American Institutions and Their Influence by Alexis de Tocqueville et al

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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.[251] 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.[252] 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.[253]

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.

Yet, at whatever period the strife may break out, the whites of the
south, even if they are abandoned to their own resources, will enter the
lists with an immense superiority of knowledge and of the means of
warfare: but the blacks will have numerical strength and the energy of
despair upon their side; and these are powerful resources to men who
have taken up arms. The fate of the white population of the southern
states will, perhaps, be similar to that of the Moors in Spain. After
having occupied the land for centuries, it will perhaps be forced to
retire to the country whence its ancestors came, and to abandon to the
negroes the possession of a territory, which Providence seems to have
more peculiarly destined for them, since they can subsist and labor in
it more easily than the whites.

The danger of a conflict between the white and the black inhabitants of
the southern states of the Union--a danger which, however remote it may
be, is inevitable--perpetually haunts the imagination of the Americans.
The inhabitants of the north make it a common topic of conversation,
although they have no direct injury to fear from the struggle; but they
vainly endeavor to devise some means of obviating the misfortunes which
they foresee. In the southern states the subject is not discussed: the
planter does not allude to the future in conversing with strangers; the
citizen does not communicate his apprehensions to his friends: he seeks
to conceal them from himself: but there is something more alarming in
the tacit forebodings of the south, than in the clamorous fears of the
northern states.

This all-pervading disquietude has given birth to an undertaking which
is but little known, but which may have the effect of changing the fate
of a portion of the human race. From apprehension of the dangers which I
have just been describing, a certain number of American citizens have
formed a society for the purpose of exporting to the coast of Guinea, at
their own expense, such free negroes as may be willing to escape from
the oppression to which they are subject.[254] In 1820, the society to
which I allude formed a settlement in Africa, upon the 7th degree of
north latitude, which bears the name of Liberia. The most recent
intelligence informs us that two thousand five hundred negroes are
collected there; they have introduced the democratic institutions of
America into the country of their forefathers; and Liberia has a
representative system of government, negro-jurymen, negro-magistrates,
and negro-priests; churches have been built, newspapers established,
and, by a singular change in the vicissitudes of the world, white men
are prohibited from sojourning within the settlement.[255]

This is indeed a strange caprice of fortune. Two hundred years have now
elapsed since the inhabitants of Europe undertook to tear the negro from
his family and his home, in order to transport him to the shores of
North America; at the present day, the European settlers are engaged in
sending back the descendants of those very negroes to the continent from
which they were originally taken; and the barbarous Africans have been
brought into contact with civilisation in the midst of bondage, and have
become acquainted with free political institutions in slavery. Up to the
present time Africa has been closed against the arts and sciences of the
whites; but the inventions of Europe will perhaps penetrate into those
regions, now that they are introduced by Africans themselves. The
settlement of Liberia is founded upon a lofty and a most fruitful idea;
but whatever may be its results with regard to the continent of Africa,
it can afford no remedy to the New World.

In twelve years the Colonization society has transported two thousand
five hundred negroes to Africa; in the same space of time about seven
hundred thousand blacks were born in the United States. If the colony of
Liberia were so situated as to be able to receive thousands of new
inhabitants every year, and if the negroes were in a state to be sent
thither with advantage; if the Union were to supply the society with
annual subsidies,[256] and to transport the negroes to Liberia, there is
little chance that the negro population of the United States would
change.

In the South, however, this leaves two choices: either for the whites to
remain in communities with the negroes, and to intermingle with them;
or, remaining isolated from them, to keep them in a state of slavery as
long as possible. All intermediate measures seem to me likely to
terminate, and that shortly, in the most horrible of civil wars, and
perhaps in the extirpation of one or other of the two races. Such is the
view which the Americans of the south take of the question, and they act
consistently with it. As they are determined not to mingle with the
negroes, they refuse to emancipate them.

Not that the inhabitants of the south regard slavery as necessary to the
wealth of the planter; for on this point many of them agree with their
northern countrymen in freely admitting that slavery is prejudicial to
their interests; but they are convinced that, however prejudicial it may
be, they hold their lives upon no other tenure. The instruction which is
now diffused in the south has convinced the inhabitants that slavery is
injurious to the slave-owner, but it has also shown them, more clearly
than before, that no means exist of getting rid of its bad consequences.
Hence arises a singular contrast; the more the utility of slavery is
contested, the more firmly is it established in the laws; and while the
principle of servitude is gradually abolished in the north, that
self-same principle gives rise to more and more rigorous consequences in
the south.

