inaugurated its first Ruler, will the second Governor take his place at their government's head. The wide extent of this country will require a wide grasp of statesman ship ; in him it will find a fitting exponent. He will surround him self by the forms and the substance of a power which will command the respect, not only of its own citizens, but of the entire world. 2 6 MINDEN ARMAIS. There will be no longer the constant change from man to man which seems essential to its successful working to-day, because in him, as in Caesar, as in Alfred, as in Washington and Napoleon, will concentrate all the hopes and fears and desires of his nation, and the sole calamity which can then happen to his people will be the cessation of his power by death. There will be no change from theory to theory, because the wants and desires of the nation will have been ascertained, and because the nation will find in him their complete expression and will come to rest ; because he himself will feel his importance to his people's welfare and permit no change. In his breast there will be no prejudice ; the happiness and welfare of all his vast populations will be his desire and the crown of his existence. From him will descend by links, through the great officers who shall stand around him, to the lowest man who shall hold the smallest measure of authority, a chain of accountability as rigorous as in the most absolute empire, yet freely rendered by a consenting people. The whole time of the citizen, freed from the care of the selection of his rulers, will be given to his private affairs and to the material well-being and progress of his own in dividuality. The Judges will sit in their places, relieved while they live by the amplest provision, against the necessities of their material ex istence, to detennine dispassionately between the highest and the lowest suitor ; the guardians of the peace, responsible, grade by grade, to that imperial head, will stand immovably in their places. Swift will be the execution of the laws, and all alike will share their advantages, and be subject to their inexorable penalties. Wise men alone, and those to whom long study and intercourse with their fellow-citizens have given knowledge of the public affairs, will enact the laws of the nation. That will be their only duty ; that having done, they will ue set apart for the honor of their fellow- citizens, and like the Judges, will be made secure against all mate rial chance and changes. Everywhere will the influence of that great head of the nation be felt ; in every city and in every street, and not less, over far dis tant lands and seas. As it was in imperial Rome, so will it be in America. The nationality of its citizens will be their passport through the world. TJieir government will at last become worthy of themselves." XIX. On the question of the races among us and their future intercourse, the following extracts from his diary give a MINDEN ARMAIS. 27 clear expression. If he failed fully to comprehend the sys tem of our government, he did not fail to clearly see, and,, as I believe, rightly estimate these relations. I remember a conversation we had relative to Liberia. I had always been an advocate of the separation of the races here this resulted, it may be, from my political education 7 and I looked forward to the time when the negro race, that fruitful source of our troubles, would exist no longer on this continent. Liberia, I believed, would be the eventual out let for that population, and the Colonization Society the resolver, in this respect, of our sectional agitations.* I had been reading on one occasion, I remember, a highly inter esting report of the proceedings of that Society, and I spoke to M. Armais of its great usefulness and advantages to the black race. He replied to me: "There is no doubt, Dr. Jamieson, that some black men could, with advantage to themselves and to you, be sent to Liberia. England finds it necessary to send many of her people to Australia ; Germany and other European nations willingly part with portions of their populations ; expatriation may serve a good purpose, in fact, for certain men of all colors. But Liberia, in the sense of its being the final home to which the negro race in America may turn its weary eyes, is very palpably a delu sion. The Liberia idea, you will admit, with me," he said, " has mainly this basis : that the negro, having come from Africa, should return thither and there build up a civiliza tion and establish a nationality." u That is very nearly the truth," I replied. " If the proposition, then, be a correct one for the negro race," he said, "it is also for every other race which has. emigrated to America. The descendants of the Dutch found ers of New York should take steamers for Amsterdam, again open their ancestors' old shops and re-commence their old trades. The Puritan people of New England should also re-emigrate and work out their salvation in the land of their ancestors. Your German farmers should quit their broad * Appendix, XII. 28 MINDEN ARMAIS. acres and wagon back their way to your sea coasts to embark for the narrow fields of their forefathers. For, however un favorably this might affect the common sense of the world, it is precisely that which the Colonization Society proposes to do with the black race. But however practicable this theory might be for other races," he said, "I find in it, for the black race, an insuperable difficulty. That race has be come mixed up with your race to the extent of a million or more of souls, and you cannot separate its w f hite and black elements. Yet, this it w r ould be necessary to do to retain here what is white, and to send there what is black. You would do too great an injustice to your own race. The humanitarian feeling of the whole world would be shocked at the grief you would cause to the white fathers and moth ers of these unfortunate indivisible million human souls."* XX. The solution of the problem of the black race was, in his view, to be effected in another manner and by other in strumentalities. The following extract from his diary contains his ideas on this subject : " Many theories exist as to the origin of man, but whichever one of them may be correct, it is very clear that the earth was not filled at one time with the ancestors of all the races now living. The negro and the Caucasian did not originate under the same in fluences of climate, soil and production. There were, probably, at a remote period, negroes in Africa only. There were probably white men in Caucasia only ; and tawny men in the Indies and America. There were, certainly, large unoccupied regions on the earth, and there were migrations to those unoccupied regions. These mi grations were, as certainly, the forerunners of interminglings and the origin of new types of manhood on the earth. And what is very apparent to the most casiial observer, is the fact, that a like migration is individualizing this age and this country. There is a great trans-oceanic current pouring over these shores Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, Germans, Hungarians, Spaniards, Russians, Poles, Frenchmen and Italians, Chinamen and Celts three conti- * Appendix, XII. MINDEN ARMAIS. 29 nents, in a word, transmitting their populations to a fourth conti nent. The intermingling palpably results and produces a change and development like in its character to what must have been those earlier changes of the human race. But what seems more incredi ble, but which is as undeniably true, is the fact that the black race is more than any other apparent in this intermingling.* The other races are superior in point of intelligence ; the negro race sur passes them in exuberance of vitality and adaptiveness to the cli mate, soil and production of the middle land of this continent. There is but little intermingling, it is evident, between the Teutonic and the Celtic, or between the Celtic and the Hebrew races. In fact, all the other races of this migration more slowly resolve themselves ; but the intermingling of all these races with the negro race has changed the whole character of the population of Central America, Mexico and the West Indiesf and formed a new race. New Grenada has as many of that new race as of all other races. Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru contain large majorities of that new race. In Brazil it outnumbers the whole remaining population by more than half a million.^ One half of the entire continent is already peopled in nearly equal numbers with the other races and that new race. In their own slave states there are now a million, or more, of that new race. All of these women and men share their blood. By a law of nature, which has been unchangeable for all ages on the earth, the dark skinned man can exist only in the tropic, as the fair skinned man can exist only in the temperate, regions of the earth. In conformity with this law, the emigration from Northern Europe seeks the Northern States of America, and establishes there its power ; in conformity, also, with this law, the Spaniard, the Frenchman, the Portuguese, the Chinese and the Negro are filling up and establishing an empire over the tropic land of the continent ; and in conformity with this law, what remains of the North Europe emigration there, instinctively tends to base itself on the more enduring frame of the negro, and create an enduring population the basis of a new civilization. The other races in Central America, in Mexico, the West Indies, and in their own Gulf States, who refuse to accede to this law, are being set aside, and will be finally altogether obliterated. The climate, soil and productions of those regions are compelling their unchangeable result, and statesmen will find it as little prac ticable to revoke this law of nature, which has, in all. ages, and * Appendix, V. t Appendix, V, VI, VII. J Appendix, VIII. Appendix, I, U, III. 3 o MINDEN ARMAIS. which will continue, to control the tropic belt of ground around the earth, as the churchmen found it to revoke the law by which the earth itself keeps swinging through its circuit. The Eighteenth Diospolitan dynasty whose Pharaohs swayed the Egyptian Empire in the height of its power, transmitted an inter mingled negro and Caucasian blood down through two hundred years without change ; the records of that intermingled kingly race yet endure ; their very images endure, their story has begun to repeat itself in this new continent, and the end is not death. The dark races throughout the whole southern section of these States remain healthful and strong, while their own race, which they fear, by this intermingling, may perish, degenerate. The races of Northern Europe develope in the great West ; climate, soil, and production justify their continuance there ; there eventually will be the seat of their empire on this continent. From the Eastern seaboard, lank, restless and cadaverous, they wander Southward and Westward. In the South, effete, sallow, and fever- worn, they waste away. Even here, in this middle coast land, they give evidence of their decay. The old families, if I may judge from the remarks I daily hear, sink into obscurity, and lose their places and their power, and their city's charities are monuments of a declining health and influence. I see, on every side, institutions for deaf and dumb children ; schools for blind children ; asylums for idiot children, and schools for feeble-minded children. I meet, also, in their streets, limb-straightening practitioners, and I see infirmaries opened by sight-restoring, ear-opening, and teeth-restoring men. Death puts on his crown, resolutely, before them ; they who acknowledge no other king early and late, bow before him. But they vaunt themselves, everywhere, of the endurance of their race, and arguments rarely convince men not the less am I content the event will forego argument. The first blow struck against the slaveholder will be under the cry of negro brotherhood, and the negro will rise there as he rose in Egypt centuries agone. " Diary, January 25th, 1860. XXL Such were his views as to the ultimate relation of the races here. The social problem agitating our country was, as he believed, through the violence of war, and by the slower processes of nature, to have its resolution in a new race. That race, he believed, would extend over a vast area, com prising the whole middle land of this continent. Over it, as over all the others, he further believed, the dominion of MINDEN ARMAIS. 31 the Saxon race would extend. To that race, highest in point of intelligence, naturally belonged, he believed, a rule over the entire continent, and in its ultimate government, or rather in the energy, will and intelligence of the race itself, he had, as I have said, the most entire, and to me, very grateful confidence. Amid all the disorder and incompetency which he saw here, and which to one educated as he had been under a strict military system, was utterly bewildering, he yet believed the future was always brightening before us, and we were break ing down all the barriers of caste and laws derived from old civilizations and enlarging into one unbroken empire, a government looking directly up from the people to one cen tralized expression of power. Of his views of the future vastness and present power of our nation, the following extract from his diary gives evidence : ' ' The wildest dreams of the theorists of the old world dwarf away before the extending power of this government. Like a giant, it puts forth its hands in every direction. Its limits will soon be the ocean boundaries of one-half the world. In a little while the land which lies between its States and. those Northern seas to which its venturous fishermen voyage, the islands of the Pacific, which lie in the track of its vessels to the Indies, the more valuable islands of the Atlantic which adjoin its Southern seaboard, will be part of its domain. It will dominate British America and Russian America, Mexico and Central America. The whole area of land below the equator will also be gathered into its wide empire. Russia will but a little longer hold territory here. The waning power of Spain this country can, at its will, destroy. But if the territory of the Ameri can nation will be vast, how great, also, will be its population. It will number within the century a hundred million of citizens ; of the Saxon race there will be fifty millions ; of the dark and black races there will be an equal number. They represent all religions, all climates and all civilizations on the face of the globe, and each is here to lend the strength of his individual nature to the well-being of all." Diary, July 8th, 1860. There was always that steady assurance in M. Armais' breast, as theje was in many others then, which now looks 32 MINDKX ARMAIS. like a spirit of prophecy. This conversation, after the elec tion of that year (November 15, 1860), I take as the fullest expression of the fact ; it shows how certain was his presci ence of our political condition. " Doctor, the North has now, you say, obtained the mastery for four years ; so many ballots in so many boxes, deposited against so many ballots in so many other boxes deposited so many millions here against so many millions there, give assurance of the result ; but it has, I believe, done more, it has balloted itself a long way beyond four years, a long way, in fact, towards a new future. Much jargoning clearly goes on among the people whose ballots were fewer than the others ; much jargoning, clearly, but in a different spirit, among those who deposited more of those popular evidences of right and truth and power. But jargoning does not bring men to any satisfactory end ; a great number of bonfires are being made by boys, and many dinners eaten by men, and a great exodus goes on from every workshop towards your capital, to obtain increased duties, workshop men in other countries from underselling them. I see foreign dealers in French wines and English wares also in some agitation about this ; but something more is also visible to me. I see a gaunt old man, with a rope dangling about his neck, rising out of his grave ; his wounds fresh upon him his eyes blood- shotten, with the tension of an ignominious death. South ward he is going along the dusty roads from the bleak place of his burial, followed by a great multitude that no man can number ; and I hear voices shouting his burial dirge, the paen of his resurrection. I see him marching on ; I see drops of his blood trickle down afresh and run together into rivulets and rivers of blood ; I hear every agony of his death uttered again by innumerable voices ; I see him marching on, through the valley, along the mountain-side, in the dark lagoon, in the wilderness. I hear every agony of his death repeated again and again, for ever. I see him marching on ; a broad and bloody pathway through your land, those ballots have made plain to me." MINDEN ARMAIS. 33 I said to him, " Aniiais, I can only see the bonfires, and the boys, the dinners, and the disappointed men." He replied to me, " I see him marching on." XXII. When the imminence of the war was beginning to be apparent to every one, M. Armais asserted that it would result in the immediate elevation of the negro race through out the Southern States. He expected a simultaneous rising of that race. The man of Virginia, whom he accepted as a saviour, he believed, if not in a physical sense, no less really, had risen from his grave that the myriads of that race would follow him bearing aloft the charters and laws he had written for them that by a decisive blow that race would assume power. What we felt, his education, the very qualities of his nature, made possible to him, he believed to be possible for the whole negro race. The incredible elevation of that race which the five succeeding years accomplished he believed to be the result of one short hour of revolution, and that hour, it might be, the very one in which we were speaking. So certain he believed this result to be, so present was it before him, that it was difficult to hold him to any argument. , Imme diately after the passage of the first secession ordinance, of South Carolina (Dec. 20, 1860), I engaged him, but with only partial success, in an argument, the substance of which fol lows here : I said, " The ordinance of secession has been passed by the State of Soiith Carolina." u Yes," he replied, "a State has dissolved its connection with your Government." "It is a State only that has gone," I replied ; "and we, abiding firm in our strength and principles, will say, 'go in peace.' " "You speak truly, Dr. Jamieson, when you say a State only has gone ; but it is one link taken from the chain that moored the old slave hulk to the granite hills ; it is one pier 34 MINDKN ARMAIS. fallen from the bridge over which the fugitive was carried back." "Surely you will admit, then, M. Armais, that self- government is no delusion here ; every State does what seems good for it. Even- State stands alone, controlling its own territory." " It would seem, then, to you, that one State authority may let the water out of a canal where it chances to cross that State's boundary-line?" "Certainly." "Another may cut out the fifty or a hundred miles of your great continental railways which may chance to be embraced within its borders?" "Each State has such rightful power." "Another, controlling one Hundred, or two hundred miles of your coast, may open its ports to the enemies of the rest, and still another destroy the revenue of your Gov ernment by making its own ports free to the world?" "I hope we may never see the exercise of this power." " It has been exercised in that ordinance, fully and fin ally ; and now you expect, Dr. Jamieson, that your canal capitalists \vill take the load out of this boat, lying dry up on the drained bottom of the canal, and put it on the backs of the mules till they go around that enclosed State and come to another where the water may be allowed to flow. The railroad traveler will take up his valise at the line of that State which has cut the railroad on which he was travelling, and walk around to the line of a State whose pleasure it may be to let it remain." "These do not seem possible contingencies." "These are the actual facts of the separation; and let me tell you, Dr. Jamieson, that no wall could be built around that State, or any other, strong enough to make that ordinance valid one hour. National division by the narrow line of States is no longer possible. It is the weak attempt of proud, but narrow brains, to enforce the ideas of a cen tury or more ago, in this country, against the rush and rasp and purpose of to-day. Your innumerable popula- MINDKN ARMAIS. 