History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0099/00998.txt

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$Title{Democracy In America
Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races - Part III}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{De Tocqueville, Alexis}
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$Subject{states
slavery
united
upon
indians
negroes
amongst
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whites
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$Date{1899}
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Title:       Democracy In America
Book:        Volume I
Author:      De Tocqueville, Alexis
Date:        1899
Translation: Reeve, Henry

Chapter XVIII: Future Condition Of Three Races - Part III

     In 1830 the State of Mississippi assimilated the Choctaws and Chickasaws
to the white population, and declared that any of them that should take the
title of chief would be punished by a fine of $1,000 and a year's
imprisonment.  When these laws were enforced upon the Choctaws, who inhabited
that district, the tribe assembled, their chief communicated to them the
intentions of the whites, and read to them some of the laws to which it was
intended that they should submit; and they unanimously declared that it was
better at once to retreat again into the wilds.]

     If we consider the tyrannical measures which have been adopted by the
legislatures of the Southern States, the conduct of their Governors, and the
decrees of their courts of justice, we shall be convinced that the entire
expulsion of the Indians is the final result to which the efforts of their
policy are directed.  The Americans of that part of the Union look with
jealousy upon the aborigines, ^v they are aware that these tribes have not yet
lost the traditions of savage life, and before civilization has permanently
fixed them to the soil, it is intended to force them to recede by reducing
them to despair.  The Creeks and Cherokees, oppressed by the several States,
have appealed to the central government, which is by no means insensible to
their misfortunes, and is sincerely desirous of saving the remnant of the
natives, and of maintaining them in the free possession of that territory,
which the Union is pledged to respect. ^w But the several States oppose so
formidable a resistance to the execution of this design, that the government
is obliged to consent to the extirpation of a few barbarous tribes in order
not to endanger the safety of the American Union.

[Footnote v: The Georgians, who are so much annoyed by the proximity of the
Indians, inhabit a territory which does not at present contain more than seven
inhabitants to the square mile.  In France there are one hundred and sixty-two
inhabitants to the same extent of country.]

[Footnote w: In 1818 Congress appointed commissioners to visit the Arkansas
Territory, accompanied by a deputation of Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws.
This expedition was commanded by Messrs. Kennerly, M'Coy, Wash Hood, and John
Bell.  See the different reports of the commissioners, and their journal, in
the Documents of Congress, No. 87, House of Representatives.]

     But the federal government, which is not able to protect the Indians,
would fain mitigate the hardships of their lot; and, with this intention,
proposals have been made to transport them into more remote regions at the
public cost.

     Between the thirty-third and thirty-seventh degrees of north latitude, a
vast tract of country lies, which has taken the name of Arkansas, from the
principal river that waters its extent.  It is bounded on the one side by the
confines of Mexico, on the other by the Mississippi.  Numberless streams cross
it in every direction; the climate is mild, and the soil productive, but it is
only inhabited by a few wandering hordes of savages.  The government of the
Union wishes to transport the broken remnants of the indigenous population of
the South to the portion of this country which is nearest to Mexico, and at a
great distance from the American settlements.

     We were assured, towards the end of the year 1831, that 10,000 Indians
had already gone down to the shores of the Arkansas; and fresh detachments
were constantly following them; but Congress has been unable to excite a
unanimous determination in those whom it is disposed to protect.  Some,
indeed, are willing to quit the seat of oppression, but the most enlightened
members of the community refuse to abandon their recent dwellings and their
springing crops; they are of opinion that the work of civilization, once
interrupted, will never be resumed; they fear that those domestic habits which
have been so recently contracted, may be irrevocably lost in the midst of a
country which is still barbarous, and where nothing is prepared for the
subsistence of an agricultural people; they know that their entrance into
those wilds will be opposed by inimical hordes, and that they have lost the
energy of barbarians, without acquiring the resources of civilization to
resist their attacks.  Moreover, the Indians readily discover that the
settlement which is proposed to them is merely a temporary expedient.  Who can
assure them that they will at length be allowed to dwell in peace in their new
retreat?  The United States pledge themselves to the observance of the
obligation; but the territory which they at present occupy was formerly
secured to them by the most solemn oaths of Anglo-American faith. ^x The
American government does not indeed rob them of their lands, but it allows
perpetual incursions to be made on them.  In a few years the same white
population which now flocks around them, will track them to the solitudes of
the Arkansas; they will then be exposed to the same evils without the same
remedies, and as the limits of the earth will at last fail them, their only
refuge is the grave.

