Struggles and Triumphs, P. T. Barnum [good books to read in english .txt] 📗

passengers and have them live under our government with no real vital interest in its perpetuity. Every man must be a joint owner.

The only safe inhabitants of a free country are educated citizens who vote. The gentleman from Milford lives near the old Washington toll-bridge, which spans the Housatonic River, and he doubtless remembers, as I do, when the Boston and New York stages crossed that bridge, and the coachman would always denounce the “infernal bridge monopoly” which compelled him to pay a dollar every time the stage crossed. The passengers would generally laugh and say: “Let him pay, it’s nothing to us; we are only passengers.” Some twenty years ago, one of the gentlemen accustomed to travel in that stage, was crossing the Atlantic in a steamship. At the hour of midnight, when nearly all were wrapt in sleep, the fearful cry of “fire” rang through the ship. There were the poor passengers, threatened by the devouring element, and only a plank between them and death. Our passenger, not half awake, rubbed his eyes and probably fancying he was in the old stagecoach, cried out: “Fire away, I am only a passenger!” Fortunately, it was a false alarm; but when the gentleman was wide awake, he discovered that there could be no disinterested passengers on board a burning ship.

Nor in a free government can we afford to employ journeymen; they may be apprenticed until they learn to read, and study our institutions; and then let them become joint proprietors and feel a proportionate responsibility. The two learned and distinguished authors of the minority report have been studying the science of ethnology and have treated us with a dissertation on the races. And what have they attempted to show? Why, that a race which, simply on account of the color of the skin, has long been buried in slavery at the South, and even at the North has been tabooed and scarcely permitted to rise above the dignity of whitewashers and bootblacks, does not exhibit the same polish and refinement that the white citizens do who have enjoyed the advantages of civilization, education, Christian culture and self-respect which can only be attained by those who share in making the laws under which they live.

Do our democratic friends assume that the negroes are not human? I have heard professed democrats claim even that; but do the authors of this minority report insist that the negro is a beast? Is his body not tenanted by an immortal spirit? If this is the position of the gentlemen, then I confess a beast cannot reason, and this minority committee are right in declaring that “the negro can develop no inventive faculties or genius for the arts.” For although the elephant may be taught to plow, or the dog to carry your market-basket by his teeth, you cannot teach them to shave notes, to speculate in gold, or even to vote; whereas, the experience of all political parties shows that men may be taught to vote, even when they do not know what the ticket means.

But if the colored man is indeed a man, then his manhood with proper training can be developed. His soul may appear dormant, his brain inactive, but there is a vitality there; and Nature will assert herself if you will give her the opportunity.

Suppose an inhabitant of another planet should drop down upon this portion of our globe at midwinter. He would find the earth covered with snow and ice and congealed almost to the consistency of granite. The trees are leafless, everything is cold and barren; no green thing is to be seen; the inhabitants are chilled, and stalk about shivering, from place to place;⁠—he would exclaim, “Surely this is not life; this means annihilation. No flesh and blood can long endure this; this frozen earth is bound in the everlasting embraces of adamantine frost, and can never develop vegetation for the sustenance of any living thing.” He little dreams of the priceless myriads of germs which bountiful Nature has safely garnered in the warm bosom of our mother earth; he sees no evidence of that vitality which the beneficent sun will develop to grace and beautify the world. But let him remain until March or April, and as the snow begins to melt away, he discovers the beautiful crocus struggling through the half-frozen ground; the snowdrops appear in all their chaste beauty; the buds of the swamp-maple shoot forth; the beautiful magnolia opens her splendid blossoms; the sassafras adds its evidence of life; the pearl-white blossoms of the dogwood light up every forest;⁠—and while our stranger is rubbing his eyes in astonishment, the earth is covered with her emerald velvet carpet; rich foliage and brilliant colored blossoms adorn the trees; fragrant flowers are enwreathing every wayside; the swift-winged birds float through the air and send forth joyful notes of gratitude from every treetop; the merry lambs skip joyfully around their verdant pasture grounds; and everywhere is our stranger surrounded with life, beauty, joy and gladness.

So it is with the poor African. You may take a dozen specimens of both sexes from the lowest type of man found in Africa; their race has been buried for ages in ignorance and barbarism, and you can scarcely perceive that they have any more of manhood or womanhood than so many orangutans or gorillas. You look at their low foreheads, their thick skulls and lips, their woolly heads, their flat noses, their dull, lazy eyes, and you may be tempted to adopt the language of this minority committee, and exclaim: Surely these people have “no inventive faculties, no genius for the arts, or for any of those occupations requiring intellect and wisdom.” But bring them out into the light of civilization; let them and their children come into the genial sunshine of Christianity; teach them industry, self-reliance, and self-respect; let them learn what too few white Christians have yet understood, that cleanliness is akin to godliness, and a part of godliness; and