35 tions, moving backward and forward across a continent, will not- be restrained by narrow lines of States, or narrower men within them. The great inland territories, to which the old States are necessary avenues, will not be shut in, by little aristocracies, from the ocean. Their populations will go down your Western rivers, if they have to force themselves over State-line obstacles every mile of their way. Your nationality must have a clear field over the whole continent. The hour has come. The light streams down from the scaffold. The land is filled with lurid burnings and the awful hate of the chasms of perdition itself, a seething sea of blood through the midst of the land." To these words he always came, and I always endeav ored to draw him back again from what then seemed to me meaningless expressions of hatred, fire and blood. I said, " Your reasonings might not be without a sig nificance for other countries, but State divisions here were the basis of the Government ; it was against the idea of cen tralization that we struggled in our revolution, and the con stitutions and laws on which rested State divisions were the only barriers to absolute rule on this continent." " Therein is the cause of the struggle. The history of the world will repeat itself here, and with its unchangeable result. In so vast a territory as you have, Dr. Jamieson, unity of action, without which you can wield no effective power, can only be attained by centralization. Your many- headed hydra of States has got into its own way ; it will devour itself unless you chain up the heads and give it a keeper. Like all other nations, you will, at last, wisely accept the great fact in government, that one is the majority of the multitude, and confess that your country has become more truly expressive of the popular will, when it more absolutely concentrates its power in one hand. Brutus was the fanatic of a faction ; Caesar the true representative of the whole Roman people." On the 27th of December he came to my house, and in his usual manner, said : " Doctor, negotiations are now con- 36 MIXDEN ARMAIS. eluded. One of those decisive actions which shuts the door between the past and the future has had place in the harbor of Charleston." It was on my lips to answer: "Your prophecies are resultless ;" but I restrained myself, although I was clear in my own convictions. I said : " Beyond perad venture, our President will return the commandant of that post to Fort Moultrie, and the political and military condition will be as it was before." " It will not be done," he replied; "there is no power in a man or in a government to restore the past. That pile of masonry where your flag floated is even now, I believe, crumbling under the slave-holders' cannon. Your President has not permitted that flag to be taken from what you deem its ark of safety, and had it placed again at their mercy. Fear, no less than honor, has compelled him to sustain the man who withdrew from those unsafe surroundings. There is open war. All things before me grow destructive and sublime. The flame of cannon supersedes the breath of man." XXIII. These conversations evidence the general character of M. Armais' opinions. If they were not acceptable at the time, or at any time thereafter, they were, in tone, unobjec tionable. I look back, certainly, on his intercourse with us, up to this time, with unmingled satisfaction, and I leave now this portion of the memoir with regret, to approach the consideration of feelings, the concealment of which, alone, saved himself and Madeline from universal condemnation. I cannot, even now, write dispassionately of these feelings. We are in the midst of an agitation as intense, in regard to the social relations of the black race, as we were, for many years, about its political relations. We have admitted the fact, that a man, irrespective of his complexion, has a right to the ownership of his muscles, only to become involved in questions as to his right to the ownership of his senses. We have loosed the black race from obsolete laws, controlling MINUEN ARMAIS. 37 its labor ; we are contending for the continuance of obsolete laws controlling its social intercourse. M. Armais, it is true, before he came among us, had lived where thoughts of dif ference in shades of color had no existence ; but here, by those obsolete laws, all that he was in himself fell upon senseless stone. Outside his menial place he was ail object of loathing. The treacherous shades of a darker blood ostracised him. The livery of the burnished sun degraded him from the status of a human being. But I must, as he did, take human nature as I find it. M. Armais' shadowed face, the repose of his eyes, their languor, it may be even their sensuous blackness, had come to exercise on Madeline's senses unnatural sympathies, as we regard them in a word, a passion to which she yielded more and more day by day. Betrothed to Henry L,amar, she was daily committing, against him, and his race, the crime, whatever that may be, of accepting a close and closer relation with this man of another race. XXIV. The influences by which M. Armais justified to Made line this passion were those by which he sought to justify, also, to us, his immeasurable confidence. He told her, as he told us, that our land was rending in twain that a sea of blood was dividing our people forever. He told her that her marriage with Henry L,amar, rather than her love to himself, would bring on herself and on us, disgrace and dis honor. He told her that he who had died for his race had risen from his grave, that our fathers and brothers would follow him, hand in hand with the black race, chanting the paean of his resurrection, that that race was assuming its rightful place and rule over one-half of this land, over those slave-holders we called our brothers, but who were our mas ters no less than the masters of that race. In these resolute words of prescience Madeline forgot her pledge to Henry Lamar and her relations to her race. These were the argu ments which he addressed to her reason ; but that argument which most affected her was addressed to her senses it was 38 MINDEN ARMAIS. the silent one of his personal attractiveness. It \vas not possible that any man could live long intimately with M. Annais without a feeling toward him of respect and confi dence. It was not possible, I believe, that a woman, if I am any judge of women, could so live without a feeling of admiration. As I remember him in M. Lavalle's home, in Paris, and as I remember him here, I recognize that influ ence which irresistibly broke down the barrier of race which had otherwise divided our intercourse. There was about him strength and a manly intelligence. There was also a womanly tenderness and passionate nature which called forth the sympathies and controlled the weaknesses of others. He was naturally admired by me ; he was as naturally loved by Madeline. It could not be otherwise. Among all the men I ever met I recall not one face which has impressed me as much with the sense of singular personal attractive ness as the face of M. Annais. He was a man of the new race ; freshly nurtured in the bosom of our new earth ; clear in intellect as any type of manhood ; classic and admirable as that statue which our Story has chiselled and our Haw thorne approved as the most perfect type of human com pleteness. So it was like Shakespeare's fair white woman ; she turned away from the pallid features and the blue watery desire of " the darlings of her nation " and found in his dark features and passionate eyes satisfaction for her senses and soul. In the Salon Chinois, Napoleon's sitting room at Fon- tainbleau, there stands (1867) a statue of the new race man as he comes into existence in the West Indies, in Central America, and the Southern States, the result of our blood commingled with the blood of the negro race. This statue stands near the centre of the Salon. On the wall before it hangs the admirable portrait of the Empress, by Winter- halter. The statue is of life size. It is composed of onyx, bronze and gold. Cordier has made three materials sub sidiary to the force and fusion of his art You lose sight of the materials of the statue in its realness and singular sen- MINDEN ARMAIS. 39 suous influence. Its lithe limbs are rounded almost like the limbs of a woman. A soft languor rests where the bloo.l darkens in the eyes. The lips part, and the nostrils are dis tended with that exhaustless desire which characterizes the new race. An intense concentration of passion is expressed there. The strength and languor of the statue contrasts strongly with the pale, spirituelle features of the portrait. Your eyes are held by an unintelligible influence to the one and the other. Cordier achieved a great reputation by this statue and realized a high purpose ; his successful effort was to personate one of those mestizos, in whom French blood has so largely intermingled and lent and acquired such endur ing advantages. He used in that statue, as he has said, a material which has waited through many ages for a fitting use bronze. He veined it through with gold. His purpose was to re-create in the features of that new race, the first Apollo, the Apollo as it was originally formed in bronze, without the support of garments, added by the Greeks, to sustain the strengthless and unplastic stone ; with no muscle unnaturally constrained by unadaptable, fragile material ; to restore art as it was ere its beauty was sepulchred in white marble. The position it now holds, and the influence it exerts on the senses, is the evidence of his success. M. Armais himself would have been as fit a model for the portraiture ; I remember, in illustration of what I say, this incident ; we were on a summer tour in 1853 along the Mediterranean, fishing and boating ; one day Duval, a fellow student, Armais and myself had agreed to a trial of endurance in the water ; we were swimming a considerable distance from the shore ; our comrades were seated on the smooth white stones of the beach urging us on. Armais, more lithe and stronger than ourselves, had advanced before us, and was floating easily some distance beyond the point at which we had agreed to turn back for the shore. When we turned he joined us and we swam together ; a storm gathering along 40 MINDKN ARMAIS. the sky had blackened the water, and the wind then rising had lifted the waves and broke them in little crests of foam. This increased the interest and excitement of the trial, and when the lightning flashed over us in its long ridges, the admiration of our comrades broke out in joyous cheers. Confylent of our strength, with renewed endeavors we rivalled each other. When still some distance from the shore the rain began to fall in great drops, and suddenly from the bosom of a single cloud poured down a stifling torrent of water. It was then no longer a struggle for advantage, it became at once a struggle for life. I, as well as I was able, held my own ; Duval showed signs of exhaustion and called for help. Armais, strong and vigorous, struck out towards him ; I turned back also, but finding my strength momen tarily failing, resumed my weakening contention with the choking mass of falling water and surging waves. Armais reached Duval, ready to sink, and out of heart utterly ; entreating him to be firm and calm, and assuring him of his own strength, he bade him trust to him entirely. We were now the centre of an intense and breathless interest of our comrades. Strong as Armais w r as, had the rush of falling waters continued, long before he reached the shore Duval and himself had both perished, but its force was concentrated in this single cloud, which, passing towards the east, soon left the air clear and the water sensibly sinking from its violence. I first, and soon after Armais, felt his feet touch the shelving bottom, Duval quitted his hold, the others coming to his assistance, drew him out through the shallow water. They had lain me down, quite exhausted, cushioning my head with their clothes ; I soon, however, revived and got up. Duval and Armais coming to me, we embraced each other, our comrades shed tears of sympathy and over-strained feel ing. The first outburst of these emotions over, I again sank back on the sand. Duval sat down beside me ; Armais, still vigorous as before, stood upon a ledge of rocks and suffered the fresh air from the sea to dry his wet limbs. The clouds, broken and dispersed, hung like a curtain behind him, down to MINDEN ARMAIS. 41 the horizon ; and the sun shining out from the west poured around him its wealth of gold. Armais drew our eyes to him in admiration ; he was indeed very beautiful in that scene and hour. In the light of the setting sun, in the sense of gratitude, he seemed to Duval something more than mortal more than any man of our race standing there in perfect symmetry and strength, every muscle of his body was dis tinctly lifted up by the intense exertion in the water, and almost quivering ; but his silent eyes were looking beyond, across the sea, as if wholly unconscious of the struggle of life and death through which he had just passed. The dark, even tinge of the skin was aglow with the golden light of the sun, and his hands were jeweled with the water drops that trembled down the fingers like precious stones. XXV. In the month of February, 1861, while every day w r as bringing Madeline's marriage with Henry Lamar nearer ; while she had no longer courage to refuse marriage with him ; while she had no longer will not to love M. Armais ; while her wedding arrangements were being made, she went out to Mr. Barclay's country house. Her object was, she alleged, to make these preparations without interruption'. M. Armais accompanied her for her protection and she was with him there, alone. A silent witness, of her feelings at this time, remains the evidence of her passion. It is a volume of Tennyson's poems. On the fifty-eighth page of this volume are some Sapphic verses, a transcription into English words, of frenzy and desire in a woman. The following lines of the poem are marked,and the date, in Madeline's hand-writing Feb ruary 1 4th, 1 86 1, are written on the margin of the leaf: ' ' In my dry brain my spirit soon Down deepening from swoon to swoon, Faints like a dazzled morning moon." ' ' My heart pierced through with fierce delight Bursts into blossom in his sight. ' ' 42 MINDEN ARMAIS. VI. " My whole soul waiting silently, All naked in a sultry sky, Droops blinded with his shining eye, I will possess him or will die ; I will grow round him in his place, Grow, live, die, looking on his face, Die, dying clasped in his embrace." Passion recognizes no condition, color, or relation of humanity. It isolates two human beings, and makes for them its own obligations. It blinds them to what the world calls shame and honor. Madeline and Armais knew nothing in those hours but each other. They feared nothing. They desired nothing in all the world but their passion's eternal duration. To have prescribed for them antipathies of race ; to have restrained them by any other law than the law of their passion, had been impossible. The life of Madeline was lost in the life of Armais. She was happy beyond mortal dreams in him alone ; wondering, trembling, confused in the revelations of this passion, but always having him close in her heart. Whatever he was to others, To her he was white and ruddy ; His head was as the most fine gold ; His eyes were as the eyes of doves, by the rivers of waters ; His cheeks were as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers ; His hands were as gold rings set with beryl ; bright ivory overlaid with Sapphires, pillars of marble, set upon sockets of fine gold, His mouth was most sweet : he was altogether lovely. This was, in these hours, her beloved. This is every woman's beloved in the supreme hour of passion. It is not the woman or the man ; it is the passion itself which ren ders perfect and complete, blinds, transmutes, exalts, glori fies. XXVII. Day after day M. Armais saw with clear eyes the pas sing events. He saw the fourth day of March come and go in wordy violence only. Fort Sumter, with whose abandon- M IN DEN ARMAIS. 43 * ment lie had associated the sudden rising of his race to power, was not abandoned, and had not fallen. His faith wavered. His passion became a passion of despair. But Madeline lived with an unquestioning confidence. Three weeks passed, when there came with a rude shock, the more rude for its tenderness, a letter from Henry Lamar. " Almost with this letter," it said, "I will be with you Madeline. I hear your voice count the lessening hours which separate us, as I do here." Madeline, terribly awakened, looked up to M. Armais from this letter this death summons with the desperate confidence of one who hopes against hope ; but she saw beneath his tender smile, despair. His changed counte nance summoned her beyond recall to misery. Through the splendor of her passion she looked blindly outward, as with the eyes of one who, dazzled long by sunlight, seeks to pene trate a darkened room. She realized that she must consent to that "death in life" which comes to all of human kind to whom is given love. Lip from lip, heart from heart, must be torn asunder. XXVIII. A wedding has its chief resemblance in a funeral. It has its summoning of forgotten relatives. It has its out flow of tears. It has its white flowers, and it leaves the same sense of desolation in the house. The beloved and beautiful one goes to another home and the place that knew her shall know her no more forever. When Madeline was, by that letter, summoned back, the library was beginning to glitter with wedding gifts. She looked at them as if they were offerings to the dead. She had power to retain so much composure as we expect in a bride, but she thought only of death. She destroyed her letters ; she passed her time in her chamber. She knew that if she permitted herself to see M. Armais her courage would be gone. Henry Lamar came full of hope and glad expectancy. Madeline, with a conquerless resolution from the hour he came, lived before him a new life. True it was that tears 44 MINDKX ARMAIS. f started sometimes to her eyes ; true it was she often sought the silence of her room. But what seemed to him her filial devotion heightened the more her beauty in his eyes. Mr. Barclay was not wholly deceived by this manner, nor was I. But how little did we surmise that terrible fatality which hung over us. Madeline's manner continued up to the week before that fixed for her wedding, then she began to break down. The days that followed became almost unbearable. A kind of horror began to tremble from her heart without outward sign. But not alone within that house was that horror and dread ; yet undefined, it was resting on the whole city, the whole country. The day foreboded by M. Annais was approaching, and although there was not yet a tremor on the surface of the land, by one of those terrible convul sions which appal the beings whom God in His good pleas ure creates and destroys, it was about to be rent in twain. As to the condition of the mind of M. Armais at this time, I may say that after his return from Mr. Barclay's country house, at times it almost verged on insanity. I knew nothing of his passion ; I could judge of what affected his mind only by what he said. His whole brain seemed to concentrate around that fort which then held public attention and in whose fate he believed lay such im mediate and final consequences to ourselves. One day he would come to me, saying : u Fort Sumter will fall, and my race will rise to power; " the next he would be plunged in despair. I endeavored to reason with him, but uselessly. I said to him : " M. Armais, if these events which you predict are to come to pass in this land, I, myself, would not desire to remain here. After the marriage of Madeline, Mr. Barclay will probably be willing to pass some time with me in Europe. Why will you not accompany us there? v He would answer me: "I shall never see Europe again." Changing from this mood as positions of more defiant atti tude developed themselves, he would be as unduly hopeful. He would come to me and suggest his plans for the future. Then he would suddenly lose all interest in life again. I MINDEN ARMAIS. 