The Negro: What is His Ethnological Status? 2nd Ed.

Nor is this all the evidence the Bible furnishes, of God's utter abhorrence of this crime, and his decided disapprobation of the negro, in those various attempts to elevate him to social, political and religious equality with the white race. In the laws delivered by God, to Moses, for the children of Israel, he expressly enacts and charges, "that no man having a flat nose, shall approach unto his altar." This includes the whole negro race; and expressly excludes them from coming to his altar, for any act of worship. God would not have their worship then, nor accept their sacrifices or oblations —they should not approach his altar; but all of Adam's race could. For Adam's children God set up his altar, and for their benefit ordained the sacrifices; but not for the race of flat-nosed men, and such the negro race is. And who shall gainsay, or who dare gainsay, that what God does is not right? The first attempt at the social equality of the negro, with Adam's race, brought the flood upon the world – the second, brought confusion and dispersion – the third, the fire of God's wrath, upon the cities of the plain – the fourth, the order from God, to exterminate the nations of the Canaanites – the fifth, the inhibition and exclusion, by express law of God, of the flat-nosed negro from his altar. Will the people of the United States, now furnish the sixth? Nous verrons.

There remains now but one other point to prove, and that is – That the negro has no soul. This can only be done by the express word of God. Any authority short of this, will not do. But if God says so, then all the men, and all the reasonings of men on earth, can not change it; for it is not in man's power to give a soul to any being on earth, where God has given none.

It will be borne in mind that we have shown, beyond the power of contradiction, that the descendants of Shem and Japheth, from the present day back to the days of our Saviour, and from our Saviour's time back to Noah, their father, that they were all long, straight-haired, high foreheads, high noses, and belong to the white race of Adam. In the case of Ham, the other brother, there is, or has been, a dispute. It is contended, generally, by the learned world, that Ham is the progenitor of the negro race of this our day, and that, such being the case, the negro is our social, political and religious equal —brother; and which he would be, certainly, if this were true. The learned world, however, sees the difficulty of how Ham could be the progenitor of a race so distinct from that of Ham's family; and proceed upon their own assumptions, but without one particle of Bible authority for doing so, to account why Ham's descendants should now have kinky heads, low foreheads, flat noses, thick lips, and black skin (not to mention the exceptions to his leg and foot), which they charge to the curse denounced by Noah, not against Ham, but against Ham's youngest son – Canaan. But, to sustain their theory, they further assume that this curse was intended for Ham, and not Canaan; and they do this right in the teeth of the Bible and its express assertions to the contrary. Forgetting or overlooking the fact that, confining its application to Canaan, as the Bible expressly says, yet they ignore the fact that Canaan had two white sons – Sidon and Heth – and that it was impossible for the curse to have made a negro such as we now have, or to have exerted any influence upon either color, hair, etc.; as these two sons of Canaan, and their posterity, are shown, unequivocally, to have been, and yet are, in their descendants, white. The learned world, seeing the difficulties of the position, and the weakness of their foundation for such a tremendous superstructure as they were rearing on this supposed curse of Ham, by his father, undertake to prop it up by saying that Ham's name means black in Hebrew; and, as the negro is black, therefore it is that the name and the curse together made the negro, such as we now have on earth. And, although the Bible nowhere says, and nowhere charges, or even intimates, that Ham is or was the progenitor of the negro; and in defiance of the fact that no such curse was ever denounced against Ham, as they allege – nor can it be found in the Bible; yet they boldly, on these assumptions and contradictions, go on to say that Ham is the father of the negro of the present day. Contradicting the Bible; contradicting the whole order of nature as ordained by God himself – that like will produce its like; contradicting the effect of every curse narrated in the Bible, whether pronounced by God, or by patriarch, or by prophet; and assuming that it did that, in this case of Noah, which it had never done before nor since – that it did change Ham from a white man to a black negro. Forgetting or setting aside the declaration of the Bible, that Ham and his brothers were the children of one father and one mother, who were perfect in their genealogies from Adam, and that they were white, they assume again, that the Bible forgot to tell us that Ham was turned into a negro for accidentally seeing his father naked in his tent. Tremendous judgment, for so slight an offense! We do not ask if this is probable; but we do ask, if it is within the bounds of possibility to believe it? Did not the daughters of Lot see the nakedness of their father in a much more unseemly manner? Ham seeing his father so, seems altogether accidental; theirs deliberately sought. And on this flimsy, self-stultifying theory, the learned of the world build their faith – that Ham is the progenitor of the negro! While, on the other hand, by simply taking Ham's descendants – those known to be his descendants now, and known as much so and as positively as that we know the descendants, at the present day, of Shem and Japheth – that by thus taking up Ham's descendants of this day, we find them like his brothers' children – with long, straight hair, high foreheads, high noses, thin lips, and, indeed, every lineament that marks the white race of his brothers, Shem and Japheth; that we can trace him, with history in hand, from this day back, step by step, to the Bible record, with as much positive certainty as we can the descendants of his brothers; that, with the Bible record after, we can trace him back to his father, Noah, with equal absolute certainty, no one will deny, nor dare deny, who regards outside concurrent history, of admitted authenticity and the Bible, as competent witnesses in the case; that the testimony in regard to Ham and his descendants being of the white race, is more overwhelming and convincing than that of Japheth – and none doubt Japheth's being of the white race; that God himself, foreseeing the slander that after ages would attempt to throw on Ham, as being the father of the kinky-headed, flat-nosed and black-skinned negro, caused a whole nation to do one thing, and that one thing had never been done before, nor by any other nation since, and that he caused them to continue doing that one thing for centuries, and for no other purpose in God's providence, that we can see, but for the alone purpose of proving the identity of Ham's children, from the flood downward, for more than twenty-three centuries, and that they, thus identified, were of the white race; and that this embalmment of Ham's children was so intended, as evidence by God; that like, as the Jewish genealogical tables served to identify Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah, so this embalming of the children of Mizraim, the second son of Ham, serves to identify his descendants as belonging to the white race; and that, like the Jewish tables of genealogy, when they had accomplished the end designed by God, they both ceased, and at one and the same time.

