American Institutions And Their Influence

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No sooner was the law of primogeniture abolished than fortunes
began to diminish, and all the families of the country were
simultaneously reduced to a state in which labor became necessary
to procure the means of subsistence: several of them have since
entirely disappeared; and all of them learned to look forward to
the time at which it would be necessary for every one to provide
for his own wants. Wealthy individuals are still to be met with,
but they no longer constitute a compact and hereditary body, nor
have they been able to adopt a line of conduct in which they
could persevere, and which they could infuse into all ranks of
society. The prejudice which stigmatized labor was in the first
place abandoned by common consent; the number of needy men was
increased, and the needy were allowed to gain a laborious
subsistence without blushing for their exertions. Thus one of
the most immediate consequences of the partible quality of
estates has been to create a class of free laborers. As soon as
a competition was set on foot between the free laborer and the
slave, the inferiority of the latter became manifest, and slavery
was attacked in its fundamental principles, which is, the
interest of the master.

As slavery recedes, the black population follows its retrograde
course, and returns with it to those tropical regions from which
it originally came. However singular this fact may at first
appear to be, it may readily be explained. Although the
Americans abolish the principle of slavery, they do not set their
slaves free. To illustrate this remark I will quote the example
of the state of New York. In 1788, the state of New York
prohibited the sale of slaves within its limits; which was an
indirect method of prohibiting the importation of blacks.
Thenceforward the number of negroes could only increase according
to the ratio of the natural increase of population. But eight
years later a more decisive measure was taken, and it was enacted
that all children born of slave parents after the 4th of July,
1799, should be free. No increase could then take place, and
although slaves still existed, slavery might be said to be
abolished.

From the time at which a northern state prohibited the
importation of slaves, no slaves were brought from the south to
be sold in its markets. On the other hand, as the sale of slaves
was forbidden in that state, an owner was no longer able to get
rid of his slaves (who thus became a burdensome possession)
otherwise than by transporting him to the south. But when a
northern state declared that the son of the slave should be born
free, the slave lost a large portion of his market value, since
his posterity was no longer included in the bargain, and the
owner had then a strong interest in transporting him to the
south. Thus the same law prevents the slaves of the south from
coming to the northern states, and drives those of the north to
the south.

The want of free hands is felt in a state in proportion as the
number of slaves decreases. But in proportion as labor is
performed by free hands, slave-labor becomes less productive; and
the slave is then a useless or an onerous possession, whom it is
important to export to those southern states where the same
competition is not to be feared. Thus the abolition of slavery
does not set the slave free, but it merely transfers him from one
master to another, and from the north to the south.

The emancipated negroes, and those born after the abolition of
slavery, do not, indeed, migrate from the north to the south; but
their situation with regard to the Europeans is not unlike that
of the aborigines of America; they remain half civilized, and
deprived of their rights in the midst of a population which is
far superior to them in wealth and in knowledge; where they are
exposed to the tyranny of the laws,[Footnote:

The states in which slavery is abolished usually do what they can
to render their territory disagreeable to the negroes as a place
of residence; and as a kind of emulation exists between the
different states in this respect, the unhappy blacks can only
choose the least of the evils which beset them.

] and the intolerance of the people. On some accounts they are
still more to be pitied than the Indians, since they are haunted
by the reminiscence of slavery, and they cannot claim possession
of a single portion of the soil: many of them perish
miserably,[Footnote:

There is a very great difference between the mortality of the
blacks and of the whites in the states in which slavery is
abolished; from 1820 to 1831 only one out of forty-two
individuals of the white population died in Philadelphia; but one
negro out of twenty-one individuals of the black population died
in the same space of time. The mortality is by no means so great
among the negroes who are still slaves. (See Emmerson's Medical
Statistics, p. 28.)

] and the rest congregate in the great towns, where they perform
the meanest offices, and lead a wretched and precarious
existence.

But even if the number of negroes continued to increase as
rapidly as when they were still in a state of slavery, as the
number of whites augments with twofold rapidity since the
abolition of slavery, the blacks would soon be, as it were, lost
in the midst of a strange population.