45 accounted for these moods by saying to Mr. Barclay that M. Armais' constant confinement during the past three years had impaired his health, but to me they were unaccountable. For some days before the one fixed for the wedding of Made line he did not leave his room. He seemed utterly broken down. I think, in my whole experience, I have never wit nessed such extremes of emotion in a human being. XXIX. The 1 4th of April had been fixed for Madeline's wed ding. I passed the evening preceding -that day with Mr. Barclay in his library. He was greatly depressed. He said to me : u It is very hard to bear this separation, but it is harder, far harder, to witness Madeline's unhappiness." I endeavored to calm him. I reminded him that Madeline had borne up as well as we might expect under these always depressing circumstances. I assured him she would be more composed on the morrow. Mr. Barclay replied : "I thought I should have felt differently. I believed Madeline had chosen wisely. I will never fully regain my health ; I may be here but a little longer. If I could have seen her happy in these hours it would have been a comfort to me ; but even that is denied me. An undefined feeling oppresses me, but I must strive to submit to this separation." He continued: "There is trouble everywhere. The future darkens before us. The happy days our country has seen it will see no more." I, myself, had the same feelings, and we sat there for some time in silence. It was after midnight, M. Armais had not, as I have said, left his chamber for several days ; thinking all in the house had retired, following his usual habit, he came to the library. He saw us sitting- there. He stood motionless in the doorway a moment, a black obelisk, and then turned away without speaking. We heard his steps on the stairs going back to his room. We still continued sitting in silence. The" shadow of an uncertain fear hung over us ; it was the shadow of Death. There would come no happy morning to that household, 46 MINDEN ARMAIS. nor to our land. The sun that lighted the dawn of our ex istence as a nation had already set, shrouded in the smoke of a conflict in which the old Union of our States, its old the ories and populations, were passing away. XXX. Madeline rose early the next morning and with her bridesmaids completed the toilet she had chosen for the ceremony. They were all affected by her manner as we had been, and they felt a sense of relief when they left her for their rooms. A favorite friend and companion remained with her. When the others had retired there was yet more than an hour before the ceremony. All was completed. The orange blossoms were in her hair ; the light trembled on the ring. She said, slowly, to herself: "It is all done." Her companion stood watching her, feeling, as she has said, separated from her. There was then a long silence; she seemed to be questioning herself. I believe her mind was wavering. She \valked slowly about the room, and turning to her companion, she said, in a slow, decisive tone: "There is half an hour more; leave me here alone." While her companion was going along the hall she heard Madeline lock the door of her chamber. Her decision had been made. She w r eiit to the window and looked out for the last time on the old Cathedral. The servants in the basement saw her 9 standing there. She was looking on its sacred cross, shining in the great calm of heaven. From that gilded symbol of unutterable agony, man's last consolation, she went to the table. Her conquerless resolution did not desert her. She opened a little casket ; she took out and unfolded a paper, and laid the white death it held on her lips. Then, with slow and uncertain steps, she turned backward blindly, wan dering towards the bed, for rest from life, forever. Her com panion, when she joined the other bridesmaids, attracted their attention by her paleness and agitation. They waited awhile, as Madeline had requested, and then returned to her room. They found the door still locked. They called her, MINDEN ARMAIS. 47 but there was no answer. Then, greatly alarmed, they came down to us. We all hurried to Madeline's room, alike agi tated with the same sense of evil. There was still no answer. We forced open the door. Madeline was lying on the bed ; the crushed orange blossoms were broken from the fastenings in her hair ; her face was buried in the pillow ; her hands were clenched tight together. She was dead. She had perished at the very border of that sea of blood. One hour longer and her marriage with Henry L,amar would have been impossible. In that silent room we heard the tumult of the maddened people, surging with hoarse mur murs along the streets. But should we have grieved? A life of suffering, how ever it had terminated, had been spared her. Madeline's true marriage had become consummate and eternal in that action. Her enforced union with a man, whom from that hour we loathed and condemned, whose life from that hour we sought to destroy ; over whose unmarked grave we shed no tear ; whose land and people we called accursed, and de stroyed, was made forever impossible. XXXI. That day was one of horror, not in that room, by that bedside only, but across a whole continent. Lamar, to save his life from the sudden indiscriminate rage of the people, had fled from Mr. Barclay's house. Human nature had changed to demoniasm in one short hour. We sought the slaveholders' lives with an unquenchable, unappeasable hate, and the prophecies of M. Armais' brain were justified. The true reason of Madeline's death is well known among those for whom this memoir is written. The reason I gave at the time was satisfactory to all, beyond these, who expressed any sympathy for Mr. Barclay's family. Hatred to the slaveholders absorbed every other feeling. Death itself we felt to be a happy release from a marriage with one of those who were seeking to imperil the integrity and set at defiance the flag of our nation. 48 ^IIXDKN ARMAIS. XXXII. From the hour of Madeline's death M. Arniais had but a single purpose to give up his life, as a sacrifice, in com mon with many of his race, for the accomplishment of the result which he had in view in coming to this country. He believed, from the first, that the negroes were the only sure allies on which our people could rely in this desperate strug gle. I remember a conversation with him, in which he indicated to me what then seemed an impossible condition of our struggle. He said: "Your old Union is gone. The slaveholders will live and die your enemies; they loathe you; they despise and execrate you. You hate, you fear, you would destroy them. You have called, for many years, the black man your brother. He is your brother, and Time, the justifier, will show my \vords to be true. There is 110 safety for you in this war unless you consent to march side by side with that race, and this you will ultimately do." And when I told him I thought our race would, under no circumstances, arm the black man, he said: "You will do more. You will make the flag of your nation his flag also ; you will at last make it the standard of your race and mine." The great event of the 2 ad of September, 1862, affected him as it did the whole country, profoundly, but he said : u Emancipation is not the end, it is the beginning of the work which is to be done, before this struggle between the South and North populations will close. The legislation of caste and privilege must be wholly obliterated from your statute books, your liturgies, and social codes ; there cannot be black privileges and white privileges anywhere in these States. One part of the problem has been solved to-day by this extraordinary representative of your race ; that other part will follow in its time, for you cannot carry on without continual disturbance a government for free men, with laws, usages and customs in any part of your domain, suitable only for slaves. Antipathies will develop themselves there and will become stronger as the fonner slaveholder, unadaptable to labor, impoverishes and enfeebles there, and the black race MINDEN ARMAIS. 49 strengthens, as it will continually strengthen there, under this emancipation. It is only by the removal of their cause these obsolete laws that these antipathies will cease. This has been the result upon every other race here which you have put upon the same plane with yourselves, and will be the same with the black race there. If you would now reimpose upon the other races which arrive year after year in your States, from Kurope, the disa bilities which will remain in the South upon the black race after this war's close, you would relegate them also back to their antagonistic condition in Europe, and your whole civil ization in these States would end in .struggle after struggle between these races, as it does there. No prejudice between the w T hite and black races here is all all comparable either in extent, duration or bitterness, with the prejudices between the races of Europe, which emigrate here.* They live there, under codes and customs intolerable to humanity, which brutalize them, and so it is they are ready to destroy each other on any pretext ; and this will go on there until at last they will carry down their governments and every sacred thing, below resurrection. When they reach these shores all these disabilities are at once removed, and forever marriage for them here is free, one race with the other ; they are equal in elective franchise ; the roads of intercourse are as free to one as to the other ; their churches stand upon one common foimdation, separate wholly from the State ; education is as free and adequate to one as to the other ; military service with its robbery of their lives has ended, and their homes are secure from the violence of their former masters ; and so it is their hatreds, centuries long, disappear also at once and forever. And when you shall have given the negro race the same rights and privileges which you have given to the other races here, and so completed the work of emancipation, you will have removed from that race also as from the rest, all their and your anti- * Appendix, XL 50 MINDKN ARMAIS. pathies, and with them the last cause of difference, as far as we see to-day, to the progress of your country. Has their longer life, here, the centuries long toil of their hands, their service to your race from the cradle to the grave, and their close domestic relations* entitled them to less privileges than you accord to strangers of other races coining here without character, thrust upon your shores from the hovels and lazar-houses of Europe ? This does not seem credible, but if it shall be so if because you have denied them every right common to humanity, you w r ill still deny them education, the marriage rite and the elective franchise, as freely as you do to other races here, how great will be the shame to your civilization ! " I said to him, that should the war result in the oblitera tion of the old State lines I did not see how it would be possible to prevent, eventually, the application of the general principles of our government to every race in the same manner. He said : " With or without State lines, the underly ing principle of your government will be maintained, and that I understand from your great Declaration to be, an absolute equality of right in man, irrespective race." XXXIII. The Emancipation Proclamation settled one great issue before the country, but another immediately rose the black man's elevation to a military plane with our white soldiers and the one issue seemed as hard to resolve, as the other far broader one. Yet, day by day the chasm widened. Day by day our race came into closer companionship with the black race ; the slaveholders pressed us 011 every side, they swept up to the gates of our Capital again and again, and hard necessity at last brought the negro to this plane. On the 2 oth day of January, 1863, the Proclamation having gone into effect on the first, M. Armais' assurances were justified- Our flag, for the first time, floated over the two races. M. Appendiv. X . MINDEN ARMAIS. 51 Armais had bided that hour. Since Madeline's death he had lived only for that hour. He accepted again an obsure place. Our laws, unkind to him in war as in peace, would allow no other. In the first negro regiment of the war the Fifty- fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers he enrolled himself as a private. XXXIV. M. Armais still kept his obscure place, but his race was now assuming its higher one on the common platform of man. ' We rode together in conveyances on the public streets. We dined together at public tables. We took seats together in churches. Merchants of my acquaintance called upon M. Armais. My professional friends invited him to their houses. The uniform which he wore demanded and obtained recogni tion. Having taken a military position for the Union, he had become part of the great controlling force of public opinion. The bloody tide of the rebellion had at last swept over the door-sills of the advocates, as well as the enemies, of the socialization of our races. The white man remaining in civil life, gave place by the authority of law, to the black man. They stood before our doors for our protection a shield between us and our adversaries. I dined, I remember, with M. Armais, by invitation, with a gentleman who, in many respects, might be considered the head of social life in New England. The commander of the regiment in which M. Armais had enrolled his name was present. Two years before, with the tone of feeling then existing, such a thing would have been impossible in America. I contrasted it with the hesitancy I felt in inviting M. Armais, when he first came here, to my house. I was myself bewildered at the suddenness of the change ; but, I may observe that this change was not so sudden. The socialization of our race had been going on for two centuries. It had only been made apparent through the necessities of our war. We were begin ning to sit down openly at tables and in conveyances with those with whom we had secretly for all these years accepted 52 M INDEX ARMAIS. a much nearer relationship.* \Ye were witnessing the pro gress not of two years, but of two hundred years. XXXV. The evening before M. Armais left, May 2 9th, we were together. It will never be forgotten by me while I live. His whole life was laid open before me. Beyond what I have already written I may impart no more of this sacred confi dence. When, with a heart broken down with grief, this was done, he took my hands in his own and said : " Dr. Jamieson, we part this night forever." I was about to inter rupt him. He said : " No ! do not say any word of hope ; it is forever." Then he continued: "I am about to die, and in these last hours of my life, reading the future by that light which gleams before dying eyes, with an intense brightness, and fades away into darkness, I see the future of your .land. Remember my words. Your race, the most powerful in all the tide of time, is lifting to itself my race, while it rises a world compelling power. The millions of its women and men, black and white women and men, no longer separated in the currents of their lives, are intermingling. A new tidal wave of human life is rising which shall endure for man}' centuries. This is the meaning, and the final cause of this war which deluges your land with blood. For this was given the life of the saviour of our race ; and now must be given mine, and the lives of worthier men of your race and mine." These were the last words he said to me. I keep them in unfading remembrance. He gave me then his papers and his diary, and we parted that night to meet on this earth no more. M. Armais did go forth to die. The ghostly hands of that saviour of his race were lifted before him ; beckoned him onward. With a strong heart he followed, accepting the end. XXXVI. On the following day, May 3Oth, 1863, the 54th Regi ment passed through the streets of Boston. The old flag Appendices. IT, VTTT. IX. MINDEN ARMAIS. 53 was floating over them. A band of music was before them filling the air with the new anthem of America, "John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave." There was an embarkation in the harbor; a thousand black men sailed that night to the slaveholder's land. Two months inter vened between that day and the day of M. Armais' fore shadowed death. The events of those two months were of dramatic interest. When the regiment reached Port Royal it was welcomed with the news of pillage and burning. It engaged, but with no willing hand, in like pillage and burn ing. By an equal fate the brave black soldiers of this regi ment lighted the broad path of desolation through the Southern land. At the close of these two months they began their march over swampy, muddy grounds, through driving rains, by water and by land, and reached Morris Island and the front of our batteries. They were ordered there to make the memorable assault on Battery Wagner. XXXVII. Hard manual labor by men of our own race, digging and hauling by night, week after week, had advanced and established our lines' before Battery Wagner. Forty-two siege-guns and siege mortars bore on its landward face. Nine iron-clads, and twenty-five mortar-boats, carrying two-hun dred pound rifled guns, and eleven and fifteen-inch guns commanded its face looking across Charleston Harbor. This vast enginery of our Government, General Gilmore had ordered there to clutch and hold that handful of rebellious earth. Battery Wagner was a casemated bastion with a closed gorge and moat. It mounted seven guns, four bear ing seaward 011 the channel, and three landward on the island. Its moat was one foot deep at low water and six at high water. It had an exterior slope of forty degrees revetted with cotton and sand bags. On the morning of the 1 8th of July, 1863, the sun rose without a cloud. It shone upon our siege batteries and iron-clads and on the low brown earth- work; it shone on the spires of Charleston which rose beyond that earth-work and on the faces of the 54 MINDEN 4.RMAIS. slaveholders and their women, and little helpless children. The air was very still. The broad ensigns of onr power from a hundred masts and from all our lines of batteries folded in their vengeful stars. That bright summer morn ing the bombardment of Battery Wagner began. At eight o'clock a little cloud of smoke eddied up from one of its guns. A shot plunged out far across the channel, lifted and dipped and sank. In answer to that challenge our mortar boats, following each other slowly, in a circle on the water, delivered upon it a continuous fire. Shots clearly traceable, ridged and channelled its sloping sides ; volumes of sand and sea lifted high in the air as they broke through its solid bomb-proofs. These mortar-boats, steadily, through an hour, delivered their fire. As ten o'clock struck from the church domes of that doomed city a gun at the left of our land batteries opened as a signal, and then ran along the line of these batteries an outburst of flame and smoke, followed by heavy successive shocks of sound. To this the earthwork answered from one only of her guns. Our fire increased in frequency and intensity. The work of individual shells was no longer traceable ; our land batteries showed only as lines of smoke along the earth. The hour of twelve came. The wind had risen. The sky was filled with stormy clouds. At that hour a grander act in the drama began our mortar boats, one after another, withdrew from before the earthwork. Amid an interest akin to awe, our ironclads moved up the channel. Among them was that Leviathan of modern days, exhumed from the inexhaustible mines of iron and fire in Pennsylva nia, the Ironsides ; four thousand tons in one framework of iron. The ironclads, like guards, moved beside that giant vessel. Amid a welcoming cannonade the}' rested before the earthwork, black iron masses, as immovable as if solidly bolted to the roots and caverns of the sea. There was silence then for a time, and then flamed up from their turrets' mouths a sudden fire and outbursting cloud. From this cloud and fire broke through the air great MINDKN ARMAIS. 55 crashes of sound ; a mass of earth and sand lifted up from the earthwork ; three tons of iron from that one discharge had been buried there. That outburst of fire and crash of iron continued for two hours. A black smoke settled like a pall over the earthwork ; through it rose at intervals the dull, heavy sound of its gun. At two o'clock the fire on the shore and water ceased. The smoke, lifting slowly, showed the earthwork's flag down and shouts rose from our batteries. But hardly had they died away before daring men leaped upon its parapet and uplifted it again. Our batteries then renewed, and continued unceasingly, their fire. Our ironclads hurled their tons of iron against the earthwork again ; and the black pall sunk down over it as before. At six o'clock there was flame and smoke everywhere. There was a ceaseless tremor through the island ; there were broken cloud masses and drifts of steam, and explosions of shells across the channel. The scene had grown to be like some fabulous likeness of thick darkness, flame and fire. Over this scene the sun was sinking in the West, and glitter ing across the channel in a great sheet of gold. A little boat pushed out from the shore to the cloud line W 7 here the ironclads lay, conveying orders to the old Admi ral. The preparations for the assault had been made. The last act of the drama was about to begin. On the channel and on the shore must now be exhausted the utmost limit of our destructive power. Then the ironclads strove with almost superhuman efforts, and last, a bold commander ran out his vessel from the others up under the earthwork ; as by a gigantic inspiration, within pistol range he discharged deliberately, his vessel's immense shells directly into an em brasure, lifting, by that close terrible fire, a columbiad bodily from its place, sinking it with its gunners, and crumb ling an angle of the earthwork down into the sea. He had grasped, as it were, his huge iron vessel like a pistol in his hand, stretched it out and flashed it in duello into the very eyes of the enemy, a final answer to their morning's chal- 56 MINDKX ARMAIS. lenge. The work of our great Vikings of the Northern seas, had, in this act, a fitting conclusion. On the island the tempestuous fire, also about to cease, became more frequent, more accurate, more terrible. Our shells burst in such rapid continuing groups together that the earthworks shone out like a constantly exploding mine. It became, at last, the sole object visible, glowing and brightening to the conflict's close. At the same moment, on the channel and on the island, between seven and eight o'clock, the fire ceased, and gathering night and silence rested over all. We had deluged that battery with iron, and swept it with fire ; yet, within its bomb-proofs and in the sand ridges in its rear a thousand slaveholders still survived. Around them lay the mangled bodies of their brothers and of their sons, but they stood there as resolved as when the first rays of the sunlight of that day of desolation gilded their beloved city's spires. We must now begin a desperate struggle, hand to hand, breast to breast with these resolute men. W T ho should General Gilmore select for that struggle, the endur ance of which has hardly had a parallel ? The choice has been made. Three days before, the order was written. By that order the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, had made the march to Morris Island ; by that order, most honorable to their race, they were before the lines of our batteries. Among all the men General Gilmore had gathered on that island, seventeen thousand men of our own race, he had assigned them this place. At eight o'clock they began that death journey from the lines of our batteries to the broken slopes of Battery Wagner. Thirteen hundred yards intervened between these lines and that Battery when the bombardment began that morning. They yet intervened at this hour ; a long reach of w r et level sand, separating these black men from the thousand slaveholders who stood in that Battery. Our brave brothers, liege black men, move for ward in solid regimental column. Lightning flashes along the horizon, thunder mutters in the distance. They move steadily on three hundred yards of this death journey. MINDEN ARMAIS. 