The legislation of the southern states, with regard to slaves, presents
at the present day such unparalleled atrocities, as suffice to show how
radically the laws of humanity have been perverted, and to betray the
desperate position of the community in which that legislation has been
promulgated. The Americans of this portion of the Union have not,
indeed, augmented the hardships of slavery; they have, on the contrary,
bettered the physical condition of the slaves. The only means by which
the ancients maintained slavery were fetters and death; the Americans of
the south of the Union have discovered more intellectual securities for
the duration of their power. They have employed their despotism and
their violence against the human mind. In antiquity, precautions were
taken to prevent the slave from breaking his chains; at the present day
measures are adopted to deprive him even of the desire of freedom. The
ancients kept the bodies of their slaves in bondage, but they placed no
restraint upon the mind and no check upon education; and they acted
consistently with their established principle, since a natural
termination of slavery then existed, and one day or other the slave
might be set free, and become the equal of his master. But the Americans
of the south, who do not admit that the negroes can ever be commingled
with themselves, have forbidden them to be taught to read or to write,
under severe penalties; and as they will not raise them to their own
level, they sink them as nearly as possible to that of the brutes.

The hope of liberty had always been allowed to the slave to cheer the
hardships of his condition. But the Americans of the south are well
aware that emancipation cannot but be dangerous, when the freed man can
never be assimilated to his former master. To give a man his freedom,
and to leave him in wretchedness and ignominy, is nothing less than to
prepare a future chief for a revolt of the slaves. Moreover, it has long
been remarked, that the presence of a free negro vaguely agitates the
minds of his less fortunate brethren, and conveys to them a dim notion
of their rights. The Americans of the south have consequently taken
measures to prevent slave-owners from emancipating their slaves in most
cases; not indeed by a positive prohibition, but by subjecting that step
to various forms which it is difficult to comply with.

I happened to meet with an old man, in the south of the Union, who had
lived in illicit intercourse with one of his negresses, and had had
several children by her, who were born the slaves of their father. He
had indeed frequently thought of bequeathing to them at least their
liberty; but years had elapsed without his being able to surmount the
legal obstacles to their emancipation, and in the meanwhile his old age
was come, and he was about to die. He pictured to himself his sons
dragged from market to market, and passing from the authority of a
parent to the rod of the stranger, until these horrid anticipations
worked his expiring imagination into phrensy. When I saw him he was a
prey to all the anguish of despair, and he made me feel how awful is the
retribution of Nature upon those who have broken her laws.

These evils are unquestionably great; but they are the necessary and
foreseen consequences of the very principle of modern slavery. When the
Europeans chose their slaves from a race differing from their own, which
many of them considered as inferior to the other races of mankind, and
which they all repelled with horror from any notion of intimate
connexion, they must have believed that slavery would last for ever;
since there is no intermediate state which can be durable, between the
excessive inequality produced by servitude, and the complete equality
which originates in independence. The Europeans did imperfectly feel
this truth, but without acknowledging it even to themselves. Whenever
they have had to do with negroes, their conduct has either been dictated
by their interest and their pride, or by their compassion. They first
violated every right of humanity by their treatment of the negro; and
they afterward informed him that those rights were precious and
inviolable. They affected to open their ranks to the slave, but the
negroes who attempted to penetrate into the community were driven back
with scorn; and they have incautiously and involuntarily been led to
admit of freedom instead of slavery, without having the courage to be
wholly iniquitous, or wholly just.[257]

If it be impossible to anticipate a period at which the Americans of the
south will mingle their blood with that of the negroes, can they allow
their slaves to become free without compromising their own security? And
if they are obliged to keep that race in bondage, in order to save their
own families, may they not be excused for availing themselves of the
means best adapted to that end? The events which are taking place in the
southern states of the Union, appear to be at once the most horrible and
the most natural results of slavery. When I see the order of nature
overthrown, and when I hear the cry of humanity in its vain struggle
against the laws, my indignation does not light upon the men of our own
time who were the instruments of these outrages; but I reserve my
execration for those who, after a thousand years of freedom, brought
back slavery into the world once more.

Whatever may be the efforts of the Americans of the south to maintain
slavery, they will not always succeed. Slavery, which is now confined to
a single tract of the civilized earth, which is attacked by Christianity
as unjust, and by political economy as prejudicial, and which is now
contrasted with democratic liberties and the information of our age,
cannot survive. By the choice of the master or the will of the slave, it
will cease; and in either case great calamities may be expected to
ensue. If liberty be refused to the negroes of the south, they will in
the end seize it for themselves by force; if it be given, they will
abuse it ere long.