Travels in the United States of America Part 11

He lives now _crowned_ with _Christ_; His name was Humphrey Atherton."

In order to understand the second, I must inform you, it is usual for boys, who expect christmas boxes, to present their masters' customers with a copy of verses, expressive of their good wishes, &c. The call-boy of the theatre, (a mechanic's son of this town,) had the following _verses_ written in the usual style by the _poet_ commonly employed on these occasions, and when printed, delivered one to each of the performers.--

"THE CALL-BOY OF THE THEATRE, FEDERAL-STREET, NEW YEAR'S WISH, 1797.

"Look up, worthy friends, from yonder bright hills See how Phoebus smiles, to hail the new year: I bring you a tribute--rejoice thus to find, So many are living, and meet with us here.

"May health be confirm'd, and sickness remov'd; May no sweeping flames take place in this state; We sympathise deeply with neighbouring friends, Whose cup has run over with this bitter fate.

"May _teachers_ this day find _help from above_ To publish glad news, as _heralds of grace_, While _Zion_ is mourning her light shall break forth, And shadows of midnight away from her chase.

"I wish through this year _G.o.d's presence_ may smile On all your just schemes at home or abroad; I wish you his protection, by sea or by land; May your _theatrical works_ find favour in _G.o.d_.

[Footnote: The boy must surely mean the _G.o.ds_.]

"Gentlemen and ladies, accept these wishes sincere, And I wish you all a happy new year."

_Boston, January 1st, 1797._

DEAR FRIEND,

To answer your last, wherein you desire me to send you the exact state of negro slavery in this country, is a task to which I am unequal.

You will conceive the great difficulty of obliging you in this request, when you are informed, that on this subject each individual state has it's own laws. The only point in which they are unanimous, is to prohibit their importation, either from the Coast of Africa, or the West Indies. I can only inform you in general terms, that in the _southern states_ there is little alteration in the negro code since the revolution; of course the laws are nearly the same as in the British West India islands. In the _middle states_, though negro slavery is allowed, their situation has been considerably meliorated, by a variety of laws in their favour, some tending to their gradual emanc.i.p.ation, others to render their servitude less irksome, &c.

Societies are formed in several of the large towns to enforce these lenient laws, and to purchase the freedom of a few of the most deserving slaves. The quakers, beside liberating all their negroes, have contributed liberally towards the funds these societies have established, for carrying their benevolent intentions into effect. In consequence of these measures, there are a number of free negroes in Philadelphia, whose situation is very comfortable. A handsome episcopalian church has been built for their use, and one of the most respectable negroes ordained, who performs all the duties of his office with great solemnity and fervour of devotion, a.s.sisted occasionally by his white brethren; and there are also two schools, where the children of people of colour are educated gratis; one supported by the quakers, the other by the abolition society.

Negro slavery, under any modification or form, is prohibited in this state (Ma.s.sachusetts,) also in New Hamps.h.i.+re, the province of Maine, and, _I believe_, in all the _New England states_.

As to your other queries respecting the negroes, I send you my sentiments, infinitely better expressed by Jefferson, notwithstanding all that Imlay, Wilberforce, and other authors, have written against his a.s.sertion, viz., that "Negroes are _inferiour_ to the whites, both in the endowments of _body_ and _mind_." I am clearly and decidedly of his opinion. A strict attention to this subject, during three years residence in these states, has convinced me of the truth of every t.i.ttle of the following extract from his Virginia, which I enclose for your perusal, and am, most sincerely,

Yours, &c.

"The first difference that strikes us is colour. Whether the black of the negro reside in the reticular membrane, between the skin and scarf skin, or in the scarf skin itself; whether it proceed from the colour of the blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if it's seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less share of beauty in the two races?

Are not the fine mixtures of red and white, the expression of every pa.s.sion by a greater or less suffusion of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal monotony, that immovable veil of black, which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites, declared by their preference to them, as uniformly as is the preference of the oroonowtang for the black women over those of his own species? The circ.u.mstance of superiour beauty is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man?

"Beside those of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions, proving a difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less by the kidneys, and more by the glands of the skin; which gives them a very strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. Perhaps a difference of structure in the pulmonary aparatus, which a late ingenious experimentalist, (Crawford) has discovered to be the princ.i.p.al regulator of animal heat, may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so much of that fluid from the outer air; or obliged them, in expiration, to part with more of it.