57 There, at once, before them the air is lit with sudden flashes and a terrible crash breaks through the darkness a storm of shot and shell, sheets of iron hurtle by, pause, hurtle by again, as rain washes along the earth, driven by angry winds. Where the iron storm falls there is a mound of dead black men ; but the broken regiment struggles through this driv ing storm ; foot by foot, they make their way onward toward the Battery. Man after man is riven down from his com panions, a long line of their dead lengthens behind them. But they struggle on ; they reach that dark Battery ; with a great shout they rush forward but behind its broken slopes those thousand slaveholders, with levelled muskets, lie side by side. As the shout of our brave allies rises, a fringe of fire runs along its edge, deliberate and terrible. But those brave black men, made more desperate by the cries of agony and falling forms of their companions, struggle on, and gain that Battery's sloping side. Through the steady fire of how itzers and the continuous flash of musketry they gain the parapet. Their dusk, bloody faces glare into the faces of these slaveholders. Their strong arms are bared against them. A wild, shapeless, brutal contest, the most memorable dur ing the war, surges backward and forward; demoniasm with demoniasm the slaveholders and the black race. Huge impulses of horror, hatred and revenge. A conflict which inflamed our nation more than any other, and, at last, brought to us, as its final result, the freedom of that race and the salvation of our national existence. The next morning, three hundred yards before our line of batteries, there was a tumulus of dead black men ; at short distances from it, bodies of these men lay separately the dusk faces of some, calm and still in death, were turned upward to heaven. The hands of others, whose souls had parted in sudden, sharp agony, still clutched their muskets. Bloody breasts and fragments of others had been driven into the ridges of the sand. In the tumulus, the bodies for the most part, lay closely together ; they seemed to have been at 5^ MIXDKX ARMAIS. the same instant destroyed ; but with some the work of death had been slower. One had w r alked blindly a little way in the darkness and then fallen his footprints still remained in the sand. Another had crawled away and lay in the ridges of a cannon shot. Another seemed to have straightened himself up\vard, and so fallen dead. From this tumulus began a line of the dead ; this line lengthened along a thou sand yards, up to the very slopes of the Battery ; sometimes bodies singly lying on the sand ; sometimes two or three together. At one place the line was marked by some shreds of clothing; at another by a broken musket, then a dead body. So it continued until it reached the ditch of the earthwork ; across the ditch lay a bridge of dead bodies. But within the earthwork the terrible character of this con flict impressed itself even more forcibly upon the eye. The slaveholder and the slave lay there together; white and black bodies lying against each other ; agony, hatred and revenge made rigid upon their features by death, so to remain until they should crumble away in undistinguishable dust together. Of M. Armais, one of the soldiers of the nation, what else could we desire should be written ? He was part of this bloody conflict. Within that earthwork, in silence and dark ness, his dead body, with others, lay. Of this fact, evidence conclusive to me remains. XXXVIII. Among the bodies carried out from the salient, there was one which claimed and received recognition, even in death. Early the following morning a subordinate officer of the slaveholders, having charge of the burial of the dead, passed through the Battery. That officer was, for whatever reason, impressed with its appearance, and after giving to his men the order then and there first given in the war to bury the bodies of the negroes with their white officers, he remained awhile, remarking the strange sense of authority its features preserved even in death. A letter in my posses- MINDEN ARMAIS. 59 sion, to an officer of this regiment, describes the body with such particularity as to leave no doubt on my own mind of its identity. But whether in the Battery or along that path way of death, in that assault he perished, and in one com mon grave with our own race, was buried. The life of Minden Armais is now written. My task is completed. 60 MINDEN ARMAIS. The following appendices referred to in the volume were compiled to elucidate the positions taken in the conversations and diary. They begin with the conclusive disputation between Dr. Bachman, of Charleston, and Dr. Morton, of Philadelphia, the most eminent men of their time, which established the fact that there is a true and enduring hybridi zation between the two races going on in the Southern States ; this is followed by statistics and accounts of the con ditions of populations which show a steady and large dis placement, decade after decade, of the white by the black race through the whole middle belt of the Continent ; and by the opinions of the most eminent men here and in Europe, fully sustaining the position finally assumed by the subject of the memoir, which is : that the intermixture of the tiuo races is the inevitable solution oj this most momentous problem of our civilization. APPENDIX I. Broca's pamphlet contains the following suggestions as to eugenesic hybridity : If the opinion I wish to combat were not supported by authors of acknowledged talent, it might perhaps be superfluous to demonstrate that there exists in the human species eugenesic hybrids. Most of the readers of these pages must reconcile themselves to this qualification, for assuredly men of a pure race are very rare in the country they inhabit. Nothing is in fact more clear than that many modern nations, to commence with the French, have been formed by the intermixture of two or more races. My excellent teacher, Gerdy, has devoted a long chapter in his Physiology to this subject, and has after great research arrived at the conclu sion that all, or nearly all, the actual races have been crossed more than once, and that the primitive types of mankind, altered and modified by so many crossings, are no longer rep resented on the earth. There is here much exaggeration ; for there are races who by a peculiar geographical situation, and the prejudices of caste and religion, have remained in a state of purity. p. 16. In point of fact it was merely because eminent men have for some years doubted the existence of eugenesic hybridity in mankind, that it became necessary to demonstrate so evident a proposition that the population of France in at least nineteen-twentieths of our territory, presents in unequal degrees the characters of mixed races. We might say, without fear of error, that the greater part of Western Europe is inhabited by mixed races. c i 62 MINDEX ARMAIS. Mixed populations possess everywhere, as those of France and Great Britain, a vitality and fecundity which leaves nothing to be desired. p. 18. The population of France, as we have amply established elsewhere, is descended from several very distinct races, and presents everywhere the character of mixed races. The pure representatives of the primitive races form a very small minority ; nevertheless, this hybrid nation, so far from decay ing in accordance with the theory of Mr. Gobinieau, far from presenting a decaying fecundity, according to some other authors grows every day in intelligence, prosperity and numbers. Ever since the revolution has broken the last obstacles which opposed themselves to the mixture of races, and despite of the gigantic wars which during twenty-four years mowed down the elite of its male population, France has seen the number of its inhabitants increase by one-third ; this is not a symptom of decay. Where the intermixture has been strongest the popula tion is neither less handsome nor less robust nor prolific than the others. p. 21-2-3. On the Phenomenon of Hybridity, by Paul Broca, Secretaire General a la societe d'anthropologic de Paris, etc. Edited by C. Carter Blake, F. G. S. F. A. S. L., Honorary Secretary of the Anthropological Society of London. London, 1864. APPENDIX II. The controversy between the late Dr. Morton and Dr. Bachman, with much carefully collected matter, sets at rest and affirmatively, the doctrine of eugenesic Hybrid-ization in man. Dr. Morton says : "There is again physiological objection to the propaga tion of any animals from a single pair, because this incestuous intercourse tends eventually to the deterioration and extinc tion of the races that are subjected to it. As to man let us suppose the mulatto offspring of a black man and a white woman(or the reverse) were compelled to marry among them- MINDKN ARMAIS. 63 selves, without any access of other individuals of either race, how long do you suppose ths mixed race would last? Not beyond the third or fourth generation." p. 17-18. Letter to the Rev. John Bachman, D. D., by Samuel George Morton, M. D. Charleston, S. C., 1850. Dr. Bachman replies: And now I will endeavor to answer the question you have put to me, "how long would the mixed breed of mulatto offspring last, were they compelled to marry among themselves?" You answer "not beyond the third or fourth generation." My reply is, they would last till the day of judgment. I have resided in situations where I have possessed the amplest opportunities of observing the fertility of these mulattoes. The males and females are equally prolific. Among individuals with loose morals, they are in this respect characterized by the same tendency that exists in the whites similarly degraded ; but even here the fertility of the mulatto female is decidedly greater than that of the white woman under the same circumstances. At the moment I am writing my eye is from time to time directed to a free mulatto car penter, superintending the building of an adjoining house. I knew his respectable parents before him, and am acquainted with this man's children they are in color what are usually called light mulattoes they have for generations past married with those of their own color and grade. This man weighs about one hundred pounds more than either of us. All the brothers, sisters and relations, have reared large families of children ; I doubt indeed, whether among any of our white inhabitants instances of greater fertility can be produced. Could you favor me with a visit here, and examine some fifty families that I would be prepared to point out to you, I am confident that you would greatly modify your statement of their dying out after three or four generations, if you did not entirely abandon the ground you have assumed. Although I have seen mulattoes that have arrived at a great age, I am not prepared to say that as a general rule they attain to the 64 MINDEN ARMAIS. age of either of their predecessors. Still they cannot be said to be short-lived they raise large families of children, and I have often supposed that they were even more prolific than the whites. I have seen on an average a greater num ber of cases of sterility among white females than I have discovered among the mulattoes. Our records are so imper fectly kept, and your theory of repugnance is so little carried into practice, that it is not easy to trace the mulattoes who have regularly intennarried, beyond five or six genera tions, but as there is no greater tendency to sterility in the sixth generation than was in the first, and as sterility is even rarer among them than in the whites, we are warranted in believing that in this particular they partake of the charac teristics of the admixture of the Caucasian with the ancient Huns, who for ages and centuries have continued to increase and multiply as rapidly, and are as healthy and long lived as either of the unmixed races from whom they have originated. Indeed I have seen the descendants of an admixture of all the five varieties of Blumenbach, and probably one-fourth of the world is now composed of individuals of mixed blood, yet I have never seen any races that evidenced a tendency to sterility. p. 635-6-7. As you have, however, quoted from Walker and referred me and your readers to that w r ork to prove the truth of your theory, I must be permitted to invite your attention to the same writer, for his opinion on your supposed degeneracy of mixed breeds among the various races of men. After endorsing the opinions of Pritchard and Pallas, tha: an admixture of the Celtic population of Ireland with the Scotch or English settlers produces tall, fine figures, " and great physical energy," and that the intermarriages of Russians and Tartars with the Mongolians produce children " with agreeable, and sometimes beautiful features," he goes on to say on the authority of D. Ayara, that in Paraguay, a great majority of the people termed Spaniards or white men, are a mixed breed with the native Indian, and that " they are said to be a people superior in physical qualities to either MINDEN ARMAIS. 65 of the races from which they have sprung, and much more prolific than the aborigines." Speaking of the admixture of the Dutch and the Hottentot, he quotes Moodie, to prove that in point of under standing, there is an improvement in this progeny, and that the intermixture of races seems to improve the intellectual powers as much as it does the bodily proportions. He quotes Dr. Hancock to prove that " in South America the mulattoes are far in advance of the primitive African race. ' ' He adds : " It is a well known fact that the Samboes of South America the progeny of Black and Indians, are remark able for their superiority over their progenitors of either side." Speaking of the Maroons in the West Indies Islands, he says : " This union has produced a most athletic and vigorous race of men, active and enterprising. Whilst you, therefore, are under the impression that the mixed breed which you regard as hybrids will degenerate, or die out in three or four generations, Walker, whom you quote as authority, insists that these mixed races not only have improved in intelligence, but are more robust, active and prolific, than either of the races from which they sprung." p. 637-8. Monograph, Art. VI. Second letter to Samuel George Mor ton, M. D. The Charleston Medical Journal and Review, Vol. V. Charleston, S. C., July, 1850. Dr. Morton had already admitted the doctrine of eugen- esic hybridity, but added the following remarks as to the theory of a repugnance of race to race : " Now, since man possesses this aptitude in the highest, degree, being as Blumenbach expresses it, the most domestic of animals, it would be nothing singular if he possessed the power of fertile hybridity, even if the human family should prove to embrace several distinct species ; because, as we have fully shown, this phenomenon is not unfrequently among animals whose species domestication, or as we have termed it, the aptitude for domesticity, explains the fact in one instance, it certainly does so in the other ; more especially 66 MIX DEN ARMAIS. since fertile reproduction has ceased to be evidence of identity of species. A word with respect to the theory of repugnance. The same phenomena, moral as well as physical, take place to a certain extent among men, as among animals ; for the repugnance of some human races to mix with others has only been partially overcome by centuries of proximity, and above all other means, by the moral degradation consequent to the state of slavery. Not only is this repugnance prover bial among all nations of the European stock among whom negroes have been introduced, but it appears to be almost equally natural to the Africans in their own country toward such Europeans as have been thrown among them ; for with the former a white skin is not more admired than a black one is with us. p. 22. Hybridity in animals and plants, by Samuel George Morton, M. D., read before the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, November 4 and u, 1846. New Haven, 1847. In a critique of this paper, Dr. Bachman, while regard ing the matter in a melancholy light, says very conclusively : Near the close of this article Dr. M. offers a " word with respect to the theory of repugnance." He considers that the same repugnance that exists in the different species of animals, is also evidenced among the varieties of men ; that this repugnance is only partially overcome by centuries of proximity, and by the moral degradation consequent to the state of slavery. He adds : " Not only is this repug nance proverbial among all nations of the European stock among w r hom negroes have been introduced, but it appears to be equally natural to the Africans in their own country towards such Europeans as have been thrown among them ; for with the former, a white skin is not more admired than a black one is with us." We could heartily wish in behalf of good morals that these views of our esteemed friend could be verified by our experience in regard to the two varieties to which he alludes. MINDEN ARMAIS. 