Negroes and Negro "Slavery:" the first an inferior race: the latter its normal condition.Van Evrie, John H.
History
Negroes and Negro "Slavery:" the first an inferior race: the latter its normal condition.
Van Evrie, John H.
African Americans; Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States
has since so overshadowed the land, and, with the best intentions on
their part, so deluded Americans themselves into a blind warfare against
the progress, prosperity, and indeed the civilization, of their country
and continent. In the seven years’ war waged to crush out the rebellion
of the Colonies, England subsidized the savage Indian tribes wherever it
was possible to do so; and in the subsequent War of 1812, her agents
partially succeeded in combining all the savages on our western border,
under Tecumseh, with the design of shutting us out forever from the
country west of the Mississippi. The result of this monstrous alliance
of European monarchists and American savages to beat back the advancing
civilization of the New World, to hold in check, and, if possible, to
defeat and overthrow republicanism, has ended in the destruction and
almost utter annihilation of the North American Indians. General
Jackson’s campaigns in Florida, as well as those of Harrison in the
West, and, to a certain extent, even the later Seminole War, all had
their origin in the same causes, the open or secret intrigues of British
agents, stimulating the savages to resist the onward march of American
civilization. Nor was it anything like the former contests of the agents
of England and France to enlist the aid of the savages against each
other; for, repulsive and iniquitous as it may be for men of the same
race to employ subordinate races against their own blood, they were
struggling for possession of a continent, and all means, doubtless,
seemed legitimate that should give them victory. But in this case it was
a war against Americanism—against a new order of political
society—against a system based on a principle of utter antagonism to
monarchism, and which if permitted to develop its legitimate results, to
grow into a new and grander order of civilized society than the world
had ever yet witnessed, the rotten and worn-out systems of Europe were
doomed to certain and perhaps early overthrow. It is true, the agents
employed did not know this—indeed, their European masters were ignorant,
perhaps, of the principles involved; but the instinct of
self-preservation, the instinct inherent in hostile systems impelled
them forward, while the ends to be reached, or the consequences of
success, were always too apparent to be mistaken. But their savage
instruments were destroyed in the conflict, in the uses to which they
were applied by their European allies; and whatever may be the future
fate of the Aborigines in Spanish America, the North American Indian is
virtually annihilated. A few wild tribes of the West and South-west,
whose means for preserving existence are every day growing less, still
remain, and some remnants of semi-civilized tribes, which are perishing
even more rapidly than the former, are to be found on our Western
frontier; but the time is not distant, perhaps, when they will be wholly
and absolutely extinct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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