A district which is cultivated by slaves is in general more
scantily peopled than a district cultivated by free labor:
moreover, America is still a new country, and a state is
therefore not half peopled at the time when it abolished slavery.
No sooner is an end put to slavery, than the want of free labor
is felt, and a crowd of enterprising adventurers immediately
arrive from all parts of the country, who hasten to profit by the
fresh resources which are then opened to industry. The soil is
soon divided among them, and a family of white settlers takes
possession of each tract of country. Besides which, European
emigration is exclusively directed to the free states; for what
would be the fate of a poor emigrant who crosses the Atlantic in
search of ease and happiness, if he were to land in a country
where labor is stigmatized as degrading?

Thus the white population grows by its natural increase, and at
the same time by the immense influx of emigrants; while the black
population receives no emigrants, and is upon its decline. The
proportion which existed between the two races is soon inverted.
The negroes constitute a scanty remnant, a poor tribe of
vagrants, which is lost in the midst of an immense people in full
possession of the land; and the presence of the blacks is only
marked by the injustice and the hardships of which they are the
unhappy victims.

In several of the western states the negro race never made its
appearance; and in all the northern states it is rapidly
declining. Thus the great question of its future condition is
confined within a narrow circle, where it becomes less
formidable, though not more easy of solution.

The more we descend toward the south, the more difficult does it
become to abolish slavery with advantage: and this arises from
several physical causes, which it is important to point out.

The first of these causes is the climate: it is well known that
in proportion as Europeans approach the tropics, they suffer more
from labor. Many of the Americans even assert, that within a
certain latitude the exertions which a negro can make without
danger are fatal to them;[Footnote:

This is true of the spots in which rice is cultivated;
rice-grounds, which are unwholesome in all countries, are
particularly dangerous in those regions which are exposed to the
beams of a tropical sun. Europeans would not find it easy to
cultivate the soil in that part of the New World if it must
necessarily be made to produce rice: but may they not subsist
without rice-grounds?

] but I do not think that this opinion, which is so favorable to
the indolence of the inhabitants of southern regions, is
confirmed by experience. The southern parts of the Union are not
hotter than the south of Italy and of Spain;[Footnote:

These states are nearer to the equator than Italy and Spain, but
the temperature of the continent of America is very much lower
than that of Europe.

] and it may be asked why the European cannot work as well there
as in the two latter countries. If slavery has been abolished in
Italy and in Spain without causing the destruction of the
masters, why should not the same thing take place in the Union?
I cannot believe that Nature has prohibited the Europeans in
Georgia and the Floridas, under pain of death, from raising the
means of subsistence from the soil; but their labor would
unquestionably be more irksome and less productive[Footnote:

The Spanish government formerly caused a certain number of
peasants from the Azores to be transported into a district of
Louisiana called Attakapas, by way of experiment. These settlers
still cultivate the soil without the assistance of slaves, but
their industry is so languid as scarcely to supply their most
necessary wants.

] to them than the inhabitants of New England. As the free
workman thus loses a portion of his superiority over the slave in
the southern states, there are fewer inducements to abolish
slavery.

All the plants of Europe grow in the northern parts of the Union;
the south has special productions of its own. It has been
observed that slave labor is a very expensive method of
cultivating corn. The farmer of corn-land in a country where
slavery is unknown, habitually retains a small number of laborers
in his service, and at seed-time and harvest he hires several
additional hands, who only live at his cost for a short period.
But the agriculturist in a slave state is obliged to keep a large
number of slaves the whole year round, in order to sow his fields
and to gather in his crops, although their services are only
required for a few weeks; but slaves are unable to wait till they
are hired, and to subsist by their own labor in the meantime like
free laborers; in order to have their services, they must be
bought. Slavery, independently of its general disadvantages, is
therefore still more inapplicable to countries in which corn is
cultivated than to those which produce crops of a different kind.