67 Charleston has from time to time received the majority of its male inhabitants from our Northern United States and Europe. Personal observation does not verify his assertions, that it requires centuries of proximity to remove this natural repugnance ; on the contrary, the proofs are sufficiently evident, and to a melancholy extent, that if it existed on the day of their arrival here, it faded away, not after the lapse of centuries, but in a very few days. p. 1045. Referring to the opponents of his theory Dr. Bachman again says : They are fully aware of the long established and unde niable fact, that all the races of men in every age and in every country produce prolific offspring in their association with each other. That the Caucasian, Mongolian, African, Malay, and the aboriginal American, all are affording us the most convincing evidences of this fact. That in this manner many new intermediate races have been produced on the confines of Asia, Africa and Europe, and that within the last two hundred years a new race has sprung up in Mexico and South America between one branch of the Caucasian and the native Indian, together with 110 small admixture of African blood. They are aware that in the United States, whose first permanent settlement commenced in Virginia in 1607, the two extremes of Africa and Caucasian have met and produced an intermediate race. We know them to be fully as prolific, if not more so, as the whites, where their constitutions have not been wasted by dissipa- patioii. We will not stop to inquire whether this race is equally as long lived as either of their originals ; but even here we would find no difficulty, as no one will be disposed to deny the fact that some races of the pure Caucasian, the Mongolian, and African families, are more robust and longer lived than others. The facts, however, are undeniable that all these half breeds are prolific with each other, and we can point out at least the descendants of five generations, both in Carolina and New York, where there has been no inter mixture with either of the original varieties ; and they are 68 MINDKX ARMAIS. to this day as prolific as any of the other races of men. We are aware that labored articles have been written to show that the descendants of the two races, especially those between the Caucasian and African, in the process of time become sterile. We have not, however, of late, heard this argument insisted on, and we believe it is virtually abandoned. The learned researches of Dr. Morton (Crania Americana) which are characterized by great knowledge and sound discrimina tion, will, we think, set this matter forever at rest. We regard his " Essay on the varieties of the human species," as condensing in a hundred pages as much valuable informa tion on this subject, as is contained in any similar work to which we have had access. Although we are constrained to state that on an examination of the valuable materials he has presented to us, we have arrived at different conclusions from those to which his mind seems to lean, and differ from him in our views of the origin of the native American families, we must nevertheless admit that the world of science is greatly indebted to him for the faithful manner in which he has collected his materials, and the judgment he has in most cases evidenced in arranging them. The accounts scattered throughout his learned essay, of the many intermediate tribes of nations that have derived their origin from an admixture of Mongolian, Malayan, American, Caucasian and African blood, are calculated to convince all who have hitherto entertained any doubts on this subject that not only these widely separated, but all the varieties in the human species, produce in perpetuity an inter mediate and fertile progeny. Malte Brun, speaking of the Portuguese in Africa, says : " The Rio South branch is inhabited by the Maloes, a negro race so completely mingled with the descendants of the original Portuguese as not to be distinguished from them. Several writers inform us that there is a large and growing tribe in South Africa called the Griqua, on the Orange river, being a mixture of the original Dutch settlers and the Hottentots, composed of more than five thousand souls. These are referred to by MINDEN ARMAIS. 69 Thompson and Liechtenstein, in their travels in South Africa. Several similar races, a mixture of the African and Spaniard, or Portuguese, exist in South America, separated from other communities. The last calculation we have read of the population, composed of the mixed races in North and South America, amounted to upwards of five millions. p. 115- 16-17. The Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race, by John Bachman, D. D., Prof. Nat. His., College of Charleston, etc., etc., etc. Charleston, S. C., 1850. APPENDIX IV. As to the population of the Central American States Mr. Squier writes : The relative proportions of whites, mixed (Ladinos), and Indians, in the populations of the various Spanish American States is a subject of profound interest, and to the modern student will appear of vital consequence in all speculations on the condition, capacities and destinies of the people of those countries ; but here we have to regret the absence of reliable data ; for while it is the concurrent testimony of all intelligent and observing men in Central America that the pure whites are not relatively but absolutely decreasing in numbers, yet the statistics bearing strictly upon the subject are imperfect, or wholly wanting. The actual Bishop of Guatemala, Sr. Don Garcia Pilaces, writing in 1841, and proceeding upon the census of 1837 and other data within his reach, estimated the population of Central America at that time to be, Spaniards and white Creoles, 89,959 ; Ladi nos, 619,167; Indians, 681,137; total, 1,390,513. This cal culation allows one white inhabitant to sixteen mixed and Indian, which proportion I entertain no doubt has now de creased to almost one of the former to twenty of the latter, p. 51-2. 7 o MINDEN ARMAIS. Mr. Thompson, who was British commissioner to the old Federation of Central America in 1823, estimated the relative proportions of the people as follows: Whites and Creoles, ..... one fifth. Mixed classes, ...... two fifths. Indians, ....... two fifths. He estimated the Europeans, u or perfect whites," at not more than 5,000. Mr. Crowe, referring specifically to Gua temala calculates the proportions as follows : Indians, ...... three fifths. Ladinos, ...... one fourth. Whites, ...... one fortieth. Mulattoes, ..... one eightieth. Negroes, ...... one fiftieth. Samboes, ...... one one-hundredth. Ladinos, it may be observed, is a term signifying gal lant men and is understood to apply to the descendants of whites and Indians. It is only used in Central America. The following table probably exhibits very nearly the exact proportions in Central America, so far as the}' may be deduced from existing data and from personal observation : Whites, ..... . . 100,000 Mixed, ........ 800,000 Negroes, ........ 10,000 Indians, ........ 1,109,000 Total, ........ 2,019,000 -p. 52-3-4- "Notes on Central America," by E. G. Squier, formerly charge d'affaires of the United States to the Republics of Central America. Harper & Bro., New York, 1855. Writing of San Juan, Mr. Squier also says : Besides what may be called the native inhabitants and who exhibit the same characteristics in language, habits and customs with the lower classes in the interior of the States, MINDKN ARMAIS. 71 there are a few foreigners, and some Creoles of pure stock, who reside here as agents or consignees of mercantile houses and as commission dealers. There are also the negro authorities consisting chiefly of negroes from Jamaica. The inhabitants exhibit, therefore, every variety of race and complexion. Whites, Indians, Negroes, Mestizos and Samboes, black, brown, yellow and fair, all mingle together with utmost freedom, and in total disregard of those conven tionalities which are founded on caste. In what may be called the best families, if it were pos sible to institute comparisons on the wrong side of zero, it is no uncommon thing to find three and even four shades of complexion, from which it may be inferred that the social rela tions are very lax. The English church is the established religion ; occasionally a priest in his black robes is seen flit ting about the town ; but unless it is desired to find out the residence of the prettiest of the nut-brown Senoritas, it is not always prudent to inquire to closely into his movements. -Vol. I, p. 73-4. Writing of Leon, Mr. Squier also says : Here, as everywhere else in Nicaragua, the Indian and mixed population greatly predominate, and the pure whites constitute scarcely one-tenth of the whole number. An infu sion of Indian blood is easily to be detected in a large pro portion of those who claim to be of pure Spanish descent. It displays itself less in the color of the skin than in a certain quickness of the eye, which is a much more expres sive feature in those crossed with the Indians than on either of the original stocks. In respect of physique, leaving color out of the question, there are probably no handsomer men in the world than some of the Samboes, or offspring of the Indian and negro parents. They are, of coarse, darker than the Indian but taller and better developed. It should, how ever, be observed that the negroes of Nicaragua differ very widely in appearance from those of the United States. They must have been derived from an entirely different portion of the African continent. They have, in general, aquiline 72 MINDEN ARMAIS. noses, small mouths and thin lips in fact, with the excep tion of the crisp hair and dark skin, they have few of the features which, with us, are regarded as peculiar and uni versal with the negro race. The fusion between all parties of the population of Nicaragua has been so complete that notwithstanding the diversity of races, distinctions of caste are hardly recognized. A few days in Leon sufficed to show me that in the tone of its society and the manners of its people, it had more of the metropolitan character than Granada. And although the proportion of its inhabitants who laid claim to what is called " position," was even here comparatively small and not at all rigid in its adherance to the conventionalities of the larger cities of Mexico, South America and our own country, yet in the essential respects of hospitality, kindness and courtesy, I found it entitled to a position second to no other community. The women are far from being highly educated, but are simple and unaffected in their manners, and possessed of great quickness of apprehension and a read iness in .good natured repartee which compensates to a cer tain extent for their deficiency in general information. ' The condition of the country for many years has been such as to afford few opportunities for the cultivation of those accomplishments which are indisputable accessories of refined society, and we are therefore not justified in subject ing the people of Leon or any other city of Central America to the test of our standards. I am conscious of nothing more painful or more calculated to awaken the interest of the stranger from abroad than the spectacle of a people with really high aspirations and capabilities borne down by the force of opposing circumstances, conscious of .its own con dition but almost despairing of improving it. In dress the women of Leon have the same fashions with those of Granada, but the European styles are less com mon, owing to the circumstance that there are fewer foreign residents to affect the popular taste. They have an equal fondness for the ci^arito ; and in the street are not less proud MINDEN ARMAIS. 73 of displaying a little foot and a satin slipper. Vol. i, p. 267-8-9. Nicaragua, by E. G. Squier, late charge, etc. D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1852. Dr. Nelson says (in 1889) of the population of Panama : A few of the Chinamen have their wives with them ; many of them form quasi-nnions with the Indian women of the country, and the offspring of such unions is most interest ing. Such children have straight black hair, black eyes and olive skins, while the flattened nose of the Chinaman gives place to the straighter Grecian nose- of the Indian, They are exceedingly bright little people. p. 159. Five years at Panama. The Indian and negro in Columbia are not greatly given to marriage they simply get matched they deem matrimony serfdom ; in time if they fail to agree they separate ; they divide the assets of their partnership ; he takes one-half the children and she the other there is great decency and fidelity in these relations. Ib. p. 51-2. APPENDIX V. Michael Chevalier, as to the population of Mexico, states : The actual population of Mexico appears to be about eight millions of souls, of whom more than half are Indians of pure blood ; of the rest, the majority consist of castes of mixed blood who are principally sprung from whites and Indians. The blacks and mulattoes resulting from a cross of the African race with whites or Indians form other distinct categories. p. 148. The whites make scarcely more than a sixth or seventh of the population, and even among persons who give them selves out and are accepted as belonging to the unmixed white race, a goodly number have in their veins a portion of Indian blood. p. 153. Mexico, ancient and modern, by Michael Chevalier, Senator and Member of the Institute of France. London, 1864. Vol. II. MINDEN ARMAIS. MINDEN ARMAIS. 75 APPENDIX VI. Mr. Trollope, writing of Jamaica, says : If, in speaking of the negroes, I have been in danger of offending my friends at home, I shall be certain, in speak ing of the colored men, to offend my friends in Jamaica. On this subject, though I have sympathy with them, I have no agreement. They look on themselves as the ascendant race ; I look upon those of color as being so, or, at any rate, as about to become so. In speaking of my friends in Jamaica, it is not unnat ural that I should allude to the pure-blooded Europeans, or European Creoles to those in whose veins there is no ad mixture of African blood. Similia Similibus. A man from choice will live with those who are of his own mode of thinking. But as regards Jamaica, I believe that the light of their star is waning, that their ascendancy is over ; in short, that their work, if not done, is on the decline. p. 75. Ascendancy is a disagreeable word to apply to any two different races whose fate it may be to live together in the same land. It has been felt to be so in Ireland, when used either in reference to the Saxon. Protestant or Celtic Roman Catholic ; and it is so with reference to those of various shades of color in Jamaica. But nevertheless it is the true word. When two rivers come together, the waters of which do not mix, the one stream will be stronger, w r ill overpower the other will become ascendant. And so it is with people and nations. It may not be pretty spoken to talk about ascendancy, but sometimes pretty speaking will not answer a man's purpose. p. 75-6. It is almost unnecessary to explain, that by colored men I mean those who are of a mixed race of a breed mixed, be it in what proportion it may, between the white European and the black African. Speaking of Jamaica, I might almost say, between the Anglo-Saxon and the African, for there remains, I take it, but a small tinge of Spanish blood ; of the old Indian blood, there is, I imagine, hardly a vestige. 76 MINDEN ARMAIS. Ill Jamaica one does come in contact with colored men. They are to be met at the Governor's table ; they sit in the House of Assembly ; they cannot be refused admit tance to State parties, or even to large assemblies ; they have forced themselves forward, and must be recognized as being in the van. p. 76. My theory, for I acknowledge to a theory, is this : That Providence has sent white men and black men to these regions in order that from them may spring a race fitted by intellect for civilization, and fitted also by physical organiza tion for tropical labor. The negro, in his primitive state, is not, I think, fitted for the former ; and the European white Creole is certainly not fitted for the latter. p. 77. That they will amalgamate, if brought together, all nature teaches us. The Anglo-Saxon and the negro have done so, and in two hundred years have produced a population which is said to amount to a fifth of the whole island of Jamaica, and which probably amounts to much more. Two hundred years with us is a long time ; but it is not so in the world's history. From 1660 to 1860 A. D., is a vast lapS2 of years, but how little is the lapse from the year 1660 to the year 1860, dating from the creation of the world ; or, rath ?r, how small such lapse appears to us ! In how many pages is its history writ ten? And yet God's races were spreading themselves over the earth then as now. Men are in such a hurry. They can hardly believe that that will come to pass of which they have evidence that it will not come to pass in their own days. But then comes the question, whether the mulatto is more capable of being educated than a negro, and more able to work under a hot sun than the Englishman ; whether he does not rather lose the physical power of the one, and the intellectual power of the other. There are those in Jamaica who have known them long, and who think that, as a race, they deteriorated both in mind and body. I am not prepared to deny this. They probably have deteriorated in mind and body; and nevertheless my theory may be right. Nay I will go MINDEN ARMAIS. 77 further and say, that such deterioration on both sides is necessary to the correctness of my theory. In what compound are we to look for the full strength of each component part? Should punch be as strong as brandy, or as sweet as sugai ! Neither the one nor the other. But in order to be good and efficient punch, it should partake duly of the strength of the spirit and of the sweet ness of the saccharine according to the skill and will of the gnostic fabricator, who in mixing knows his own purpose. So has it ever been, a^o, in the admixture of races. The same amount of physical power is not required for all cli mates, nor the same amount of mental energy. But the mulatto, though he has deteriorated from the black man in one respect, and from the white in another, does also excel the black man in one respect, and also excels the white in another. As a rule, he cannot work as a negro can. He could not probably endure to labor in the cane fields for sixteen hours out of the twenty-four, as is done by the Cuban slave ; but he can work safely under a tropical sun, and can, in the day, go through a fair day's work. He is not liable to yellow fever, as is the white man, and enjoys as valid a protection from the effects of heat as the health of these negroes requires. Nor, as far as we yet know, have Galileos, Shakspeares or Napoleons been produced among the mulattoes. Few may probably have been produced who are able even to form an accurate judgment as to the genius of such men as these. But that the mulatto race partakes largely of the intelligence and ambition of their white forefathers, it is, I think, use less and moreover wicked to deny; wicked, because the denial arises from an unjust desire to close against them the door of promotion. Let any stranger go through the shops and stores of Kingston, and see how many of them are either owned or worked by men of color ; let him go into the House of Assembly, and see how large a proportion of their debates is carried on by men of color. How large a portion of the public service is carried on by them; how 78 MINDEN ARMAIS. well they thrive, though the prejudices of both white and black are so strong against them. p. 78-9-80. They are fit these colored people to undertake the higher as well as the lower paths of human labor. Indeed, they do undertake them, and thrive well in them now, much to the disgust of the so-called ascendant class. They do make money, and enjoy it. They practice as statesmen, as lawyers, and as doctors in the colony; and though they have not as yet shone brightly as divines in our English church, such deficiency may be attributed more to the jealousy of the parsons of that church than to their own incapacity. p. 83. The colored people, I have said, have made their way into society in Jamaica. That is, they have made a certain degree of impression on the millstone, which will therefore soon be perforated through and through, and then crumble to pieces like pumice stone. p. 86. There are but few white laborers in Jamaica and but few negroes who are not laborers. But the colored people are to be found in all ranks, from that of a prime minister for they have a prime minister in Jamaica down to the worker in the cane fields. Among their women many are now highly educated, for they send their children to English schools. Perhaps, if I were to say fashionably educated, I might be more strictly correct. They love dearly to shine ; to run over the piano with quick and loud fingers ; to dance with skill, which they all do, for they have good figures and correct ears ; to know and display the little tricks and graces of English ladies such tricks and graces as are to be learned between fifteen and seventeen at Ealing, Clapham and Horn- sey. p. 89. The fact is, that in Jamaica, at the present day, the colored people do stand on strong ground, and that they do not so stand with the good will of the old aristocracy of the country. They have forced their way up, and now loudly protest that they intend to keep it. I think they will keep it, and that, on the whole, it will be well for us Anglo- MINUKN ARMAIS. 