Mizraim settled what is now called Egypt. He embalmed his dead. Where did he get the idea from? No nation or people had ever done it before; none have done it since. It was a very difficult thing to accomplish, to preserve human bodies after death; and to preserve them to last for thousands of years, was still more difficult. How did Mizraim come to a knowledge of the ingredients to be used, and how to use them? Yet he did it, and did it at once. The only satisfactory answer to these questions, is, that God inspired him. Then, it is God's testimony, vindicating his son Ham from the aspersions of men – that he was a negro, or the father of negroes.

Ye learned men of this age – you who have contributed, by your learned efforts, and by your noble but mistaken philanthropy, innocently, honestly and sincerely as they were made, but wrongfully done – to fix and fasten on Ham this gross slander, that he is the father of the present race of negroes, must reexamine your grounds for so believing heretofore, and now set yourselves right. God's Bible is against your views; concurrent history is against them: the existing race of Ham is against them: God's living testimony is against them, in the dead children of Mizraim, embalmed ever since the flood, but now brought forth into the light of day, and testifying for Ham, that he and his descendants were and yet are of the white race. You must now come forth and abandon your fortress of assumptions, for here that citadel falls; for, if Ham is not the father of the negro (which is shown to be an impossibility) then the negro came out of the ark, and as we now find him; and if he came out of the ark, then he must have been in the ark; and if he was in the ark, which, by the logic of facts, we know he was – now let us read the Bible, the divine record and see whether or not the negro has a soul. It reads thus: "When the long-suffering of God waited, in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved;" the negro being in the ark, was not one of those eight souls, and consequently he has no soul to be saved– the Bible and God's inspiration being judge. Carping is vain, against God. His order will stand, whether pleasing or displeasing to any on earth. But God only promised to save eight– Noah and his wife, and his three sons and their wives. These had souls, as the apostle (Peter) testifies, and all that were in the ark that did have souls. The negro was in the ark; and God thus testifies that he has no soul.