The cultivation of tobacco, of cotton, and especially of the
sugar-cane, demands, on the other hand, unremitting attention:
and women and children are employed in it, whose services are of
but little use in the cultivation of wheat. Thus slavery is
naturally more fitted to the countries from which these
productions are derived.

Tobacco, cotton, and the sugar-cane, are exclusively grown in the
south, and they form one of the principal sources of the wealth
of those states. If slavery were abolished, the inhabitants of
the south would be constrained to adopt one of two alternatives:
they must either change their system of cultivation, and then
they would come into competition with the more active and more
experienced inhabitants of the north; or, if they continued to
cultivate the same produce without slave labor, they would have
to support the competition of the other states of the south,
which might still retain their slaves. Thus, peculiar reasons
for maintaining slavery exist in the south which do not operate
in the north.

But there is yet another motive which is more cogent than all the
others; the south might indeed, rigorously speaking, abolish
slavery, but how should it rid its territory of the black
population? Slaves and slavery are driven from the north by the
same law, but this twofold result cannot be hoped for in the
south.

The arguments which I have adduced to show that slavery is more
natural and more advantageous in the south than in the north,
sufficiently prove that the number of slaves must be far greater
in the former districts. It was to the southern settlements that
the first Africans were brought, and it is there that the
greatest number of them have always been imported. As we advance
toward the south, the prejudice which sanctions idleness
increases in power. In the states nearest to the tropics there
is not a single white laborer; the negroes are consequently much
more numerous in the south than in the north. And, as I have
already observed, this disproportion increases daily, since the
negroes are transferred to one part of the Union as soon as
slavery is abolished in the other. Thus the black population
augments in the south, not only by its natural fecundity, but by
the compulsory emigration of the negroes from the north; and the
African race has causes of increase in the south very analogous
to those which so powerfully accelerate the growth of the
European race in the north.

In the state of Maine there is one negro in three hundred
inhabitants; in Massachusetts, one in one hundred; in New York,
two in one hundred; in Pennsylvania, three in the same number; in
Maryland, thirty-four; in Virginia, forty-two; and lastly, in
South Carolina, fifty-five per cent.[Footnote:

We find it asserted in an American work, entitled, "Letters on
the Colonization Society," by Mr. Carey, 1833, that "for the last
forty years the black race has increased more rapidly than the
white race in the state of South Carolina; and that if we take
the average population of the five states of the south into which
slaves were first introduced, viz., Maryland, Virginia, South
Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia, we shall find that from
1790 to 1830, the whites have augmented in the proportion of 80
to 100, and the blacks in that of 112 to 100."

In the United States, 1830, the population of the two races stood
as follows:--

States where slavery is abolished, 6,565,434 whites; 120,520
blacks Slave states, 3,960,814 whites; 2,208,112 blacks.

[By the census of 1840, the population of the two races was as
follows: States where slavery is abolished, 9,556,065 whites;
171,854 blacks Slave states, 4,633,153 whites; 2,581,688 blacks.]

] Such was the proportion of the black population to the whites
in the year 1830. But this proportion is perpetually changing,
as it constantly decreases in the north and augments in the
south.

It is evident that the most southern states of the Union cannot
abolish slavery without incurring very great dangers, which the
north had no reason to apprehend when it emancipated its black
population. We have already shown the system by which the
northern states secure the transition from slavery to freedom, by
keeping the present generation in chains, and setting their
descendants free; by this means the negroes are gradually
introduced into society; and while the men who might abuse their
freedom are kept in a state of servitude, those who are
emancipated may learn the art of being free before they become
their own masters. But it would be difficult to apply this
method in the south. To declare that all the negroes born after
a certain period shall be free, is to introduce the principle and
the notion of liberty into the heart of slavery; the blacks, whom
the law thus maintains in a state of slavery from which their
children are delivered, are astonished at so unequal a fate, and
their astonishment is only the prelude to their impatience and
irritation. Thenceforward slavery loses in their eyes that kind
of moral power which it derived from time and habit; it is
reduced to a mere palpable abuse of force. The northern states
had nothing to fear from the contrast, because in them the blacks
were few in number, and the white population was very
considerable. But if this faint dawn of freedom were to show two
millions of men their true position, the oppressors would have
reason to tremble. After having enfranchised the children of
their slaves, the Europeans of the southern states would very
shortly be obliged to extend the same benefit to the whole black
population.