[Footnote x: The fifth article of the treaty made with the Creeks in August,
1790, is in the following words: - "The United States solemnly guarantee to
the Creek nation all their land within the limits of the United States."

     The seventh article of the treaty concluded in 1791 with the Cherokees
says: - "The United States solemnly guarantee to the Cherokee nation all their
lands not hereby ceded." The following article declared that if any citizen of
the United States or other settler not of the Indian race should establish
himself upon the territory of the Cherokees, the United States would withdraw
their protection from that individual, and give him up to be punished as the
Cherokee nation should think fit.]

     The Union treats the Indians with less cupidity and rigor than the policy
of the several States, but the two governments are alike destitute of good
faith.  The States extend what they are pleased to term the benefits of their
laws to the Indians, with a belief that the tribes will recede rather than
submit; and the central government, which promises a permanent refuge to these
unhappy beings is well aware of its inability to secure it to them. ^y

[Footnote y: This does not prevent them from promising in the most solemn
manner to do so.  See the letter of the President addressed to the Creek
Indians, March 23, 1829 (Proceedings of the Indian Board, in the city of New
York, p. 5): "Beyond the great river Mississippi, where a part of your nation
has gone, your father has provided a country large enough for all of you, and
he advises you to remove to it.  There your white brothers will not trouble
you; they will have no claim to the land, and you can live upon it, you and
all your children, as long as the grass grows, or the water runs, in peace and
plenty.  It will be yours forever."

     The Secretary of War, in a letter written to the Cherokees, April 18,
1829, (see the same work, p. 6), declares to them that they cannot expect to
retain possession of the lands at that time occupied by them, but gives them
the most positive assurance of uninterrupted peace if they would remove beyond
the Mississippi: as if the power which could not grant them protection then,
would be able to afford it them hereafter!]

     Thus the tyranny of the States obliges the savages to retire, the Union,
by its promises and resources, facilitates their retreat; and these measures
tend to precisely the same end. ^z "By the will of our Father in Heaven, the
Governor of the whole world," said the Cherokees in their petition to
Congress, ^a "the red man of America has become small, and the white man great
and renowned.  When the ancestors of the people of these United States first
came to the shores of America they found the red man strong: though he was
ignorant and savage, yet he received them kindly, and gave them dry land to
rest their weary feet.  They met in peace, and shook hands in token of
friendship.  Whatever the white man wanted and asked of the Indian, the latter
willingly gave.  At that time the Indian was the lord, and the white man the
suppliant.  But now the scene has changed.  The strength of the red man has
become weakness.  As his neighbors increased in numbers his power became less
and less, and now, of the many and powerful tribes who once covered these
United States, only a few are to be seen - a few whom a sweeping pestilence
has left.  The northern tribes, who were once so numerous and powerful, are
now nearly extinct.  Thus it has happened to the red man of America.  Shall
we, who are remnants, share the same fate?

[Footnote z: To obtain a correct idea of the policy pursued by the several
States and the Union with respect to the Indians, it is necessary to consult,
1st, "The Laws of the Colonial and State Governments relating to the Indian
Inhabitants." (See the Legislative Documents, 21st Congress, No. 319.) 2d, The
Laws of the Union on the same subject, and especially that of March 30, 1802.
(See Story's "Laws of the United States.") 3d, The Report of Mr. Cass,
Secretary of War, relative to Indian Affairs, November 29, 1823.]

