The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 40, February, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
But leaving this and other points on which we find ourselves at issue
with Mr. Fisher, we come to what we regard as the most important part of
his pamphlet,--the results which he shows to follow from the law, that
"each race has a tendency to occupy exclusively that portion of the
country suited to its nature." In the States that lie on the Gulf of
Mexico the negro "has found a congenial climate and obtained a permanent
foothold." "The negro multiplies there; the white man dwindles and
decays." We should be glad to quote at length the striking pages in
which Mr. Fisher shows the prospect of the ultimate and not distant
ascendency of the black race in this new Africa. The considerations he
presents are of vital consequence to the South, of consequence only less
than vital to the North. But by the side of "New-Africa" are States and
Territories in which the black race has little or no foothold. Free,
civilized, and prosperous communities are brought face to face, as it
were, with the mixed and degenerating populations of the Slave country.
In the Free States the white race is increasing in numbers and advancing
in prosperity with unexampled rapidity. In the Slave States the black
race is growing in far greater proportion than the white, the most
important elements of prosperity are becoming exhausted, and the
forces of civilization are incompetent to hold their own against the
ever-increasing weight of barbarism. Shall this new Africa push its
boundaries beyond their present limits? Shall more territory be yielded
to the already wide-spread African, race? It is not the question,
whether the unoccupied spaces of the South and West shall be settled by
Northern white emigrants with their natural property, or by Southern
white emigrants with their legal property,--and there an end; but it
is the question, whether New England or New Africa shall extend her
limits,--whether the country shall be occupied a century hence by a
civilized or by a barbarous race. Every rood of ground yielded to the
pretensions of the masters of slaves is so much of the heirloom of
freedom and of civilization lost without hope of recovery. Slavery is
transient.
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