In the north, as I have already remarked, a two-fold migration
ensues upon the abolition of slavery, or even precedes that event
when circumstances have rendered it probable; the slaves quit the
country to be transported southward; and the whites of the
northern states as well as the emigrants from Europe hasten to
fill up their place. But these two causes cannot operate in the
same manner in the southern states. On the one hand, the mass of
slaves is too great for any expectation of their ever being
removed from the country to be entertained; and on the other
hand, the Europeans and the Anglo-Americans of the north are
afraid to come to inhabit a country, in which labor has not yet
been reinstated in its rightful honors. Besides, they very
justly look upon the states in which the proportion of the
negroes equals or exceeds that of the whites, as exposed to very
great dangers; and they refrain from turning their activity in
that direction.

Thus the inhabitants if the south would not be able, like their
northern countrymen, to initiate the slaves gradually into a
state of freedom, by abolishing slavery; they have no means of
perceptibly diminishing the black population, and they would
remain unsupported to repress its excesses. So that in the
course of a few years, a great people of free negroes would exist
in the heart of a white nation of equal size.

The same abuses of power which still maintain slavery, would then
become the source of the most alarming perils, which the white
population of the south might have to apprehend. At the present
time the descendants of the Europeans are the sole owners of the
land; the absolute masters of all labor; and the only persons who
are possessed of wealth, knowledge, and arms. The black is
destitute of all these advantages, but he subsists without them
because he is a slave. If he were free, and obliged to provide
for his own subsistence, would it be possible for him to remain
without these things and to support life? Or would not the very
instruments of the present superiority of the white, while
slavery exists, expose him to a thousand dangers if it were
abolished?

As long as the negro remains a slave, he may be kept in a
condition not very far removed from that of the brutes; but, with
his liberty, he cannot but acquire a degree of instruction which
will enable him to appreciate his misfortunes, and to discern a
remedy for them. Moreover, there exists a singular principle of
relative justice which is very firmly implanted in the human
heart. Men are much more forcibly struck by those inequalities
which exist within the circles of the same class, than with those
which may be remarked between different classes. It is more easy
for them to admit slavery, than to allow several millions of
citizens to exist under a load of eternal infamy and hereditary
wretchedness. In the north, the population of freed negroes
feels these hardships and resents these indignities; but its
members and its powers are small, while in the south it would be
numerous and strong.

As soon as it is admitted that the whites and the emancipated
blacks are placed upon the same territory in the situation of two
alien communities, it will readily be understood that there are
but two alternatives for the future; the negroes and the whites
must either wholly part or wholly mingle. I have already
expressed the conviction which I entertain as to the latter
event.[Footnote:

This opinion is sanctioned by authorities infinitely weightier
than anything that I can say; thus, for instance, it is stated in
the Memoirs of Jefferson (as collected by M. Conseil), "Nothing
is more clearly written in the book of destiny than the
emancipation of the blacks; and it is equally certain that the
two races will never live in a state of equal freedom under the
same government, so insurmountable are the barriers which nature,
habit, and opinions, have established between them."

] I do not imagine that the white and the black races will ever
live in any country upon an equal footing. But I believe the
difficulty to be still greater in the United States than
elsewhere. An isolated individual may surmount the prejudices of
religion, of his country, or of his race, and if this individual
is a king he may effect surprising changes in society; but a
whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself. A despot who
should subject the Americans and their former slaves to the same
yoke, might perhaps succeed in commingling their races; but as
long as the American democracy remains at the head of affairs, no
one will undertake so difficult a task; and it may be foreseen
that the freer the white population of the United States becomes,
the more isolated will it remain.[Footnote:

If the British West India planters had governed themselves, they
would assuredly not have passed the slave emancipation bill which
the mother country has recently imposed upon them.

