Mohammedanization of Central Africa. than that of the capacity of communities of African descent for civilization. In his own country the negro has been subjected for more than a thousand years to two influences, Christian and Mohammedan. Here and there, on the outskirts of that great continent, the European has made a faint, but at the best only a transitory impression; the Asiatic has pervaded it through and through. Of the promising churches which in the early days of Christianity fringed the northern coast, scarcely any vestige now remains; the faith of Arabia has not only supplanted them, but is spreading toward the Cape of Good Hope, and this, as it would seem, spontaneously. Our prejudices and education ought not to conceal from us that there must certainly be some adaptedness, though only in a sensual respect, between the doctrines of the Koran and the ideas of many climates, many nations, many colors. The light of the Arabian crescent shines on all countries from the Gulf of Guinea to the Chinese wall. In the pestilential and sunburnt forests of equinoctial Africa, cities are springing up with ten, twenty, fifty thousand inhabitants. That implies subordination, law, civilization. Doubtless, to no insignificant extent, this spread of Mohammedanism has been due to the fact that its first impression was made on the Western-the Indian Ocean tribes. They are much farther advanced than those of the Atlantic coast. From Mozambique and Zanguebar it was carried through commerce, and not by missionary exertion, to the tribes of the interior. The practice of polygamy, which the Koran does not forbid, has also greatly favored this propagandism. Whoever compares the character of the negro in Africa with the character of the negro in America American negro in will come to the conclusion that not only is this race capable of a certain grade of civil Progress of the civilization. 196 THE AMERICAN NEGRO. [SECT. II. ization, but that it has made considerable advances in that career. The American negro has universally abandoned the abject paganism of his forefathers, and has become not merely nominally, but in spirit, a devout Christian. It can not be said of him that he is incapable of the sentiment of love. Too often has he worn himself out in redeeming from slavery the wife of his choice. Under circumstances the most unfavorable, he has attained correct ideas of conjugal and paternal relations. Essentially religious, his trust in the justice of God has nev er wavered. In his darkest days and sorest trials he has firmly expected in patience the coming of the inevitable hour that would proclaim him free. At the end of a civil war in which the passions of men have been unbound, and violence of all kinds has been licensed, he stands unaccused of crime. He has approved himself a brave soldier, true to the supreme authority of the coun try in which Providence has cast his lot. The necessarily his advance. The American negro is not civilizing merely upon the surface, but interiorly. Leaving the stage of imitation and passing to that of comprehension, he is beginning to have ideas like ours. It will, however, be long before he can combine and generalize. At the best, as was remarked on page 102, he will never be more limited nature of than an overgrown child. Communities formed of such a social element will be wafted like clouds in the air, impelled by extraneous influences; for a long time, simple dogmas and ceremonies must be their guide. The social machine in which they are concerned must be able to work of itself; they would hardly be able to guide it. They must learn to decline ease, and be discontented with poverty, which is the great source of crime, the barrier to knowledge, the chief cause of huIn laboring to procure an individual competence, they must discern that they are becoming more man woe. happy, more virtuous, more powerful. Not without reason do communities of European descent devote themselves to the pursuit of gain; for, though " eloquence, talent, rank, attract admiration, it is wealth alone that gives power. In intellectual development the American negro has made progress; under a legal prohibition of formal education he has stealthily advanced. Without difficulty he acquires the humbler rudiments of knowledge; he learns to read and to cast up a simple account. In congregations of the Methodist and Baptist churches, to which Christian denominations he usually gives his preference, he prays with earnestness, and preaches with an eloquence often very touching from its quaint simplicity. The comic and plaintive songs which he is said to sing in his hours of relaxation have been listened to with admiration in all the gay capitals of Europe. He will not change America, but un tion. The motive for his production and protection as a source of wealth in connection with the inphysiologically internal slave-trade having ended, the census dergo redistribu- in future years will show a continuous decrease of his numbers in the Border States, and a relative increase in those of the Gulf. This will inevitably ensue if he be left to himself, with freedom of movement, and no legal repression or restraint. His instinct will lead him to do what is done by quadrupeds, by birds, and by fishes-to migrate to those regions where Nature is in unison with his constitution. He will not linger in a country of frosts if he be permitted to have access to one of warmth; and hence it is not likely that the future history of America will present the spectacle of his physiological modification: it will be the narrative of his geographical redistribution. The settlers on the Southern portion of the Atlantic 198 Westward diffusion of the Southern population. SOUTHERN PROGRESS TO THE WEST. [SECT. II. border were comparatively undisturbed by immigration. They received but few additions from Europe. Natural instinct kept them uncontaminated by African blood. Yet their diffusion to the West was rapid. Tennessee Peculiarities of the was admitted into the Union in 1796, AlaSouthern progress. bama in 1819, Mississippi in 1817. Of the trans-Mississippi states, Missouri was admitted in 1821. Political reasons connected with the balance of power in the United States Senate had unquestionably an influence in accelerating this advance, but those reasons were capable of practical embodiment only because of the pe culiarities of Southern society. The cultivation of tobac co and cotton necessarily implied plantation life, and that implied a population sparsely settled. So remunerative, and therefore so engrossing, did these pursuits rapidly become, that none of that variety of industry characteristic of the North could here have place. There was not so strong a tendency to local clustering. Towns were less numerous; their population less. Motion of the cen and centre of wealth. The massing of the population North and South, and their relative advance westward, is indicated tre of population by the fact that the centre of population has hitherto slowly moved along a line about fifteen degrees north of west. At the first census it was near Washington City; in 1840 it was in the northwestern extremity of Virginia; at the breaking out of the war it was a little beyond Columbus, Ohio. The redistribution of the negro population just alluded to will carry it south, but the point at which it will cross the Mississippi River will turn altogether on the circumstances under which industry is reorganized in the tobac co and cotton states. Should a tide of white emigration flow in that direction, it would correspondingly carry the point at which the centre of population will cross the river nearer to St. Louis than to Rock Island, to which it was formerly making its way. The centre of wealth is slowly following it, but the inclination of its path is to the south of west. At the adoption of the Constitution the population North and South was nearly equal; each of Original equality of the North and South. the two regions had nearly two millions of inhabitants, if we include for the South half a million of slaves. Their territory to the Mississippi was nearly equal; it was about 400,000 square miles: for the North, 406,086; for the South, excluding Florida, 399,400. Their commerce was equal. The annual exports of the North were $8,461,209; those of the South, $8,555,074. The assessed values of property in the two were equal, being about four hundred millions of dollars. But very soon the North began to display a greater progressive power than the South: its advancement was seen in its population, its trade, its wealth.. rapid of North in wealth and power ment action. This steady advancement of the North over the South has been popularly ascribed to the change The progress of policy pursued by the federal government not due to govern- in abandoning direct taxation and obtaining a revenue from foreign commerce. But it should be remembered that this change did not occur until 1816, and the difference between the two may be recognized from the very beginning of the government. Apart from any political considerations of strength to be derived from the multiplication of states, there were special causes that aided very powerfully in promoting the westward dif fusion of the Southern people. Among these may be mentioned, 1st. The topographical construction of the country; for the Atlantic border sweeps round the limit of the Appalachian chain through Georgia and Alabama into Mississippi, presenting the great tertiary formations Causes of the rapid population diffusion in the South. |