Gazette Of The United States

FOR THE GAZETTE OF THE UNITED STATES.
LETTER. No. IV.

MR. FENNO,

IN my last I have stated the example of blacks, who intermarried by force of conquest with two European nations—happy account—however as we all admit full blood, three quarters, and half blood, in our hounds and horses—it will not appear a paradox, if I lay it down as a general rule, that when in animated nature is gradually debased, and finally lost; this leads me to an examination of what would happen if negroes were made freemen, living among us. Different notions have been held on the manumission of negroes—let us select one, and suppose that it was granted on all sides, that the children of the slaves which will be born the next year, are to be free. As the law can, I believe, make no difference between citizens of the empire, of what colour they may be, a gradual intermarriage of the whites and blacks will happen of course: Where is, among our citizens, the mother of a family blest with beautiful daughters, who will not shudder when she thinks, that there might be only a probability, that her great grand daughters will have black muzzles and crooked figures; moreover this is but the smallest part of the bitter fruits with which black citizenship would be pregnant—it would be unclosing Pandora's box. Although I believe that the new black citizen would feel grateful for his manumission, yet this sentiment will soon subside, and be fully extinguished in the next generation; the difference in corporal and intellectual qualities would be felt by the black, the consciousness of his inferiority would extinguish gratitude, and jealousy would be his prevailing passion—should any invasion happen, the enemy would purchase the blacks on easy terms, and without any foreign attack this jealousy would have the most fatal effects, and cause constant disturbances in the empire; tranquility would fly from Columbia, and not be re-established until intermarriage had dyed the nation nearly one and the same colour! But then the original character of the nation will only stand recorded in the historic page, when it speaks of the times of their lingering tyranny, and assuming their independency with spirit; when ancestors becoming renowned in the annals of mankind by repelling gigantic strides they rose into consequence, and outshone even their originals in arms, in sciences and arts—when they crowned the liberty of the citizen by a uniform federal government: then genius was a native of this happy soil—and the foreigner gloried to be an American freeman,

RUSTICUS.