CAUSES OF HIS STATE OF SERVITUDE AND TRACES OF HIS CHARACTER, AS WELL IN ANCIENT AS IN WITH STRICTURES ON ABOLITIONISM. Embelished with Engravings. LOUISVILLE: PUBLISHED BY W. S. BROWN. 1849. CHT YRAGELI OOADINO P45 Entered according to the act of Congress, in the year 1843, by Josiah Priest, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Northern District of New-York. PREFACE. THAN a knowledge of the races and nations of men, who have peopled the globe since it was created, there can be no subject more interesting. With a view to an elucidation of this description, we present the work before us, in which an attempt is made to give, in some measure, a history of the origin, character, and fortunes, of the negro portion of mankind. In pursuit of this object we hope there needs no apology, because we have found it necessary to resort to the Holy Scriptures for much important information which relates to our design, as it is well known that those parts of that book which were written by Moses are the eldest writings of the human race now extant, and relate to the very first operations of the human race after the flood. As corroboratory of the developments of that miraculous book, we have also resorted to ancient and modern history, to travels, narratives, &c., which go to aid us in the research. As to the origin of the negro man, we have, in our cogitations, recollected several curious opinions relative to the subject, which we have thought proper to present, on account of their wild and extravagant character, as follows: Some have queried, whether the mother of the first negro man might not have been frightened by some hideous black monster of the antediluvian woods—as in the first ages of the world there were many terrible beasts of the wilderness roaming about, whose races are now extinct. There is one creature which existed then, and is not yet extinct, whose appearance, in its native haunts, is very frightful to behold; and this is the black ourang-outang, of which animal there are individuals known to have attained the enormous height D0428 of seven feet, covered entirely with shining black hair. The strange effects of fright on the offspring of mothers, is a well known phenomenon in the physiological history of man. Thus, as some have supposed, the negro race was produced, forming an entire new class of human beings, and distinguished from the nature, color, and character of the parents, by a fright of the mother. Others have seemed to believe, that, in the very first ages of the planet, and long before the creation of Adam, there existed a race of animals, having a resemblance to man, as has the ourang-outang, but of gigantic stature, as well as power, dwelling in communion with other beasts and monsters of that time. From this family of animals, it has been supposed that the negro race was derived, and brought forward by the continual mutations of nature, passing from one change to another in pursuit of maturity, with all things else, arriving at last to their highest point, as exhibited in the presence of the black or negro nations. It has also been believed, that, at a very early period of time, some community of men have been so situated, in relation to climate, food, and other circumstances, as to have been changed from their original stamp of complexion and character, to that of perfect blacks, thus originating the negro family of man. Some have imagined, that the origin of the race was a disease of the skin, which, being of an incurable nature, formed at length a radical character, and thus produced this people. Many have believed, that there was at first as many fathers and mothers created as there are now different races of men, from whom have descended the red, the white, the black, the brown, and the yellow tribes of the human race, discarding the account given in the Scriptures of there having been but one pair of human beings created. Others have imagined, that the mark set upon Cain by the Divine Power, for the crime of homicide, was that of jet, which not only changed the color of his body, but extended to the blood and the whole of his physical being, thus originating the negro race, a remnant of which they suppose, by means of some craft, or rather outrode the flood, anchoring on some lofty mountain, subsisting on the floating carcasses of the drowned animals till the earth was dried again. Thus many have mused on the subject of the origin of the negro race. But we reject all these schemes as the baseless hallucinations of vissionaries, even the mooted and equally absurb problem that climate, or any other contingency, became the origin of that people, and affirm that a cause of an entire different description from all these gave birth to the race, an account of which we shall give in the work. As to the mental character of the black nations, considered collectively, we have found them, in all ages, since their appearance on the earth, of but small account when compared with the other races of men, the red and white. In publishing our opinions, as presented in this work, we have been moved thereto, by the operations of conflicting principles, as held by abolitionists and anti-abolitionists, throughout the entire United States, believing that light was necessary, in order to learn the truth respecting the people in question, namely, the negro race. We are also anxious to ascertain the cause of this class of mankind being enslaved, in the low and degraded sense of the word. As to the history of the black portion of the human race it has occupied the pens of more writers than one; on which account we feel that we are not alone in this attempt, and, also, that we have advanced some new, and not uninteresting, |