XI.

During the more than two centuries of occupation of these southern lands there appear sufficient data to form, perhaps, some definite ideas of the success or failure of colonization, and the vague and doubtful process of acclimation. These evidences, thus far, are decidedly in favor of the black man. For he has multiplied with astonishing rapidity, and preserved his physical forces, and during this long and brutalizing term of his servitude he has not exhibited the ferocity of his master, save when hunted down like the beasts of prey, as in Hayti; neither has he sunk so low in the scale of true humanity as those who have held him in bondage.

The hungry and maimed soldier of the republic, escaping from the murderous prison-dens of the rebels, always found a crust of bread, a protecting shelter, and a kind word from the humblest and most oppressed of these beings.

Never were they betrayed by the black man, although the reward was large. Never were they denied assistance, although the penalty was death.

Although history seems to forbid, we are not of that class of men who maintain that there are inferior races, intended by nature for servitude; for we believe that every race contains the elements of greatness, and that there is a common destiny to all. And we cherish the idea that there is a better future even for the black man among the civilized nations of the earth. The singular aptitude of the black man for music, which is the language of the soul; his deep, sincere, immovable veneration for the precepts, the faith, the hope of Christianity, do not indicate a race lost to the nobler impulses, or to the benign influences of civilization, nor a people abandoned and accursed by Providence. God has gifted every living creature with the instinct of self-preservation; he has endowed all animated creatures of the human form with the love of the beautiful, with the desire of developing and perfecting their innate powers, and of leaving on earth some act, some memorial worthy of imitation or remembrance. He who declines to help his fellow-creature in the struggle for social existence, in the effort for happiness, knowledge, and immortality, is less than a man.

The problem of civilization is left mostly to the free will of men, and God blasts and crumbles into dust only those nations who have abused the gifts and privileges of nature, and who, when arriving at the height of prosperity and power, have disregarded and despised those principles of morality and religion which form the true base of all society. How all the noble aspirations may be crushed and the instincts perverted; how from a species of voluntary insanity, by our own fierce passions, and by a strange desire of mutual destruction, men rush on to contest and to ruin, is well illustrated by the past of the slave faction.