One point more. God has set a line of demarcation so ineffaceable, so indelible besides color, and so plain, between the children of Adam and Eve whom he endowed with immortality, and the negro who is of this earth only, that none can efface, and none so blind as not to see it. And this line of demarcation is, that Adam and his race being endowed by God with souls, that a sense of immortality ever inspires them and sets them to work; and the one race builds what he hopes is to last for ages, his houses, his palaces, his temples, his towers, his monuments, and from the earliest ages after the flood. Not so the other, the negro; as left to himself, as Mizraim was, he builds nothing for ages to come; but like any other beast or animal of earth, his building is only for the day. The one starts his building on earth, and builds for immortality, reaching toward Heaven, the abode of his God; the other also starting his building on earth, builds nothing durable, nothing permanent —only for present necessity, and which goes down, down, as everything merely animal must forever do. Such are the actions of the two races, when left to themselves, as all their works attest. Subdue the negro as we do the other animals, and like them, teach them all we can; then turn them loose, free them entirely from the restraints and control of the white race, and, just like all other animals or beasts so treated, back to his native nature and wildness and barbarism and the worship of dæmons, he will go. Not so with Adam's children: Starting from the flood, they began to build for Eternity. Ham, the slandered Ham, settled on the Nile, in the person of his son Mizraim, and built cities, monuments, temples and towers of surpassing magnificence and endurance; and here, too, with them, he started all the arts and sciences that have since covered Europe and America with grandeur and glory. Even Solomon, whose name is a synonym for wisdom, when about to build the Temple, instructed as he was by his father David, as to how God had told him the Temple was to be built; yet he, notwithstanding his wisdom, was warned of God, and he sent to Hiram, King of Tyre, for a workman skilled in all the science of architecture and cunning in all its devices and ornaments, to raise and build that structure designed for the visible glory of God on earth. And Hiram, King of Tyre, sent him a widow's son, named Hiram Abiff; and who was Grand Master of the workmen. He built the Temple and adorned it, and was killed a few months before Solomon consecrated it. This Hiram, King of Tyre, and this Hiram Abiff, although the mother of the latter was a Jewess, were descendants of this slandered Ham. Now, we ask, is it reasonable to suppose that God would call, or would suffer to be called, a descendant of Ham to superintend and build his Temple, and erect therein his altar, if Hiram Abiff had been a negro? – a flat-nosed negro, whom he had expressly forbidden to approach his altar? The idea is entirely inconsistent with God's dealings with men. God thus, then, testifying in calling this son of Ham to build his Temple, his appreciation of Ham and his race.

Now, let us sum up what is written in this paper: We have shown, (1.) That Ham was not made a negro, neither by his name, nor the curse (or the supposed curse) of his father Noah. (2.) We have shown that the people of India, China, Turkey, Egypt (Copts), now have long, straight hair, high foreheads, high noses and every lineament of the white race; and that these are the descendants of Ham. (3.) That, therefore, it is impossible that Ham could be the father of the present race of Negroes. (4.) That this is sustained by God himself causing Mizraim to embalm his dead, from directly after the flood and to continue it for twenty-three centuries; and that these mummies now show Ham's children to have long, straight hair, etc., and the lineaments alone of the white race. (5.) That Shem, Ham and Japheth being white, proves that their father and mother were white. (6.) That Noah and his wife being white and perfect in their genealogy, proves that Adam and Eve were white, and therefore impossible that they could be the progenitors of the kinky-headed, black-skinned negroes of this day. (7.) That, therefore, as neither Adam nor Ham was the progenitor of the negro, and the negro being now on earth, consequently we know that he was created before Adam, as certainly and as positively as we know that the horse and every other animal were created before him; as Adam and Eve were the last beings created by God. (8.) That the negro being created before Adam, consequently he is a beast in God's nomenclature; and being a beast, was under Adam's rule and dominion, and, like all other beasts or animals, has no soul. (9.) That God destroyed the world by a flood, for the crime of the amalgamation, or miscegenation of the white race (whom he had endowed with souls and immortality), with negroes, mere beasts without souls and without immortality, and producing thereby a class (not race), but a class of beings that were neither human nor beasts. (10.) That this was a crime against God that could not be expiated, and consequently could not be forgiven by God, and never would be; and that its punishment in the progeny is on earth, and by death. (11.) That this was shown at Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the extermination of the nations of the Canaanites, and by God's law to Moses. (12.) That God will not accept religious worship from the negro, as he has expressly ordered that no man having a flat nose, shall approach his altar; and the negroes have flat noses. (13.) That the negro has no soul, is shown by express authority of God, speaking through the Apostle Peter by divine inspiration.