]

I have previously observed that the mixed race is the true bond
of union between the Europeans and the Indians; just so the
mulattoes are the true means of transition between the white and
the negro; so that wherever mulattoes abound, the intermixture of
the two races is not impossible. In some parts of America the
European and the negro races are so crossed by one another, that
it is rare to meet with a man who is entirely black or entirely
white: when they are arrived at this point, the two races may
really be said to be combined; or rather to have been absorbed in
a third race, which is connected with both, without being
identical with either.

Of all the Europeans the English are those who have mixed least
with the negroes. More mulattoes are to be seen in the south of
the Union than in the north, but still they are infinitely more
scarce than in any other European colony: Mulattoes are by no
means numerous in the United States; they have no force peculiar
to themselves, and when quarrels originating in differences of
color take place, they generally side with the whites, just as
the lacqueys of the great in Europe assume the contemptuous airs
of nobility to the lower orders.

The pride of origin, which is natural to the English, is
singularly augmented by the personal pride which democratic
liberty fosters among the Americans: the white citizen of the
United States is proud of his race, and proud of himself. But if
the whites and the negroes do not intermingle in the north of the
Union, how should they mix in the south? Can it be supposed for
an instant, that an American of the southern states, placed, as
he must for ever be, between the white man with all his physical
and moral superiority, and the negro, will ever think of
preferring the latter? The Americans of the southern states have
two powerful passions, which will always keep them aloof; the
first is the fear of being assimilated to the negroes, their
former slaves; and the second, the dread of sinking below the
whites, their neighbors.

If I were called upon to predict what will probably occur at some
future time, I should say, that the abolition of slavery in the
south, will, in the common course of things, increase the
repugnance of the white population for the men of color. I found
this opinion upon the analogous observation which I already had
occasion to make in the north. I there remarked, that the white
inhabitants of the north avoid the negroes with increasing care,
in proportion as the legal barriers of separation are removed by
the legislature; and why should not the same result take place in
the south? In the north, the whites are deterred from
intermingling with the blacks by the fear of an imaginary danger;
in the south, where the danger would be real, I cannot imagine
that the fear would be less general.

If, on the one hand, it be admitted (and the fact is
unquestionable), that the colored population perpetually
accumulates in the extreme south, and that it increases more
rapidly than that of the whites; and if, on the other hand, it be
allowed that it is impossible to foresee a time at which the
whites and the blacks will be so intermingled as to derive the
same benefits from society; must it not be inferred, that the
blacks and the whites will, sooner or later, come to open strife
in the southern states of the Union? But if it be asked what the
issue of the struggle is likely to be, it will readily be
understood, that we are here left to form a very vague surmise of
the truth. The human mind may succeed in tracing a wide circle,
as it were, which includes the course of future events; but
within that circle a thousand various chances and circumstances
may direct it in as many different ways; and in every picture of
the future there is a dim spot, which the eye of the
understanding cannot penetrate. It appears, however, to be
extremely probable, that, in the West India islands the white
race is destined to be subdued, and the black population to share
the same fate upon the continent.

In the West India islands the white planters are surrounded by an
immense black population; on the continent, the blacks are placed
between the ocean and an innumerable people, which already
extends over them in a dense mass from the icy confines of Canada
to the frontiers of Virginia, and from the banks of the Missouri
to the shores of the Atlantic. If the white citizens of North
America remain united, it cannot be supposed that the negroes
will escape the destruction with which they are menaced; they
must be subdued by want or by the sword. But the black
population which is accumulating along the coast of the gulf of
Mexico, has a chance of success, if the American Union is
dissolved when the struggle between the two races begins. If the
federal tie were broken, the citizens of the south would be wrong
to rely upon any lasting succor from their northern countrymen.
The latter are well aware that the danger can never reach them;
and unless they are constrained to march to the assistance of the
south by a positive obligation, it may be foreseen that the
sympathy of color will be insufficient to stimulate their
exertions.