[Footnote a: December 18, 1829.]

     "The land on which we stand we have received as an inheritance from our
fathers, who possessed it from time immemorial, as a gift from our common
Father in Heaven.  They bequeathed it to us as their children, and we have
sacredly kept it, as containing the remains of our beloved men.  This right of
inheritance we have never ceded nor ever forfeited.  Permit us to ask what
better right can the people have to a country than the right of inheritance
and immemorial peaceable possession?  We know it is said of late by the State
of Georgia and by the Executive of the United States, that we have forfeited
this right; but we think this is said gratuitously.  At what time have we made
the forfeit?  What great crime have we committed, whereby we must forever be
divested of our country and rights?  Was it when we were hostile to the United
States, and took part with the King of Great Britain, during the struggle for
independence?  If so, why was not this forfeiture declared in the first treaty
of peace between the United States and our beloved men? Why was not such an
article as the following inserted in the treaty: - 'The United States give
peace to the Cherokees, but, for the part they took in the late war, declare
them to be but tenants at will, to be removed when the convenience of the
States, within whose chartered limits they live, shall require it'?  That was
the proper time to assume such a possession.  But it was not thought of, nor
would our forefathers have agreed to any treaty whose tendency was to deprive
them of their rights and their country."

     Such is the language of the Indians: their assertions are true, their
forebodings inevitable.  From whichever side we consider the destinies of the
aborigines of North America, their calamities appear to be irremediable: if
they continue barbarous, they are forced to retire; if they attempt to
civilize their manners, the contact of a more civilized community subjects
them to oppression and destitution.  They perish if they continue to wander
from waste to waste, and if they attempt to settle they still must perish; the
assistance of Europeans is necessary to instruct them, but the approach of
Europeans corrupts and repels them into savage life; they refuse to change
their habits as long as their solitudes are their own, and it is too late to
change them when they are constrained to submit.

     The Spaniards pursued the Indians with bloodhounds, like wild beasts;
they sacked the New World with no more temper or compassion than a city taken
by storm; but destruction must cease, and frenzy be stayed; the remnant of the
Indian population which had escaped the massacre mixed with its conquerors,
and adopted in the end their religion and their manners. ^b The conduct of the
Americans of the United States towards the aborigines is characterized, on the
other hand, by a singular attachment to the formalities of law.  Provided that
the Indians retain their barbarous condition, the Americans take no part in
their affairs; they treat them as independent nations, and do not possess
themselves of their hunting grounds without a treaty of purchase; and if an
Indian nation happens to be so encroached upon as to be unable to subsist upon
its territory, they afford it brotherly assistance in transporting it to a
grave sufficiently remote from the land of its fathers.

[Footnote b: The honor of this result is, however, by no means due to the
Spaniards.  If the Indian tribes had not been tillers of the ground at the
time of the arrival of the Europeans, they would unquestionably have been
destroyed in South as well as in North America.]

     The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by those
unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible shame, nor did they
even succeed in wholly depriving it of its rights; but the Americans of the
United States have accomplished this twofold purpose with singular felicity;
tranquilly, legally, philanthropically, without shedding blood, and without
violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world. ^c It
is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of humanity.

[Footnote c: See, amongst other documents, the report made by Mr. Bell in the
name of the Committee on Indian Affairs, February 24, 1830, in which is most
logically established and most learnedly proved, that "the fundamental
principle that the Indians had no right by virtue of their ancient possession
either of will or sovereignty, has never been abandoned either expressly or by
implication." In perusing this report, which is evidently drawn up by an
experienced hand, one is astonished at the facility with which the author gets
rid of all arguments founded upon reason and natural right, which he
designates as abstract and theoretical principles.  The more I contemplate the
difference between civilized and uncivilized man with regard to the principles
of justice, the more I observe that the former contests the justice of those
rights which the latter simply violates.]