"They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour through the day, will be induced by the slightest amus.e.m.e.nt, to sit up till midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the dawn of the morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventurous; but this may proceed from want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a danger till it be present; when present, they do not go through it with more coolness and steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after the female; but love seems with them more an eager desire, than a tender delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those numberless afflictions which render it doubtful, whether Heaven has given life to us more in mercy, or in wrath, are less felt and sooner forgotten with them.

In general, their existence appears to partic.i.p.ate more of sensation than reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep, when abstracted from their diversions, or unemployed in labour. An animal, whose body is at rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory, they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferiour. As I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing, and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation. We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites. And where the facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed, it will be right to make allowances for the difference of condition, of conversation, and of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to tillage, to their own homes, and their own society; yet many have been so situate, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that circ.u.mstance have always been a.s.sociated with the whites; some have been liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples of the best work from abroad. The Indians with no advantages of this kind, will often carve figures on their pipes, not dest.i.tute of merit and design. They will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germe in their minds, which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with strokes of the most sublime oratory, such as prove their reason and sentiment strong, their imagination glowing and elevated; but never yet could I find a black, that had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration[Footnote: "Sleep hab no ma.s.sa," was the answer of a sleepy negro, who was told that his ma.s.sa called him.--See Edward's History of Jamaica, 2d Vol.]; never see even an elementary trait of painting, or sculpture. In music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune, and time; and they have been found capable of imagining a small catch[Footnote: "The instrument proper to them is the _banjore_, which they brought here from Africa, and which is the origin of the guitar, it's chords being precisely the four lower chords of that instrument." J---- N.]. Whether they will be equal to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated harmony[Footnote: From this circ.u.mstance, I conceive our author's _catch_ was improperly so called.], is yet to be proved.

Misery is often the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, G.o.d knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet: their love is ardent; but it kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion, or rather fanaticism, has produced a _Phyllis Wheatly_; but it could not produce a poet.

Ignatius Sancho has approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more credit to the heart than the head; supposing them to have been genuine, and to have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be easy of investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition in life.

"The white slaves, among the Romans, were often their rarest artists; they excelled too in science, insomuch as to be usually employed as tutors to their masters' children. Epictetus, Terence, and Phoedrus, were slaves.

Whether further observation will, or will not, verify the conjecture, that Nature has been less bountiful to them, in the endowments of the head, I believe in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice.

That disposition to theft, with which they have been branded, must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense.

The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience. And it is a problem which I give the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property, were not formed for _him_, as well as his slave, and whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken _all_ from him, as he would slay one that would slay him?

"That a change in the relation in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong, is neither new, nor confined to the blacks; Homer tells us, it was so 2600 years ago:--'Jove fixed it certain, that whatever day makes a man a slave, takes half his worth away.' But the slaves Homer speaks of were whites.

"But to return to the blacks. Notwithstanding this consideration, which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity; and as many as among their better instructed masters, of benevolence, grat.i.tude, and unshaken fidelity.

"The opinion that they are inferiour in the faculties of reason and imagination, must be hazarded with great diffidence. To justify a general conclusion requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the anatomical knife, to optical gla.s.ses, to a.n.a.lysis by fire or solvents: how much more, then, when it is a faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research of all the senses; where the conditions of it's existence are various, and variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, in a circ.u.mstance where our conclusions would degrade a whole race of men from the rank in the scale of beings, which their Creator may perhaps have given them! To our reproach it must be said, though for a century and a half we have had under our eyes the races of black and red men, they have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks[Footnote: Where Jefferson makes use of the word _Black_, in this extract, it is rigidly confined to the _Negroes_ originally from the coast of Africa, or their descendants.], whether originally a distinct race, or made so by time and circ.u.mstances, are inferiour to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind."

_Boston, December 29th, 1796._

DEAR FRIEND,

Upon my arrival here, I had once more the mortification to find myself in the neighbourhood of the yellow fever, which had lately been imported. The uncommon, early, and severe north-west winds entirely prevented it from spreading; a fortunate circ.u.mstance for the inhabitants of Boston, as, from the narrowness of their streets, great population, and other circ.u.mstances, it must have been very fatal, had it not been by this means destroyed.

In order to give you the most regular account of this disorder I could procure, I must repeat several circ.u.mstances from former letters.