79 Saxons to have created a race capable of living and working in the climate without inconvenience. p. 98. The West Indies and the Spanish Main, by Anthony Trol- lope. Ne\v York, 1860. APPENDIX VII. The excellent and reliable little work of T. L. Godet gives the condition and numbers of the new race in the Island of Bermuda : The colored inhabitants are persons of mixed blood (usually termed people of color) and native blacks. Of the former, all the different classes are not easily discriminated. In the British West India Islands they are commonly known by the name of samboes, mulattoes, quadroons and mestizos. Thus a sambo is the offspring of a black woman by a mu latto man, or vice versa ; a mulatto is the offspring of a black woman by a white man ; a quadroon is the offspring of a mulatto woman by a white man ; and a mestizo or mustee is the offspring of a white man and a quadroon woman. The Spaniards, from whom these appellations are borrowed, have many other and much nicer distinctions. Of those arts in which perfection can be attained only in an improved state of society, it is natural to suppose that the people of color have but little knowledge. They un doubtedly possess organs peculiarly adapted to the science of music. In vocal harmony they display both variety and compass. Nature seems in this respect to have dealt more bountifully to them than to the rest of the human race. The prejudice which exists in Bermuda against the people of color is much less than it is in the United States. This great barrier, therefore, which prevents the colored race from rising in society, the emancipated people of Bermuda do not sensibly feel. In this colony they have for several years enjoyed the same municipal rights and immunities as the white population. In civil affairs and in the transaction of business there is no distinction. By the act of emancipa tion the freed people are admitted to the same standing as 80 MiNDKN ARMAIS. the whites ; and may now fill any office, from a s^at in the assembly down to that of a rural constable. There is, in deed, a prejudice in Bermuda which excludes people of color from social intercourse with the higher classes of society. Nor is pure white and mixed blood often united in matri mony. Public feeling does not allow this, or at least regards it with jealousy. The people of color have, unquestionably, a temperament peculiar to themselves. Their cheerful and easy disposition and good natured humor are proverbial. Their natural kindness, and their attachment to their off spring and friends, when not counteracted by adverse influ_ ences, are equally well known. The rising free generation are quite a superior order of beings to their ancestors, and exhibit a readiness of perception and adaptation rarely shown by the preceding race. They enjoy a freer intercourse with the white people and observe enough of their habits and manners to acquire the ideas and modes of thinking, which are peculiar to civil ized society. It will therefore be obvious, that the people of color in Bermuda stand on entirely different ground from those in the free States of America. Instead of being a redundant portion of the community, they fill a place of the utmost importance. They will, in fact, constitute the bone and sinew of society ; what their position in society may eventu ally be, it is impossible to predict ; but should the fostering care of the colonial government be secured for them, and should the means of education and religious knowledge be adequately supplied, I see no obstacle in the way of their advancement. At the present time the population is not less than 12,000, a little more than half of whom are of colored or mixed race. They are a hardy race of people, and with proper training become excellent sailors. p. 148-9-50-1- 2-3-4- In summer, fishing and boating in the harbor form other recreations. The young men usually get up a regatta on JIINDEN ARMAIS. 8r Hamilton water for sailing and oared boats, and some very spirited matches take place, when the adjacent hills and vales are covered by spectators of both sexes, representing the Caucasian as well as the Kthiopian race, and there are dam sels of divers hues the sable Venus, the bright mulatto, the delicate mustee, and the fair Bermudiaii sylph. p. 190. Bermuda, by Theodore L. Godet, M. D., London, 1860. APPENDIX VIII. Agassiz gives us some very interesting data in relation to races in Brazil: u Perhaps 110 where in the world can the blending of types among men be studied so fully as in the Amazons, where mamelucos, cafusos, mulattoes, cabocos, negroes and whites are mingled in a confusion that seems at first inextri cable. p. 296. The hybrid between white and negro, called mulatto, is too well known to require description. His features are handsome, his complexion clear, and his character confiding but indolent. The hybrid between the Indian and negro, known under the name of cafuso, is quite different. His features have nothing of the delicacy of the mulatto ; his complexion is dark ; his hair long, wiry and curly ; and his character exhibits a happy combination between the jolly disposition of the negro and the energetic, enduring powers of the Indian. The hybrid between white and Indian, called mameluco in Brazil, is pallid, effeminate, feeble, lazy and rather obstinate ; though it seems as if the Indian influence had only gone so far as to obliterate the higher characteris tics of the white, without imparting its own energies to the offspring. I have, however, noticed throughout Brazil a disposi tion to give a practical education, a training in some trade, to the poor children. In these schools blacks and whites are, so to speak, industrially united. S2 MINDEN ARMAIS. Indeed, there is no antipathy of race to be overcome in Brazil, either among the laboring people or in the higher walks of life. I was pleased to see pupils, without distinc tion of race or color, mingling in the exercises. p. 501. Manaos has been in unwonted agitation for the last few days on the subject of a public ball, to be given in honor of Mr. Tavans Bastos. The night was not so auspicious as could have been wished ; it was very dark, and as no such luxury as a carriage is known here, the different parties might be seen groping through the streets at the appointed liour lighted with lanterns. Every now and then, as we were on our way, a ball dress would emerge from the dark ness of an opposite corner, picking its way with great care along the muddy ruts. When we had all assembled, how ever, I did not see that any toilet had suffered seriously on the road. The dresses were of every variety, from silks and satins to stiff gowns, and the complexions of all tints, from the genuine negro through paler shades of Indian and negro to white. There is absolutely no distinction of color here ; a black lady, always supposing her to be free, is treated with as much consideration, and meets with as much attention, as a white one. It is, however, rare to sse a person in society who can be called a genuine negro ; but there are many mulattoes and mamelucos that is, persons having black or Indian blood. There is little ease in Brazilian society, even in the larger cities ; still less in the smaller ones, where, to guard against mistakes, the conventionalities of town life are exaggerated. The Brazilians, indeed, though so kind and hospitable, are a formal people, fond of etiquette and social solemnities. p. 281. A Journey in in Brazil, by Prof, and Mrs. L,ouis Agassiz. Boston : Tricknor & Fields, 1868. APPENDIX IX. Mr. Olmstead, writing of the State of Louisiana, says : There is one among the multitudinous classifications of society in New Orleans which is a very peculiar and MINDEN ARMAIS. 83 characteristic result of the prejudices, 'vices and customs of the various elements of color, class and nation which have been there brought together. I refer to a class composed of the illegitimate offspring of white men and colored women (mulattoes or quadroons), who, from habits of early life, the advantages of education, and the use of wealth, are too much superior to the negroes in general to associate with them, and are not allowed, by law or the popular prejudice, to marry white people. The girls are frequently sent to Paris to be educated, and are very accomplished. They are generally pretty and handsome. I have rarely, or ever, met more beautiful women than one or two of them I saw by chance in the streets. They are much better formed and have a much more graceful and elegant carriage than Americans in general, while they seem to have commonly inherited or acquired much of the taste and skill, in the selection and arrangement, and the way of wearing dresses and ornaments, that is the especial distinction of the women of Paris. Their beauty and attractiveness being their fortune, they cultivate and cherish with diligence every charm or accomplishment they are possessed of. Of course, men are attracted by them, associate with them, are captivated and become attached to them, and not being able to marry them legally and with the usual forms and securities for constancy, make such arrangements as can be agreed upon. When a man makes a declaration of love to a girl of this class, she will admit, or deny, as the case may be, her happiness in receiving it; but supposing she is favorably disposed, she will usually refer the applicant to her mother. The mother inquires like a " Countess of Kew" into the cir cumstances of the suitor; ascertains whether he is able to maintain a family, and if satisfied with him in these and other respects, requires from him security that he will sup port her daughter in a style suitable to the habits she has been bred to, and that if he should ever leave her, he will give her a certain sum for her future support, and an addi tional sum for each of the children she shall then have. 84 MIX DEN ARMAIS. The wealth thus Secured will of course vary of course I do not mean to say that love has nothing at all to do with it ; but love is sedulously restrained and held firmly in hand until the road of competency is seen to be clear, with less humbug than our English custom requires about it. Every thing being satisfactorily arranged, a tenement in a certain quarter of the town is usually hired, and the couple move into it and go to housekeeping living as if they were mar ried. The woman is not of course to be wholly deprived of the society of others her former acquaintances are con tinued, and she sustains her relations as daughter, sister, friend of course too, her husband (she calls him so, why shouldn't she?) will be likely to continue in and form part of this society. There are parties and balls bal masques and all the movements and customs of fashionable society, which they can enjoy in it if they wish. The women of this sort are represented to be exceedingly affectionate in dis position and constant beyond reproach. During all the time a man sustains this relation, he will commonly be moving also in respectable society, on the other side of the town, not improbably, eventually he marries and has a family estab lishment elsewhere. Before doing this he may separate from his placee (so she is termed). If so, he pays her according to agreement, and as much more, perhaps, as his affection for her, or his sense of the cruelty of the proceeding may lead him ; and she has the world before her again in the position of a widow. Many men continue for a long time to support both estab lishments particularly if their legal marriage is one " de convenance." But many others form so strong attachments, that the relation is never discontinued, but becomes indeed that of marriage, except that it is not legalized or solemnized. These men leave their estate at death to their children, to whom they may have previously given every advantage of educa tion they could command ; what becomes of the boys I am not informed, the girls sometimes are removed to other countries, where their color does not prevent their living MINDEN ARMAIS. 85 respectable lives, but of course mainly continue in the same society and are fated to a life similar to their mothers'. I have described this custom as it was described to me ; I need hardly say in only its best respects, the crime and heart-stricken sorrow that must frequently result from it, must be evident to every reflective reader. p. 594-5-6-7. "A planter told me," remarks Mr. Olmstead "in this connection, that the practice was not occasional or general, it was universal." " There is not," he said, "a likely look ing black girl in this state that is not the paramour of a white man. There is not an old plantation in which the grandchildren of the owner are not whipped in the field by the overseer. p. 602. As to the healthfulness, and further as to the numbers and position of the new race in Louisiana, Mr. Olmstead adds: " I afterwards spent the night at the house of a white planter, he told me that the free mulattoes were always healthy, as far as he knew. He thought they were rather more healthy than white people. Upon close questioning, he thought those of them which were nearest to white, were rather weakly. A good many that he remembered were rich, and their fathers' had them educated and brought up just as they did their white children." p. 639. An intelligent man whom I met at Washington, who had been travelling most of the time for two years in the planting districts of Louisiana, told me the best house and most tasteful grounds that he had visited in the State belong to a nearly full-blooded negro a very dark man. He and his family are very well educated and though French is their habitual tongue, they speak English with freedom ; and one of them with much more elegance than most liberally educated whites in the South. They had a private tutor in their family. They owned, he presumes a hundred slaves. p. 642. In going down Cane River, the Dalman called at several of their plantations, to take in cotton, and the Captain told me, that in fifteen miles of a well settled country, on the bank of the river beginning ten miles below Natchitoches, 86 MINDEN ARMAIS. he did not know but one pure blooded white man. The planta tion appeared no way different from those of the white Cre oles ; and on some of them were large comfortable houses. These free colored people are all descended from the progeny of old French or Spanish planters, and their negro slaves. Two merchants to whom I had letters of introduction, had extensive dealings with the colored planters, and were confi dent that they enjoyed better health than the whites living in their vicinity. He could not recollect a single instance of those indications of weak constitutions which had been men tioned to me. The colored planters within their knowledge had large and healthy families ; they were honest and indus trious and paid their debts quite as punctually as the white planters, 'and were, so far as they could judge, without an in timate acquaintance, good citizens in all respects. If you have occasion to call at their houses, I was told, you would be received in a gentlemanly manner, and find they live in the same style with white people of the same wealth. They speak French among themselves, but all are able to converse in English also, and many of them are well educated. p. 633-4. The driver of the stage from Natchitoches towards Alexandria, appeared to have been especially impressed with the domestic and social happiness he had witnessed in their homes. p. 634. The barber of the Dalman, said that colored people could associate with whites much more easily and comfortably at the South than the North, this was one reason he preferred to live at the South. He was kept at a greater distance from white people, and more insulted on account of his color at the North than at Louisiana. He thought that the colored people at Cane river were thriving and happy, he was sure they were quite as forehanded as their white Creole neighbors, -p. 636. Of the attractiveness of this new race Mr. Olmstead gives the following anecdote : A gentleman of New England education gave me the following account of his acquaintance with the quadroon MINDEN ARMAIS. 8/ society. On first coining- to New Orleans, lie was drawn into the social circles usually frequented by New Kngland people and was introduced by a friend to a quadroon family, in which there were three pretty and accomplished young women. They were intelligent and well informed; their musical taste was especially well cultivated ; they were inter ested in the literature of the day, and their conversation upon it was characterized by good sense and refined discrimi nation. He never saw any indication of a want of purity of character or delicacy of feeling in them. He was muck attracted by them, and for some time visited them frequently. Having then discontinued his intimacy, at length one of the girls asked him why he did not come to see them as often as he had formerly done. He frankly replied that he had found their society so fascinating that he had thought it best to restrict himself in the enjoyment of it, lest it should become necessary to his happiness; and out of regard to his gen eral plans of life, and the feelings of his friends, he could not permit himself to be united to one of them according to the usual custom of their class. The young woman was evidently much pained, but not at all offended, and imme diately acknowledged and commended the propriety and good sense of his resolution. p. 598. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, by Frederick Law Olmstead. New York and London, 1856. MOTHER JOSEPHINE CHARLES. A WOMAN OF THE NEW RACE- On May 21, 1889, was witnessed the interment in the tomb of the Order, at the old St. Louis Cemetery, New Or leans, of a distinguished colored woman Mother Josephine Charles, founder of the Roman Catholic Order of the Sisters of the Holy Family. Josephine was the daughter of a German father and a free mulatto woman, born in this city in 1816. She grew up a beautiful woman, eager to learn, and evincing strong traits of character, with an earnest religious inclina tion, and she received the best education allowed to people of her race and caste. Early in life she found delight in 88 M INDEX ARMAIS. doing- good, feeding the poor, and teaching the catechism to the neglected colored children. She was wont to attend the religious ceremonies at the Carmelite Convent. She found two free colored girls imbued with the same spirit, and the three determined to begin carrying out their aims a mam moth undertaking for three weak women. Josephine Charles, Harriet de Lisle, and Juliet Gaudet vowed to devote all they had of earthly means to establish an order for the education of young ladies of color and the succor and relief of poor, helpless old colored people and orphan girls. Those were slavery days. The first work undertaken by the little relig ious community was the teaching of poor slave children, and, encouraged by the Catholic clergy, although breakers of the statute law, the famous black code making their labors a crime, they accomplished a great deal. A convent was established on Chartres street. Many sisters were enrolled, who assumed the habit of the Sisters of Charity. Since the war the Order, through Josephine Charles's wise management and excellent discipline, has been established on a substantial basis. The Sisters, in 1880, established a mother house in Orleans, between Royal and Bourbon streets, near the cath edral, and on the historic site of the old Orleans Theatre. Here postulants for the sisterhood are received, and here a Christian education is given to poor colored girls. Mother Josephine did not confine her work to the house over which she presided. Three years after opening the house on Chartres she founded a branch at Opelousas. In 1875 she opened a home for aged and infirm colored people on St. Bernard, between Villere and Marais streets. On January 22, 1879, she instituted an orphan asylum for colored girls at the corner of Tonti and Hospital streets. She increased the Order constantly by her teaching and her example, and accom plished a great work of benefit for the colored people. Her labors are all the more wonderful and creditable when it is known that for a number of years her eyesight has been failing, and that for the last six years she was stone-blind. From her couch of pain she continued the direction of the affairs of the Order. She was buried with nil the honor of MINDEN ARMAIS. 89 a saint, in the presence of thousands of earnest mourners. New York Times. Mrs. Douglass, a very well meaning woman then resid ing in Virginia, deplores the universality of that relation of the races throughout all the South in these words : "This subject demands the attention, not only of the religious population, but of statesmen and law-makers. It is one great evil hanging over the slave States, destroying domestic happiness and the peace of thousands. It is summed up in the single word amalgamation. This, and this only, causes the vast extent of ignorance, degradation and crime that lies like a black cloud over the whole South. And the practice is more general than even Southerners are willing to allow. Neither is it to be found in the lower order of the white population. It pervades the entire society. Its fol lowers are to be found among all ranks, occupations and pro fessions. The white mothers and daughters have suffered under it for years have seen their dearest affections trampled upon, their hopes of domestic happiness destroyed, and their future lives embittered, even to agony, by those who should be all in all to them, as husbands, sons, and brothers. I cannot use too strong language in reference to this subject, lor I think it will meet with a heartfelt response from every Southern woman." p. 60 1. Cited in Olmstead's Book. Women are poor philosophers, but very keen observers in matters of immediate reference to themselves. There can scarcely be a more absolute assurance of the establishment of the new race there, than is contained in her earnest, but unavailing words against the natural instincts of the husbands, sons, and brothers of her own. APPENDIX X. Of the fidelity of the Negro to the slaveholders during the war, the following testimony is given in the Wilmington (N. C.,) Messenger : If the South should ever have a poet like Sir Walter Scott, he should sing one song at least in honor of the 90 MIXDEN ARMAIS. Southern slaves who stood by their masters' wives and children, and tilled the lands and garnered the crops and protected the homes, while the masters themselves \vere at the front or in bloody graves or lying maimed or dying in the hospitals. In all the histories there is no parallel case to this. Would to God that we had a strong writer of such power to reproduce the old-time Southern life and make " Mammy Harriet " and u Uncle Davy " and the playfellows Allen and Harvey Columbus, Jim and Sam and Pink live again in the pictured pages illuminated forever by the light of genius. Their fidelity and affection were not diminished or even shaken by the fierce storms of war that swept over the land. Their attachment to the old homes and the old master and mistress and " the chillen," appeared unbroken until the last scene came and the cause of the South went down in blood and gloom and complete disaster. They dug in the trenches, they built railroads, they threw up fortifications, they went with their masters to the tented field amid " the stern alarums" or they stayed at home and dug and toiled, at once the producers of the bread and the guardians of the homes of the whites. Their conduct was unexampled and their fidelity, with but few exceptions, above all praise. The Messenger remembers these things, and deplores every occurrence that provokes misunderstandings and alien ations, or that would sow the dreadful dragons' teeth of dis cord and blood. Let there be peace. Let there be no bitterness and antagonism. February 9, 1890. The State Board of Agriculture, of South Carolina, (publication of 1883) says : There were imported altogether into the Colonies and States, 263,500 negroes, from 1618 the first importation up to 1790. The census of 1790 gives 757,208, as their number in the States at that date, an increase of 493,708. p. 371. At the date of Emancipation (1865), they numbered 4,600,000 ; subtracting 90,000 imported since 1790 (a very large estimate) leaves 3,752,792, or the enormous natural increase in 75 years, of 442 per cent. MINDEN ARMAIS. 