     [I leave this chapter wholly unchanged, for it has always appeared to me
to be one of the most eloquent and touching parts of this book.  But it has
ceased to be prophetic; the destruction of the Indian race in the United
States is already consummated.  In 1870 there remained but 25,731 Indians in
the whole territory of the Union, and of these by far the largest part exist
in California, Michigan, Wisconsin, Dakota, and New Mexico and Nevada.  In New
England, Pennsylvania, and New York the race is extinct; and the predictions
of M. de Tocqueville are fulfilled. - Translator's Note.]

Situation Of The Black Population In The United States, And Dangers With
Which Its Presence Threatens The Whites

Why it is more difficult to abolish slavery, and to efface all vestiges of it
amongst the moderns than it was amongst the ancients - In the United States
the prejudices of the Whites against the Blacks seem to increase in proportion
as slavery is abolished - Situation of the Negroes in the Northern and
Southern States - Why the Americans abolish slavery - Servitude, which debases
the slave, impoverishes the master - Contrast between the left and the right
bank of the Ohio - To what attributable - The Black race, as well as slavery,
recedes towards the South - Explanation of this fact - Difficulties attendant
upon the abolition of slavery in the South - Dangers to come - General anxiety
- Foundation of a Black colony in Africa - Why the Americans of the South
increase the hardships of slavery, whilst they are distressed at its
continuance.

     The Indians will perish in the same isolated condition in which they have
lived; but the destiny of the negroes is in some measure interwoven with that
of the Europeans.  These two races are attached to each other without
intermingling, and they are alike unable entirely to separate or to combine.
The most formidable of all the ills which threaten the future existence of the
Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and
in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments or of the future
dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to consider this
as a primary fact.

     The permanent evils to which mankind is subjected are usually produced by
the vehement or the increasing efforts of men; but there is one calamity which
penetrated furtively into the world, and which was at first scarcely
distinguishable amidst the ordinary abuses of power; it originated with an
individual whose name history has not preserved; it was wafted like some
accursed germ upon a portion of the soil, but it afterwards nurtured itself,
grew without effort, and spreads naturally with the society to which it
belongs.  I need scarcely add that this calamity is slavery.  Christianity
suppressed slavery, but the Christians of the sixteenth century re-established
it - as an exception, indeed, to their social system, and restricted to one of
the races of mankind; but the wound thus inflicted upon humanity, though less
extensive, was at the same time rendered far more difficult of cure.

     It is important to make an accurate distinction between slavery itself
and its consequences.  The immediate evils which are produced by slavery were
very nearly the same in antiquity as they are amongst the moderns; but the
consequences of these evils were different.  The slave, amongst the ancients,
belonged to the same race as his master, and he was often the superior of the
two in education ^d and instruction.  Freedom was the only distinction between
them; and when freedom was conferred they were easily confounded together. The
ancients, then, had a very simple means of avoiding slavery and its evil
consequences, which was that of affranchisement; and they succeeded as soon as
they adopted this measure generally.  Not but, in ancient States, the vestiges
of servitude subsisted for some time after servitude itself was abolished.
There is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whomsoever has been
their inferior long after he is become their equal; and the real inequality
which is produced by fortune or by law is always succeeded by an imaginary
inequality which is implanted in the manners of the people.  Nevertheless,
this secondary consequence of slavery was limited to a certain term amongst
the ancients, for the freedman bore so entire a resemblance to those born
free, that it soon became impossible to distinguish him from amongst them.

[Footnote d: It is well known that several of the most distinguished authors
of antiquity, and amongst them Aesop and Terence, were, or had been slaves.
Slaves were not always taken from barbarous nations, and the chances of war
reduced highly civilized men to servitude.]

