Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/119

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DISTINCT CHARACTER OF THE COLORED RACE.
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because we believe it to be the manifest order of nature and intention of Divine Providence. And the blacks should be as unwilling to ally themselves with the white race, as the whites with them: they should feel the same repugnance to it; and this they probably would feel, but for the fact of their having been so long in an inferior situation, and therefore accustomed to look up to the whites as a superior class. In their native Africa, they certainly do entertain a similar repugnance to the whites. Park testifies that it was manifested towards him by many of the negroes. The African belles (and he describes some of them) thought him diseased and deformed, and would probably have felt the same repugnance at the idea of intermarriage. with him, as the white ladies naturally do at that of a

    uses, and spent much of his time in visiting prisons to relieve and reclaim the wretched tenants. He died in 1758. Hannibal, an African negro, rose to the rank of Lieutenant-General and Director of Artillery, under Peter the Great, of Russia: His son was also Lieutenant-General in the Russian corps of Artillery. [We may add to these the name of Toussaint L'Ouverture, General and afterwards Governor of the negroes of St. Domingo, who, for his patriotism and excellence of character, as well as for his military skill and political wisdom, may almost be denominated the Washington of negroes.] Professor Blumenbach," continues Mr. Freeman, "possessed a library composed entirely of works written by negroes. He says, there is not a single department of taste or science, in which these people have not been distinguished. Dr. Blumenbach is the author of the most able and scientific Treatise on the varieties of the human species, and was better qualified than any other person, to decide upon their constitutional differences. He observes that there is no savage people, which have distinguished themselves by such examples of perfectibility and capacity for scientific cultivation; and, consequently. that none can approach more nearly to the polished nations of the globe than the negro." — Plea for Africa, pp. 17, 46, second edition.