91 If there be something repulsive in this rapid propaga tion of the human species under slavery, it may be said in answer that this increase was by no means due to slavery, the free negroes increased during slavery even more rapidly. The number of free negroes in the United States (1790) was 59,527, (1860) 488,070; percentage of increase, 723 and in South Carolina (1790) 1,801 ; (1860) 9,914 rper cent- age of increase, 450. p. 372. The census for 1880 shows that there are 6,580,793 negroes in the United States, 'an increase of 1,980,793, by births, or 43 per cent, in the fifteen years since Emancipation. This extraordinary increase of the negro population is one of the most interesting and important questions presented by the race problem in America. p. 372. The rate of increase for the negro race throughout the United States, has been 33 per cent, for the last decade, 1870 -1880, while that of the native white at the North was less than 15.7 per cent. (J. Stahl Patterson, cited, page 372.) Should these rates of increase of population continue for the next century, the Negro would outnumber the native Northern white by 12,000,000. Of their relative vital force, the same Board gives a table ; from 1853 to 1859, there were 23,278 births of white children in South Carolina ; in the same year 69,078 births of colored children. The white births were (1836-9) 13.6 to the 1,000 ; the colored were much greater, 29.9 to the 1,006; plurality births (1859), white, 148 ; colored, 269 ; still births for the same year, 2.4 per cent, white; 1.8 per cent, colored; with a preponderance of male still births, greater in the white than in the colored race. p. 406-7. In the record of deaths from extreme old age, there were reported in the State 22 of 100 years and over; of them 4 were white and 18 negroes. p. 411. On the relative liability of the colored man to disease, the Board says : Consumption on an average for 6 years car ried off 6.85 per cent, of the whites, and 3.94 per cent, of 92 MINDEN ARMAIS. the negroes.* Croup is almost twice as fatal to the whites as negroes. p. 412. Diseases of the nervous system were more fatal to whites than negroes ; very few slaves died of homicide, poi son or suicide. p. 413. Of malarial fever in '185 7-8-9, 8.13 per cent, of whites died, and 5.63 per cent, of blacks. page 417. Of deaf mutes, the large percentage were white. Of pauperism in South Carolina, there is an inconsiderable percentage, white or black, but what there is, is less in the negroes. There were (1880), 70,616 of white military population in the State, and 98,285 of the colored population ; of those entitled to citizenship by age there are 85,000 whites and 118,000 of the colored race. The Board of Agriculture say further : " Between this race and the white race, there 4ias been no distinctive antag onism ; in Charleston the chief city of the State, they have lived in equal numbers, in close association for one hundred years, and for tw r o hundred years throughout the State there have been only two insurrections ; and these and the riots of 1876, are all the casualties resulting from contests between the whites and negroes ; as the Board say, taken together for the whole two hundred years, less than the outrages reported in a single year in Ireland." But then these blacks are no longer Negroes, they have become, insensible to the nation and themselves, a well developed portion of the new race which has been creating itself everywhere in the South. The State Board of Agriculture definitely says, relative to this fact : " The black population of the State of SontJi Carolina, November, 1883, are no longer Negroes: one-third has a large infusion of white blood, another third has less, * The census of 1880, for the whole nation, shows that the number of persons in the United States dying of cancer, in every 100,000 of the population, distinguished as to color, was 27.96 white and i 7.67 colored. The proportion of deaths from cancer in proportion to ,000 deaths from known causes with distinction of white, colored, Irish and German parentage, was white, 19.1 ; colored, 78 ; of Irish parentage, 24.3 ; and of German parentage, . 5.8. Tenth census. Mortality. MINDEN ARMAIS. 93 but still some, and of the other third, it would be difficult to find an assured specimen of African blood ; even in those whose color and features seem most unmistakably to mark them as of pure African descent, indubitable evidence may often be obtained of white parentage ; the external charac teristics are by no means invariably associated with the inter nal ones, and such blacks are often more intelligent and bear morally a closer resemblance to the white race than many lighter in color." Resources and population of South Carolina. p. 373. Chas. A. Gardner gives us the following statistics : At the close of the rebellion it was expected that the negro race would gradually disperse throughout the United States, and lose its race identity and distinct habitat. An examination of the census shows that during the past twenty years there has been practically no migration of the negro from his Southern home. Excepting the southern counties of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio, in the entire territory of the North and West the annual increase of negro popula tion has been perceptibly lower than the average annual increase of the negro race in the United States. If the great body of the race, suffering from social ostracism, poverty, and political oppression, has voluntarily remained within its present geographical boundaries, we may assume that it will remain there permanently. What are those boundaries ? If a straight line should be drawn from the northern border of Delaware to the north eastern corner of Kansas, and one from that point south to the Gulf of Mexico, nineteen-twentieths of the negro race in America would be found east and south of these lines. " The largest colored population in any Northern State is 65,000 in Pennsylvania ; Ohio comes next with 63,000. The lowest is Oregon, with only 346. In fact there are only seven Northern States that have over 20,000 negroes." But taking the seven Atlantic aud Gulf States, North Car olina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, we have a compact territory, uniform in 94 MIXDKX ARMAIS. climate and resources, and inhabited by two-thirds of all the negroes in the United States. The actual occupancy of the soil and the providential adaptation of the race to its physical surroundings, suggest that this territory will be the permanent future home of the negro race. The census of 1880 disclosed the fact that the native white population had increased twenty per cent, in the past ten years, and that the negro population had increased thirty- five per cent, in the same time. Increasing two per cent, annually, whites will double in every thirty-five years, while negroes, increasing three and a half per cent, annually, will double in every twenty years. Immigration of foreign or Northern whites may affect the future relation of the races, but such a theory finds sup port neither in history nor in existing facts. Races have migrated along the parallels of latitude, their Northern or Southern movements being almost invariably limited by the boundaries of the isothermal belts. In the year 1882-3, 400,000 foreigners landed in the United States ; of this number only 736 settled in the seven States named above. With due allowance for foreign and Northern immigra tion it still seems a reasonable conjecture that, adopting the ratios established within sixty years, negroes will be in a majority in all the South, and that one hundred years from to-day they will be double the number of whites in every Southern State. The following table indicates the present and estimated future population of the Atlantic and Gulf States : WHITES. NEGROES. 1880 . . . 3, '814, 395 1880 . . . 3,721,481 1915 . . . 7,600,000 1900 . . . 7,400,000 1950 . . . 15,200,000 1920 . . . 14,800,000 1985 . . . 30,400,000 1940 . . . 29,600,000 1960 . . . 59,200,000 1980 . . . 118,400,000 N. A. Review (1884), p. 79. MINDEN ARMAIS. 95 The census of 1860 says : Thus, according to the best estimates, the total population of the United States at the close of the present century will be about 100,000,000. Of the colored, in the year 1900, a large portion will be of mixed descent, since in 1856 one-ninth of all the colored race were returned as mulattoes, while in 1860 it is one-eighth of the whole and 36 per cent, of the free. In regard to emigration, the number colonized by the Ameri can Colonization Society and its auxiliaries during the past ten years has averaged about 400 per annum, besides the Africans captured on several slave ships. The total number of colored emigrants sent to Liberia from 1820 to 1856, inclusive, is stated at 9,502, of whom 3,676 were free born. Prep. Rep. Eighth Census, p. 6. George W. Cable takes the following ground as to the duty of the negroes to themselves : " You can as urgently claim the liberty to perform all your civil duties as the liberty to enjoy all your civil rights. The two must be sought at the same time and by the same methods. They should never be divided. You must feel and declare yourself no longer the Nation's, much less any political party's, still less your own master's mere nursling, but one bound by the duties of citizenship to study, and actively seek, all men's rights, and the public welfare of the nation, and of every lesser com munity, State, county, city, village, to which he belongs. Holding this attitude, you can make many things clear, concerning the cause of civil rights, that greatly need to be made so. For instance, that this cause is not merely yours, but is a great fundamental necessity of all free government, in which every American citizen is interested, knowing that they who neglect to defend any principle of liberty may well expect to lose its substance. Or, for another instance, that the demand for equal civil, including political, rights, is by no means a demand for supremacy, .much less the supremacy of one race over another. 96 MINDEN ARMAIS. Or, that the demand for equal unpolitical civil rights is not that public indecency and unrespectability, enjoy all the rights of decency and respectability." The Forum, August, 1888. Hon. John R. Lynch, ex-Congressman of Mississippi, and now fourth Auditor of the Treasury at Washington, D. C, a representative man of the Nezv Race, recently said, relative to the South : u The subject of race assimilation does not disturb them in the South, in the least, they have sense enough to know that all such questions regulate themselves. If there be strong race antipathies, the existence of such antipathies will keep the races apart socially, without outside assistance and without legislative control. If there be no race antipathies, the fusion or assimilation of the two races will be the result of the voluntary choice of both, in which event there can be no harm to either. In either case I cannot see that race conflicts and colli sions are to be apprehended, because t\vo different races who are the political equals of each other, happen to live upon the same continent under the same government. The colored American does not seek to invade any man's parlor, and he does not recognize the right of any one, whatever his race or color, to invade his. These are questions which are above and beyond the legislative will either of the State or Nation." Oration, February 20, 1890. Rev. T. U. Dudley, Protestant Espiscopal Bishop of Kentucky, uses this prophetic and assuring language : The time may come, and will, when the prejudices now appar ently invincible, shall have been conquered by the changed characteristics of the race now under the social ban. Society, then as now, organized upon the basis of community of interests, congeniality of tastes, and equality of position, will exclude the multitude who cannot speak its shibboleth, but there will be no color line of separation. And equally it may be that our great-grandchildren MINDEN ARMAIS. 97 shall behold such a revolution as will open wide the drawing- rooms of Washington to the black men who have been honored guests in the palaces of England and of France. Poverty and ignorance are no barrier in the way of the elevation of any white man in America, nor yet the obscurity or even degradation of his origin. Though in infancy he may have lain "among the pots," yes, and the pigs of an Irish hovel, yet in this favored land of equal rights no arbitrary distinction shall stand in the way of his education into a cultivated refinement that shall be as " The wings of a dove covered with silver," nor prevent that his trained powers shall cover " Her feathers with gold." Why' shall a different condition hedge about the black man because, forsooth, the cabin he was born in was in Carolina rather than in Gal way. The Century, June, 1885. Frederick Douglass, late Marshal of the District of Columbia, and now Minister to Hayti, writes: Nor do I think the negro will become more distinct as a class. Igno rant, degraded and repulsive as he was during his two hun dred years of slavery, he was sufficiently attractive to make possible an intermediate race of a million, more or less. If this has taken place in the face of those odious bar riers, what is likely to occur when the colored man puts away his ignorance and degradation and becomes educated and prosperous? The tendency of the age is unification, not isolation ; not to clans and classes, but to human brotherhood. It was once degradation intensified for a Norman to associate with a Saxon , but time and events have swept down the barriers between them, and Norman and Saxon have become Englishmen. N. A. Review, July, 1884. p. 85. E. W. Gilliam says : That the most intelligent of the colored population are the distinct mulattoes is everywhere noticeable. I mark it at their higher seats of learning. The representative men are mulattoes. In Washington the prominent colored office holders are almost exclusively of this class. I can recall but one excep- 98 MINDEN ARMAIS. tion, the Congressman from South Carolina ; and generally he would be regarded as a mulatto, with strong recession toward the African type. And in the minor offices, the genuine black hue is the rare exception. Educational superiority for the mulatto is indisputable; and his large percentage of Caucasian blood would make it presumable. I see no cause for materially modifying my former con clusions that the negro rate of increase for the past decade is thirty-five per cent, (more or less), or three and a half per cent, per annum ; while that for the native whites is twenty per cent., and there appears to be no reason for doubting that these relative rates will be maintained. The negro rate is not at all incredible, it has been sur passed in former decades; from 1800 to 1810 it was thirty- seven per cent. The result of all these causes is, to make Southern whites less prolific than the negro. To this is to be added, that the negro finds at the South a climate as favorable to himself, as it is, in its most fertile portions, unfavorable to whites ; and that his history bears witness to a race with phenomenal breeding qualities. Personal inquiries in a Maryland village (not the most congenial climate for the negro) showed, in one instance, thirty-five living children in four negro families ; in another, twenty-one children in three families: These families were not selected but taken at random, with no anticipation of the result, apart from the swarms of children generally observed about negro homes. And I have seen a statement that in three colored families in Geor gia thirty children were recently counted. It is a matter of most serious regret that the bill before the late Congress, " To provide for the creation of a commis sion to inquire into and report upon the intellectual, mater ial and industrial progress of the colored race in the United States, since 1865," failed for lack of time to give it consid eration. MINDEN ARMAIS. 99 A measure bearing more directly and critically upon the whole interest of the country, could not have been devised. The data now at command, in some directions full enough, warrant the substantial accuracy of these conclu sions. The statement in a former article that eighty years hence the Southern blacks would double the Southern whites (96,000,000 for the former, 60,000,000 for the latter), was meant to mark a tendency. But it is morally certain that by that date and perhaps sooner the negroes throughout the South will have a great numerical superiority. N. A. Review, November, 1884. James Anthony Froude, in his exhaustive paper, " Eng land and her Colonies," says: "The Red Indians, the Aborigines of Australia and New Zealand, disappear before the white settler. Their history has been a sad and even a shameful one ; but these races are essentially wild. They cannot accommodate themselves to civilized ways, and as we may not preserve them to hunt as we do foxes, they die as the wild animals die. Gentle treatment makes no difference. The imprisoned eagle will not mate and rear his eaglets in captivity ; he waits, gloomy and solitary, for his own deliverance in death. So it is with the savage tribes ; they recede before the white man into the wilderness and perish as if stricken with blight. Utterly unlike them, the African negro takes to domestication as kindly as the duck to water. He is called idle : we should all be idle if we were not obliged to work ; we have idle classes at home who are rather proud of that privilege. The negro no more objects to work than the European man ; that is to say, he will work when he must. He is faithful when well treated, he is an excellent servant. When I was travelling in South Africa, I had a black man and a white man with me, and the black man was worth a dozen white men. For all I know, the black race may be as good as the others when it has gone through the same training. loo M INDEX ARM A IS. Hitherto the negro has had no chance ; he has been a slave from the beginning of history ; as he is now in Cuba, so you see him painted on the walls of the Egyptian tombs ; he is ignorant, childish, given to drink ; he is free now but cannot stand alone in competition with his white superiors ; we have yet to find out how to deal with him. He does not pine, like the Sioux or the Delaware, for the wild freedom of the forest, and die if it is taken away from him. He is happy enough when he has enough to eat, and he multiplies his little black olive branches at a rate which might make Mai thus turn in his grave." And as to the duty of our race to the negro he further says: "In this generation you stand at the parting of the ways to choose whom you will serve whether the old spirit which you call honor, and which another age may call mad ness and dishonor, or the spirit which in the fire and cloud led these millions of our brothers out of the Egypt of vain ambition, into the promised land of industry and self-respect choose, and your choice shall be brief, and yet endless : briefly made, and endless in its consequences." The Prince ton Review, June, 1878. George Rawlinson, the Egyptologist, the greatest author ity living who has written on this question, says, referring to the above : " It is not even certain that such races as the Red Indians, the Australians or the New Zealanders can be depended upon, if left alone to commit suicide, and cease to inconvenience their civilized fellow-citizens by kindly effac ing themselves. Recent investigation in America has shown that the race is disappearing through absorption." He then continues : "It will be our duty to consider whether this is not the true remedy for the existing difficulties, the end at which enlightened statesmanship should aim, if not in all, at any rate in the majority of cases, where the infer- ior race or races constitute a minority of the community." M1NDKX ARMAIS. 