The yellow fever, which has lately been so fatal, is a _new disorder_, first brought to the West Indies, in a slave-s.h.i.+p from the coast of Africa, late in the year 1792. It spread rapidly from island to island, and in July, 1793, was first imported to the continent in a french schooner to Philadelphia. The physicians of that city, naturally concluding it was the usual yellow fever of the West Indies, applied the common remedies in that case: viz., bark, and other astringents. In nine cases out of ten, death was the inevitable consequence to all who took these medicines. The disease was equally fatal to the faculty. A universal despondency took place, till doctor Rush, suspecting this was a new disorder, applied an opposite method of cure, by mercurial medicines, and copious bleedings; which, when administered in the first or second stage of the disorder, had the desired effect.

I send you an extract from the doctor's pamphlet, wherein he explains his motives for adopting this method of cure, &c.

Speaking of the effect of the lancet, he says, "It was at this time my old master reminded me of Dr. Sydenham's remark, that _moderate_ bleeding did harm in the plague, where _copious_ bleeding was indicated, and that, in the cure of that disorder, we should leave Nature wholly to herself, or take the cure altogether out of her hands."

The truth of this observation was obvious:--By taking away as much blood as restored the blood-vessels to a morbid degree of action, without reducing this action afterward, pain, congestion, and inflammation, were greatly increased; all of which were prevented, or occurred in a less degree, when the system rose gradually from the state of depression which had been induced by indirect debility. Under the influence of the facts and reasonings which have been mentioned, I bore the same testimony in acute cases against what was called _moderate_ bleeding, that I did against bark, wine, and laudanum, in this fever.--I drew from many persons seventy or eighty ounces of blood in five days.

After the cold weather had completely destroyed this disorder, it did not appear again in the United States till the next year, when it was imported to Baltimore and New Haven; a distance from each other of more than five hundred miles. The cold weather again destroyed it, till carried, in 1795, to Charleston and New York, equally distant from each other; and this summer it was imported to Charleston, New York, Boston, and Newbery Port; a distance of one thousand five hundred miles along the coast; but fortunately the early N.W. winds destroyed it in all these places before it had made any considerable progress.

A quarantine upon vessels from the infected islands would effectually prevent the importation of this plague; but if performed in the _literal sense of the word_, it would materially hurt the West India trade of the Americans.

You have little to fear from this disorder being brought to England; experience has clearly proved, this fever cannot exist in a _cold_ climate; but was it to be imported to the south of Europe, the consequences would be dreadful indeed. I before told you, the negroes were not afflicted with the yellow fever, though universally employed as nurses to the sick.

A disease that will affect but _one_ species of men is not new. About the year 1652, a very dreadful and uncommon plague ravaged this part of America, and actually extirpated several nations of the Indians, without, in a single instance, affecting the _white_ emigrants, though continually among them. This strange circ.u.mstance the fanatics of New England accounted for in their usual way, as appears from several of their sermons, still preserved:--

"It was a just judgment of G.o.d upon these heathenish and idolatrous nations; the Lord took this method of destroying them, that he might make the more room for his _chosen people_." A _philosopher_ would perhaps demand a better reason. Apropos of philosophers--An american writer has been endeavouring to investigate the age of the world, from the _Falls of Niagara!_ According to _his_ calculation (which, by the by, is not a little curious) it is _36960_ years since the first rain fell upon the face of the earth!

Yours, &c.

_Boston, December 19th, 1796._

DEAR SIR,

I before hinted to you, that the Americans pay very little attention to their fisheries.

Exclusive of the shad fishery, which is only two months in the year, there is not _one_ individual, either in the city of Philadelphia, or it's vicinity, who procures a livelihood by catching fish in the Delaware, though that river abounds with sturgeon, perch, cat-fish, eels, and a vast variety of others, which would meet with a sure sale in the Philadelphia markets: but this is a trifle to their neglect of the greatest fishery in the universe; for such certainly is that on the banks of Newfoundland.

The Americans now being at peace with most of the piratical states of Barbary, will find an excellent market for their fish in the Mediterranean. This circ.u.mstance may induce congress to pay some attention to the hints thrown out by Dr. Belknap, in his Account of the American Newfoundland Fishery, which I transcribe for you perusal:--

"The cod-fishery is either carried on by boats or schooners. The boats in the winter season go out in the morning, and return at night. In the spring they do not return till they are filled. The schooners make three trips to the banks of Newfoundland in a season; the first, or spring cargo, are large, thick fish, which, after being properly salted and dried, are kept alternately above and under ground, till they become so mellow as to be denominated _dumb fish_. These, when boiled, are red, and of an excellent quality; they are chiefly consumed in these states.

The fish caught in the other two trips, during the summer and fall, are white, thin, and less firm; these are exported to Europe and the West Indies; they are divided into two sorts; one called merchantable, and the other Jamaica fish.