     The greatest difficulty in antiquity was that of altering the law;
amongst the moderns it is that of altering the manners; and, as far as we are
concerned, the real obstacles begin where those of the ancients left off. This
arises from the circumstance that, amongst the moderns, the abstract and
transient fact of slavery is fatally united to the physical and permanent fact
of color.  The tradition of slavery dishonors the race, and the peculiarity of
the race perpetuates the tradition of slavery.  No African has ever
voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the New World; whence it must be
inferred, that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are
either slaves or freedmen.  Thus the negro transmits the eternal mark of his
ignominy to all his descendants; and although the law may abolish slavery, God
alone can obliterate the traces of its existence.

     The modern slave differs from his master not only in his condition, but
in his origin.  You may set the negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise
than an alien to the European.  Nor is this all; we scarcely acknowledge the
common features of mankind in this child of debasement whom slavery has
brought amongst us.  His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding
weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being
intermediate between man and the brutes. ^e The moderns, then, after they have
abolished slavery, have three prejudices to contend against, which are less
easy to attack and far less easy to conquer than the mere fact of servitude:
the prejudice of the master, the prejudice of the race, and the prejudice of
color.

[Footnote e: To induce the whites to abandon the opinion they have conceived
of the moral and intellectual inferiority of their former slaves, the negroes
must change; but as long as this opinion subsists, to change is impossible.]

     It is difficult for us, who have had the good fortune to be born amongst
men like ourselves by nature, and equal to ourselves by law, to conceive the
irreconcilable differences which separate the negro from the European in
America.  But we may derive some faint notion of them from analogy.  France
was formerly a country in which numerous distinctions of rank existed, that
had been created by the legislation.  Nothing can be more fictitious than a
purely legal inferiority; nothing more contrary to the instinct of mankind
than these permanent divisions which had been established between beings
evidently similar.  Nevertheless these divisions subsisted for ages; they
still subsist in many places; and on all sides they have left imaginary
vestiges, which time alone can efface.  If it be so difficult to root out an
inequality which solely originates in the law, how are those distinctions to
be destroyed which seem to be based upon the immutable laws of Nature herself?
When I remember the extreme difficulty with which aristocratic bodies, of
whatever nature they may be, are commingled with the mass of the people; and
the exceeding care which they take to preserve the ideal boundaries of their
caste inviolate, I despair of seeing an aristocracy disappear which is founded
upon visible and indelible signs.  Those who hope that the Europeans will ever
mix with the negroes, appear to me to delude themselves; and I am not led to
any such conclusion by my own reason, or by the evidence of facts.

     Hitherto, wherever the whites have been the most powerful, they have
maintained the blacks in a subordinate or a servile position; wherever the
negroes have been strongest they have destroyed the whites; such has been the
only retribution which has ever taken place between the two races.

     I see that in a certain portion of the territory of the United States at
the present day, the legal barrier which separated the two races is tending to
fall away, but not that which exists in the manners of the country; slavery
recedes, but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary.
Whosoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived that in those
parts of the Union in which the negroes are no longer slaves, they have in no
wise drawn nearer to the whites.  On the contrary, the prejudice of the race
appears to be stronger in the States which have abolished slavery, than in
those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those
States where servitude has never been known.

     It is true, that in the North of the Union, marriages may be legally
contracted between negroes and whites; but public opinion would stigmatize a
man who should connect himself with a negress as infamous, and it would be
difficult to meet with a single instance of such a union.  The electoral
franchise has been conferred upon the negroes in almost all the States in
which slavery has been abolished; but if they come forward to vote, their
lives are in danger.  If oppressed, they may bring an action at law, but they
will find none but whites amongst their judges; and although they may legally
serve as jurors, prejudice repulses them from that office.  The same schools
do not receive the child of the black and of the European.  In the theatres,
gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters;
in the hospitals they lie apart; and although they are allowed to invoke the
same Divinity as the whites, it must be at a different altar, and in their own
churches, with their own clergy.  The gates of Heaven are not closed against
these unhappy beings; but their inferiority is continued to the very confines
of the other world; when the negro is defunct, his bones are cast aside, and
the distinction of condition prevails even in the equality of death.  The
negro is free, but he can share neither the rights, nor the pleasures, nor the
labor, nor the afflictions, nor the tomb of him whose equal he has been
declared to be; and he cannot meet him upon fair terms in life or in death.