The intelligent can not fail to discover who was the tempter in the garden of Eden. It was a beast, a talking beast – a beast that talked naturally– if it required a miracle to make it talk (as our learned men suppose, and as no one could then perform a miracle but God only and if he performed this miracle to make a snake, a serpent, talk, and to talk only with Eve, and that as soon as the serpent (?) seduced Eve into eating the forbidden fruit, God then performed another miracle to stop his speaking afterward, that if this be true), then it follows beyond contradiction, that God is the immediate and direct author or cause of sin: an idea that can not be admitted for one moment, by any believer in the Bible. God called it a beast – "more subtile than all the beasts the Lord God had made." As Adam was the federal head of all his posterity, as well as the real head, so was this beast, the negro, the federal head of all beasts and cattle, etc., down to creeping things – to things that go upon the belly and eat dust all the days of their life. If all the beasts, cattle, etc., were not involved in the sin of their federal head, why did God destroy them at the flood? If the crime that brought destruction on the world was the sin of Adam's race alone, why destroy the innocent beasts, cattle, etc.? When all things were created, God not only pronounced them good, but "very good;" then why destroy these innocent (?) beasts, cattle, etc., for Adam's sin or wrong-doing? But, that these beasts, etc., were involved in the same sin with Adam, is positively plain, from one fact alone, among others, and that fact is: That before the fall of Adam in the garden, all was peace and harmony among and between all created beings and things. After the fall, strife, contention and war ensued, as much among the beasts, cattle, etc., as with the posterity of Adam; and continues so to the present time. Why should God thus afflict them for another's crime, if they were free and innocent of that crime? God told Adam, on the day of his creation, "to have dominion over everything living that moveth upon the earth: " but to Noah, after the flood, he uses very different language; for, while he told Noah to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, the same as he said to Adam, yet he adds, "and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, etc., and all that moveth upon the earth, etc.; into thy hands are they delivered". If these had continued in their "primeval goodness," wholly unconnected with Adam's sin, is it reasonable to suppose that God would have used the language toward them, that he did in his instructions to Noah? It is impossible! The intelligent can also see the judgments of God on this "unforgivable" sin, at the flood, at Babel, at Sodom and Gomorrah, and on the Canaanites, and in his law; and they may profit by the example. They can see the exact time (A.M. 235), when men– the negro – erected the first altar on earth; they had seen Adam, Cain, Abel, and Seth, erect altars and call on the name of the Lord. They, too, could imitate them; they did then imitate; they then built their altars; they then called an the name of the Lord; they are yet imitating; they are yet profaning the name of the Lord, by calling on his name. And you, the people of the United States, are upholding this profanity. Who was it that caused God to repent and to be grieved at his heart, that he had made man? Will you place yourselves alongside of that being, and against God? All analogy says you will! But remember, that the righteous will escape – the hardened alone will perish.

The ways of God are always consistent, when understood, and always just and reasonable. It is a curious fact, but a fact, nevertheless, and fully sustained by the Bible; and that fact is this; That God never conferred, and never designed to confer, any great blessing on the human family, but what he always selects or selected a white slaveholder or one of a white slaveholding nation, as the medium, by or through which that blessing should reach them. Why he has done so, is not material to discuss now; but the fact, that he always did so, the Bible abundantly proves. Abraham, the father of the faithful, and in whom and his seed all the families of the earth were to be blessed, is a notable instance of this truth. For Abraham owned three hundred and eighteen slaves. And the Saviour of the world was of a white slaveholding nation; and they held slaves by God's own laws, and not by theirs. And how has it been in respect of our own nation and government, the United States? A government now declared by thousands of lips, latterly, to be the best, the very best, that has ever been in the world. Who made this government? Who established it and its noble principles? Let us appeal to history. The first attack on British power, and the aggressions of its parliament, ever made on this continent, was made by a slaveholder, from a slave state, Patrick Henry, May 30, 1765. The first president of the first congress, that ever assembled on this continent, to consider of the affairs of the thirteen colonies, and which met in Philadelphia, September 5, 1774, was a slave owner from a slave state, Peyton Randolph. The only secretary that congress ever had, was a slave owner from a slave state, Charles Thompson. The gentleman who was chairman of the committee of the whole, on Saturday, the 8th of June, 1776, and who, on the morning of the 10th reported the resolutions, that the thirteen colonies, of right ought to be free and independent states, was a slaveholder from a slave state, Benjamin Harrison. The same gentlemen again, as chairman of the committee of the whole, reported the Declaration of Independence in form; and to which he affixed his signature, on Thursday, July 4, 1776. The gentleman who wrote the Declaration of Independence, was a slave owner, from a slave state, Thomas Jefferson. The gentleman who was selected to lead their armies, as commander-in-chief, and who did lead them successfully, to victory and the independence of the country, was a slave owner, from a slave state, George Washington. The gentleman who was president of the convention, to form the constitution of the United States, was a slave holder, from a slave state, George Washington. The gentleman who wrote the constitution of the United States (making it the best government ever formed on earth), was a slave owner, from a slave state, James Madison. The first president of the United States, under that constitution, and who, under God gave it strength, consistency and power before the world, was a slave owner, from a slave state, George Washington; and these were all white men and slave owners; and whatever of peace, prosperity, happiness and glory, the people of the United States have enjoyed under it, have been from the administration of the government, by presidents elected by the people, of slave holders, from slave states. Whenever the people have elected a president from a non-slaveholding state, commencing with the elder Adams, and down to Mr. Lincoln, confusion, wrangling and strife have been the order of the day, until it culminated in the greatest civil war the world has ever beheld, under the last named gentleman. Why this has been so is not in the line of our subject. We mention it as a matter of history, to confirm the Bible fact, that God always selects slaveholders, or from a slaveholding nation, the media through which he confers his blessings on mankind. Would it not be wisdom to heed it now?