Volume 1

Memoirs read before the Anthropological Society of London.

Date:
1865-1870
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Memoirs read before the Anthropological Society of London. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

    40/612 (page 28)
    ualityj than in ours; but more amiabloness, tranquillity, gentle- ness, and content. Now, if it were possible to civilise tliem, there is no doubt they would show less energy, courage, and intellectual originality (of which they would be utterly deficient) and, as to their amiableness, tranquillity, gentleness, and con- tent, it would be more like the tranquillity and content shown by some of our domestic animals than anything else to which we can compare it. It has been said that the present slave- holders of America no more think of insurrection amongst their full-blooded slaves than they do of rebellion amongst their cows and horses ! * It has also been aflfirmed (and I beheve with truth) that not a single soldier has been required to keep order in the so called Slave States of America. The many assumed cases of civilised Negroes are generally not those of pure Negro blood. In the Southern States of North America, in the West Indies and other places, it has been fre- quently observed that the Negroes in place of trust have Euro- pean features, and some writers have supposed that these changes have been due to a gradual improvement in the Negro race, which is taking place under favourable circumstances. It is assumed that great improvement has taken place in the intellect of the Negro by education, which we much doubt. It is simply the European blood in their veins which renders them fit for places of power, and they often use this power far more cruelly than either of the pure blooded races. At the same time, there are doubtless many exceptions to this rule; dependiug perhaps on the amount of mixture of blood and inherited peculiarities. It has been affirmed that ocpa- sionally there are seen Negroes of pure blood who possess * The Southern planter, with a consciousness of superiority that would be ashamed to resort to fiction or imposition of any kind, takes olF his coat and works in the same field and at the same labom- as his ' slave.' The thought of the latter contesting his superiority never once enters his mind. As .said by a sound statesman and gallant soldier of the South, ' we no more think of a Negro insurrection, than we do of a rebellion of our cows and horses.' The planter rules as natm-aUy as the Negro obeys instinctively; the relation between them is natui'al, harmonious, and necessaiy, and tlieir interests being indivisible, there can be no cause or motive, either for the abu^ of power on the part of the master, or of rebellion on the part of the sei-vant.—Negroes and Negro Slavery. By J. H. Van Evrie, M.D. New York, 1861, p. 29.