     In the South, where slavery still exists, the negroes are less carefully
kept apart; they sometimes share the labor and the recreations of the whites;
the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain extent, and although the
legislation treats them more harshly, the habits of the people are more
tolerant and compassionate.  In the South the master is not afraid to raise
his slave to his own standing, because he knows that he can in a moment reduce
him to the dust at pleasure.  In the North the white no longer distinctly
perceives the barrier which separates him from the degraded race, and he shuns
the negro with the more pertinacity, since he fears lest they should some day
be confounded together.

     Amongst the Americans of the South, nature sometimes reasserts her
rights, and restores a transient equality between the blacks and the whites;
but in the North pride restrains the most imperious of human passions.  The
American of the Northern States would perhaps allow the negress to share his
licentious pleasures, if the laws of his country did not declare that she may
aspire to be the legitimate partner of his bed; but he recoils with horror
from her who might become his wife.

     Thus it is, in the United States, that the prejudice which repels the
negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, and
inequality is sanctioned by the manners whilst it is effaced from the laws of
the country.  But if the relative position of the two races which inhabit the
United States is such as I have described, it may be asked why the Americans
have abolished slavery in the North of the Union, why they maintain it in the
South, and why they aggravate its hardships there?  The answer is easily
given.  It is not for the good of the negroes, but for that of the whites,
that measures are taken to abolish slavery in the United States.

     The first negroes were imported into Virginia about the year 1621. ^f In
America, therefore, as well as in the rest of the globe, slavery originated in
the South.  Thence it spread from one settlement to another; but the number of
slaves diminished towards the Northern States, and the negro population was
always very limited in New England. ^g

[Footnote f: See Beverley's "History of Virginia." See also in Jefferson's
"Memoirs" some curious details concerning the introduction of negroes into
Virginia, and the first Act which prohibited the importation of them in 1778.]

[Footnote g: The number of slaves was less considerable in the North, but the
advantages resulting from slavery were not more contested there than in the
South.  In 1740, the Legislature of the State of New York declared that the
direct importation of slaves ought to be encouraged as much as possible, and
smuggling severely punished in order not to discourage the fair trader.
(Kent's "Commentaries," vol. ii. p. 206.) Curious researches, by Belknap, upon
slavery in New England, are to be found in the "Historical Collection of
Massachusetts," vol. iv. p. 193.  It appears that negroes were introduced
there in 1630, but that the legislation and manners of the people were opposed
to slavery from the first; see also, in the same work, the manner in which
public opinion, and afterwards the laws, finally put an end to slavery.]

     A century had scarcely elapsed since the foundation of the colonies, when
the attention of the planters was struck by the extraordinary fact, that the
provinces which were comparatively destitute of slaves, increased in
population, in wealth, and in prosperity more rapidly than those which
contained the greatest number of negroes.  In the former, however, the
inhabitants were obliged to cultivate the soil themselves, or by hired
laborers; in the latter they were furnished with hands for which they paid no
wages; yet although labor and expenses were on the one side, and ease with
economy on the other, the former were in possession of the most advantageous
system.  This consequence seemed to be the more difficult to explain, since
the settlers, who all belonged to the same European race, had the same habits,
the same civilization, the same laws, and their shades of difference were
extremely slight.

     Time, however, continued to advance, and the Anglo-Americans, spreading
beyond the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, penetrated farther and farther into
the solitudes of the West; they met with a new soil and an unwonted climate;
the obstacles which opposed them were of the most various character; their
races intermingled, the inhabitants of the South went up towards the North,
those of the North descended to the South; but in the midst of all these
causes, the same result occurred at every step, and in general, the colonies
in which there were no slaves became more populous and more rich than those in
which slavery flourished.  The more progress was made, the more was it shown
that slavery, which is so cruel to the slave, is prejudicial to the master.