101 It is a general rule, now almost universally admitted by ethnologists, that the mixed races of mankind are superior to the pure ones. In the earliest ages to which history goes back, the two most important nations were those of the Egyptians and the Babylonians. Many suppose these to be pure races ; but the contrary is the fact. The physical peculiarities of the Ancient Egyptians whether depicted upon their monuments or as seen in the mummies of Pharonic times are indicative of a people half Caucasian, half Nigritic, with perhaps slighter intermix tures. "The form of the head and the features of the face, are of a modified Caucasian type, approaching to that which is known as the Syro-Arabian, but inclining in the general cast, and particularly in the nose and lips, and in the soft and languid expression of the eye, to the negro character. A similar degree of resemblance to the negro is also obser vable in the body and limbs, more particularly in the legs and feet." The character of the language is composite. " It con sists of elements resembling those of the Ndgritian languages, and the Chinese language on the one hand, and those of the Semitic languages on the other." The sound judgment of Niebuhr has expressed the truth when he says : " To no glory had the Romans less claim than to that of being an original and peculiar people ; if they belonged to no nation it was only because, as even their fables and disfigured legends afford us the means of perceiv ing, they arose from the coalition of several that were wholly distinct from one another. Each of these left its peculiar inheritance of language, institutions and religion to the new people, which, in the com plex of its national character, was assuredly always unlike any of its parent races." Attempts have been made recently to distinguish the races of man into two classes, the allied and the repellent, and to argue that the advantages of union are confined to 102 MINDKX ARMAIS. the former, while if the latter intermix the result is unsat isfactory. But the theory of " repellent races " is based upon no sufficient induction. That no feeling of repulsion which is not easily overcome divides the white race from the black, is clearly evidenced by the fact that in America even under present circumstances the mulattoes exceed in number the pure negroes. The quadroon is, by general consent, of a splendid physique, and of a fair mental power. " When the grade of quinteroon is reached, the negro type has disappeared alto gether." Still it may be urged, it is not pleasant to take a leap in the dark. Is there any evidence from history that the negro can be absorbed and assimilated, and that the result is advan tageous, or not disadvantageous, to the absorbing com munity ? We have noticed the case of the Egyptians, the strongest and most civilized people of the primeval world. In Egypt, a white Caucasia^ race of incomers did not disdain to mix its blood with the native Nigritic element, and the result was a type of man of fair general physique, with a capacity of skull not much below that of the modern European, and with great mental ability. The Pyramids, the rock-tombs of Thebes and Memphis, the temples of Luxor and Karnac, exist to show what a hybrid nation, half white, half negro, could effect in archi tecture. Linguistic investigation tends more and more each day to prove that results scarcely less surprising were arrived at in science and literature. In Egypt, the Nigritic element was large, and the physical type was considerably affected by it. In another Eastern country, where white blood preponderated, a Nigritic race, " black skinned and woolly-haired," on the evidence of an eye witness, has been gradually absorbed and assimilated, so that now no trace of it has been left. The " black-faced " Colchians of Pindar are lost in the modern inhabitants of MINDEN ARMAIS. 103 Imerita, who are a fine people, u of European features and form," noted for the beauty of their women, which is said to exceed that of the Circassians. In America the absorption of 4,000,000 by 36,000,000 might be expected to result similarly. Yet another question may be asked, since the absorption could not but in some respects, and for a time, tend towards a deterioration of the stock, what it may be said, are the compensatory advantages which might be expected to flow from it ? Can they be pointed out ? If not, might it not be a wiser course for the American people to " bear the ills they have," rather than u fly to others that they know not of?" We reply : There would be two compensations. The great compensation would be the removal of all those jeal ousies, suspicions, heart burnings, complaints, grievances, which at present divide and estrange the black population from the white, splitting up the American people into two antagonistic nationalities, between which there may be an armed truce, but never any real hearty agreement. It would be worth paying a heavy price to get rid once for all of the great negro difficulty, to establish practically the equality and brotherhood which are now preached by all, but practiced by few,' to weld the present jarring elements into a really accordant and united whole. It would be a gain were something of the lighthearted- ness, the gayety, the abandon of the negro, infused with his blood into the white population ; were the contentedness and insouciance which characterize him, and make him seem a sort of grown up child, a little to temper the far seeing pru dence and keen calculating activity which among the whites are developed in an undue degree. It might not be a bad thing if the religotis ardor of the negro lent some of its warmth to the tepid devotion far too common wherever Anglo-Saxon blood predominates, and his ready faith count eracted the cynicism and distrust which have unfortunate 1 / taken posession of all highly civilized white people. 104 MINDEN ARMAIS. There might be other advantages beside these,. for some of the best results of "crossing" have often been such as could not have been anticipated ; but these at any rate seem to us beneficial consequences which might be reasonably expected to follow upon the intermixture in question. On the whole, therefore, we conclude that self-interest points out to the Americans, and to all other nations simi larly situated, that their aim should be to absorb and assimi late the inferior races with which they are brought into contact, to fuse the different bloods into one, and become as soon as possible a united homogeneous people. Let this course once be recognized as what true patriotism dictates, and the social bars, the miserable caste prejudices and dis tinctions which at present keep the races apart, would rap idly disappear. Mixed marriages would become as common as are now mixed unions of a less moral kind ; the white blood, which is to the black as nine to one, would in each genera tion more and more preponderate ; and before a century was over only the skilled physiologist might be able to perceive the existence of a Nigritic element in the composite nation. But if self-interest points this way, still more strongly does benevolence. No more happy fate can befall an infer ior race, especially if it be a race on which the circumstan ces of its past existence have set a stamp of physical infer iority, than to be absorbed into one more fortunate in its antecedents, far above it physically, morally, intellectually. It becomes an element in the composition of a great people. It obtains a full share of the mental and moral treasures inherited by the present from past ages. And it gives something in its turn. It contributes to the common fund of national qualities some important traits. It is a factor in the result arrived at. Whatever point of mental advancement, whatever perfection in morals and in art, whatever height of fame and earthly glory the mixed race may reach, each element even the lowest may claim its part in them. As it thus appears that one and the same course of con- MINDEN ARMAIS. 105 duct is prescribed, in the matter before us, by both self-inter est and benevolence, it is unnecessary to pursue any further the present investigation. Princeton Review. N. S. 8.1878. However we are not relegated to theory in this mat ter of race admixture it has already been worked out as the lormer citations evidence, on a broad plane and we may summarize the whole result: The enemies of the intermixture first began with the theory that the mulatto could not perpetuate his race ; then, losing this hold by the facts of nature, they asserted that he was of low viability relative to the white and black ancestor ; and losing this again, that he was of lower moral stature than the white ancestor, of which the evidence was the state of concubinage in which he was willing to live and the petty thieving to which he resorted ; and this is their last vantage ground. Against the robbery centuries long continued upon him by their own race of home, wife, father, of education and the honor of his helpless children, they contrast his willingness to obey illicitly a law of nature which all other nations sanction by an ordinance of God and they contrast against him his willingness to right himself in some small measure by levying a tithe from his master's granary whose whole store was the result of his own labor ; that this, too, is as untenable as the rest in the onward progress of the new race in those States where it exists, as against the more unhomogeneous migratory white races, is demonstrable on this continent. Civilization first evidences itself by strict justice between man and man fidelity to guarantees of the laws and consti tutions framed by the consent of the governed by political changes without resort to revolution, and by revolutions with out resort to violence. The United States is the best representative of the white unmingled races of the earth ; Brazil, of the nations of the largest intermixture of the black and white races ; there were the same problems presented to both nations, a change radically in their form of government and the emancipation of their slaves ; to effect the former of these the colonies of io6 MINDEN ARMAIS. the United States separated into factions of tories and colon ists and began intriguing and fighting among themselves, and at last by the fortunate chance of a foreign alliance which they repudiated as soon as they achieved their independence, and by confiscation much destruction of property and lives, emerged from the struggle an uncohesive mass, rescued at last by the aristocratic authority and incredible force and evenness of character of a man who lived and died without sympathy or affiliation with the representatives of their common people. The same problem was presented to the co-mingled black and white races of Brazil and that race with the com plete unanimity which can only result from race intermix ture, without a drop of blood without any wholesale finan cial ruin without injustice or wrong to their former ruler, advanced from a monarchy to a republic, upon a firm legal and financial foundation the sole instance in the world in its later centuries. The problem of emancipation was solved in its then empire, in the same manner, most honorably to the character and higher civilization of the new race of that nation. It held to the most strict regard for the rights and laws which secured its properties ; it maintained the imperial guaranties and made laws for the compensation of the owners of the slaves; and without the expenditure of one dollar beyond this just compensation or the sacrifice of one human life, extended the blessing of freedom over its vast domain. The facts of the endeavor in the same direction of the white races in these States are relatively humiliating to our civiliza tion. These States are still engaged in perpetuating the re membrances of the destroyers of the people's lives on either side, paying many yearly millions to the unfortunate relics who survived the fatal and injurious struggle, while the rights of a property quite as defensible as a great bulk of the other property which is accumulating among them, and which will very probably pass away in the same manner, was obliterated from their Constitution. MINDEN ARMAIS. 107 APPENDIX XL Of the race enmities in Europe, the following statement appears in the London Spectator : We know of few circumstances in modern Eiirope more disheartening than the depth of the distaste felt by its differ ent races for one another. Their growth in civilization, which certainly goes on, though it is very slow, seems only to deepen their dislike, which, again, is increased by their propinquity. The Spaniards and Portuguese are lodged side by side in the same peninsula, under circumstances which would make fusion enormously advantageous to both, Spain gaining her natural capital and trading river, and Portugal gaining the force to keep and to utilize her colonies. Yet the keenest observers report that fusion is impossi ble, because Spainards despise Portuguese, and Portuguese at once dread and detest Spaniards. The Germans and Slavs in the East of Europe can hardly be compelled to keep the peace, while the German loathing for a Dane is as intense, and, we may add, as unintelligible, as the loathing of a Dutchman for the Germans. The Italians and the French, though their frontiers touch, despise each other heartily, and when, as in Marseilles, they are forced into industrial com petition, they can hardly keep from blows. The Slavs and the Greeks living in the same Turkish provinces, though they have the bond of a common servitude, confess to a re pulsion they cannot conquer ; and the Poles and the Ger mans of Prussia, subjects of the same Crown, and invested with the same rights, regard one another, age after age, with the same angry suspicion. If the distaste were dying away, we might say, as so many say about Ireland, that it was pro duced by historic causes only ; but we see no evidence that it is dying away. On the contrary, it appears to deepen, until, in a free and enlightened city like Berlin, there is a positive danger lest, if authority were paralyzed for a few days, the "edu cated" German population would spring at the throats of all Jews, and bid all Poles depart. io8 MINDEN ARMAIS. And all this while the difference between the races is often less than the difference between families or individuals of the same race, and is manifested in action mainly as a difference in temperament and ideals. German and French despise each other and this contempt is one main cause of a hostility now so deep that it is the basis of all external European politics. The history of the feeling between Ger many and France during the last twenty years ought, of all histories, to be the most depressing for philanthropists. It seems as if the fusion which two hundred years ago was accomplished in Alsace, had in the great "improvement 1 ' of the world an improvement in many departments as demon strable as the English improvement in agriculture become impossible. It would be difficult to conceive a better illustration of the depths of race-hatred in Europe than in Bohemia. In that kingdom, the majority, 3,000,000, are Czechs, an ancient offshoot of the great Slav family, and the minority, 2,000,000, are Germans. Both are Catholics, but they are separated by language, by degree of civilization, and by the indefinable aggregate of inherent differences which \ve call "race." They have dwelt together for centuries ; but so great is their mutual dislike, that they keep up a system of social boycott ing almost as strict as that which prevails in Ireland, though it is not enforced by the same terrible and demoralizing "sanctions." No German may deal with a Czech tradesman, no Czech may consult a German doctor, no German manufacturer may employ Czech artisans, and no Czech parent may send his child to learn in a German school, without suffering the pen alty of ostracism by his own people. They can hardly bear to sit in the same Diet ; and, indeed, for the past few years the German Deputies, exasperated by what they consider the oppression of the majority, have refused to sit there, and so have deprived the representative body of much of its moral force. January 12, 1890. MINDEN ARMALS. 109 And here in conclusion may we not ask ourselves, is it not true that no such prejudice as exists between the white races of Europe to-day has ever existed between the white races and the black race here ; and may we not after all the worthless endeavors to perpetuate the past inequalities of condition of that black race, both by State legislatures and Church organizations, through the subversion of its elective franchise, the denial of its Christian association of its right to general education and association and the rite of marriage, come to the conclusion of the memoir which I restate here. " Emancipation is not the end, it is the beginning of the work which is to be done, before this struggle between the South and North populations will close. The legislation of caste and privilege must be wholly obliterated from your statute books, your liturgies, and social codes ; there cannot be black privileges and white privileges anywhere in these States. One part of the problem has been solved to-day by this extraordinary representative of your race ; that other part will follow in its time, for you cannot carry on without continual disturbance a government for free men, with laws, usages and customs in any part of your domain, suitable only for slaves. Antipathies will develop themselves there and will become stronger as the former slaveholder, unadaptable to labor, impoverishes and enfeebles there, and the black race strengthens, as it will continually strengthen there, under this emancipation. It is only by the removal of their cause these obsolete laws that these antipathies will cease. This has been the result upon every other race here which you have put upon the same plane with yourselves, and will be the same with the black race there. If you would now reimpose upon the other races which arrive year after year in your States, from Europe, the disa bilities which will remain in the South upon the black race after this war's close, you would relegate them also back to their antagonistic condition in Europe, and your whole civil- I io MINDEN ARMAIS. ization in these States would end in struggle after struggle between these races, as it does there. No prejudice between the white and black races here is at all comparable either in extent, duration or bitterness, with the prejudices between the races of Europe, which emigrate here. They live there, under codes and customs intolerable to humanity, which brutalize them, and so it is they are ready to destroy each other on any pretext ; and this will go on there until at last they will carry down their governments and every sacred thing, below resurrection. When they reach these shores all these disabilities are at once removed, and forever marriage for them here is free, one race with the other ; they are equal in elective franchise ; the roads of intercourse are as free to one as to the other ; their churches stand upon one common foundation, separate \vholly from the State ; education is as free and adequate to one as to the other ; military service with its robbery of their lives has ended, and their homes are secure from the violence of their former masters ; and so it is their hatreds, centuries long, disappear also at once and forever. And when you shall have given the negro race the same rights and privileges which you have given to the other races here, and so completed the work of emancipation, you will have removed from that race also as from the rest, all their and your anti pathies, and with them the last cause of difference, as far as we see to-day, to the progress of your country. Has their longer life here, the centuries long toil of their hands, their service to your race from the cradle to the grave, and their close lomestic relations, entitled them to less privileges than you accord to strangers of other races coming here without character, thrust upon your shores from the hovels and lazar-houses of Europe ? This does not seem credible, but if it shall be so if because you have denied them every right common to humanity, you will still deny them education, the marriage rite and the elective franchise, as freely as you do to other races here, how great will be the shame to your civilization ! 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