 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Joe Cono. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated by Henry Reeve. Chapter 17. Principle Causes Maintaining the Democratic Republic. Part 4 The laws contribute more to the maintenance of the Democratic Republic in the United States than the physical circumstances of the country and the manners more than the laws. All the nations of America have a democratic state of society, yet democratic institutions only subsist amongst the Anglo-Americans. The Spaniards of South America, equally favored by physical causes as the Anglo-Americans, unable to maintain a democratic republic. Mexico, which has adopted the Constitution of the United States in the same predicament. The Anglo-Americans of the West less able to maintain it than those of the East. Reason of these different results. I have remarked that the maintenance of democratic institutions in the United States is attributable to the circumstances, the laws, and the manners of that country. Most Europeans are only acquainted with the first of these three causes, and they're apt to give it a preponderating importance which it does not really possess. It is true that the Anglo-Saxons settled in the New World in a state of social equality. The lowborn and the noble were not to be found amongst them. And professional prejudices were always as entirely unknown as the prejudices of birth. Thus, as the condition of society was democratic, the empire of democracy was established without difficulty. But this circumstance is by no means peculiar to the United States. Almost all the transatlantic colonies were founded by men equal amongst themselves, or who became so by inhabiting them. In no one part of the New World have Europeans been able to create an aristocracy. Nevertheless, democratic institutions prosper nowhere, but in the United States. The American Union has no enemies to contend with. It stands in the wilds like an island in the ocean. But the Spaniards of South America were no less isolated by nature. Yet their position has not relieved them from the charge of standing armies. They make war upon each other when they have no foreign enemies to oppose. And the Anglo-American democracy is the only one which has hitherto been able to maintain itself in peace. The territory of the Union presents a boundless field to human activity and inexhaustible materials for industry and labor. The passion of wealth takes the place of ambition and the warmth of faction is mitigated by a sense of prosperity. But in what portion of the globe shall we meet with more fertile plains, with mightier rivers, or with more unexplored and inexhaustible riches than in South America? Nevertheless, South America has been unable to maintain democratic institutions. If the welfare of nations depended on their being placed in a remote position, with an unbounded space of habitable territory before them, the Spaniards of South America would have no reason to complain of their fate. And although they might enjoy less prosperity than the inhabitants of the United States, their lot might still be such as to excite the envy of some nations in Europe. There are, however, no nations upon the face of the earth more miserable than those of South America. Thus, not only are physical causes inadequate to produce results analogous to those which occur in North America, but they are unable to raise the population of South America above the level of European states where they act in a contrary direction. Physical causes do not, therefore, affect the destiny of nations so much as has been supposed. I have met with men in New England who are on the point of leaving a country, where they might have remained in easy circumstances, to go to seek their fortune in the wilds. Not far from the district I found a French population in Canada, which was closely crowded on a narrow territory, although the same wilds were at hand, and whilst the emigrant from the United States purchased an extensive estate with the earnings of a short term of labour, the Canadian paid as much for land as he would have done in France. Nature offers the solitudes of the New World to Europeans, but they are not always acquainted with the means of turning her gifts to account. Other peoples of America have the same physical conditions of prosperity as the Anglo-Americans, but without their laws and their manners, and these people are wretched. The laws and manners of the Anglo-Americans are, therefore, that efficient cause of their greatness, which is the object of my inquiry. I am far from supposing that the American laws are preeminently good in themselves. I do not hold them to be applicable to all democratic peoples, and several of them seem to be dangerous, even in the United States. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the American legislation, taken collectively, is extremely well adapted to the genius of the people and the nature of the country, which is as intended to govern. The American laws are therefore good, and to them must be attributed a large portion of the success which attends the government of democracy in America. But I do not believe them to be the principal cause of that success, and if they seem to me to have more influence upon the social happiness of the Americans than the nature of the country, on the other hand, there is reason to believe that their effect is still inferior to that produced by the manners of the people. The federal laws undoubtedly constitute the most important part of the legislation of the United States. Mexico, which is not less fortunately situated than the Anglo-American Union, has adopted the same laws but is unable to accustom itself to the government of democracy. Some other cause is therefore at work, independently of those physical circumstances and peculiar laws which enable the democracy to rule in the United States. Another still more striking proof may be adduced. Almost all the inhabitants of the territory of the Union are the descendants of a common stock. They speak the same language, they worship God in the same manner, they are affected by the same physical causes, and they obey the same laws. Once then, do their characteristic differences arise? Why, in the eastern states of the Union, does the Republican government display vigor and regularity and proceed with mature deliberation? Once does it derive the wisdom and the durability which marks its acts, whilst in the western states, on the contrary, society seems to be ruled by the powers of chance. There, public business is conducted with an irregularity and a passionate and feverish excitement which does not announce a long or sure duration. I am no longer comparing the Anglo-American states to foreign nations, but I am contrasting them with each other and endeavoring to discover why they are so unlike. The arguments which are derived from the nature of the country and the difference of legislation are here all set aside. Recourse must be had to some other cause, and what other cause can there be except the manners of the people? It is in the eastern states that the Anglo-Americans have been longest accustomed to the government of democracy, and that they have adopted the habits and conceived the notions most favorable to its maintenance. Democracy has gradually penetrated into their customs, their opinions, and the forms of social intercourse. It is to be found in all the details of daily life equally as in the laws. In the eastern states, the instruction and practical education of the people have been most perfected, and religion has been most thoroughly amalgamated with liberty. Now these habits, opinions, customs, and convictions are precisely the constituent elements of that which I have denominated manners. In the western states, on the contrary, a portion of the same advantages is still wanting. Many of the Americans of the West were born in the woods, and they mixed the ideas and the customs of savage life with the civilization of their parents. Their passions are more intense, their religious morality less authoritative, and their convictions less secure. The inhabitants exercised no sort of control over their fellow citizens, for they are scarcely acquainted with each other. The nations of the West display, to a certain extent, the inexperience and the rude habits of a people in its infancy, for although they are composed of old elements, their assemblage is of recent date. The manners of the Americans of the United States are, then, the real cause which renders that people the only one of the American nations that is able to support a democratic government. And it is the influence of manners which produces the different degrees of order and of prosperity that may be distinguished in the several Anglo-American democracies. Thus the effect which the geographical position of a country may have upon the duration of democratic institutions is exaggerated in Europe. Too much importance is attributed to legislation, too little to manners. These three great causes serve no doubt to regulate and direct the American democracy. But if they were to be classed in their proper order, I should say that the physical circumstances are less efficient than the laws, and the laws very subordinate to the manners of the people. I am convinced that the most advantageous situation and the best possible laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of the manners of a country, whilst the latter may turn the most unfavorable positions and the worst laws to some advantage. The importance of manners is a common truth to which steady and experience incessantly direct our attention. It may be regarded as a central point in the range of human observation and the common termination of all inquiry. So seriously do I insist upon this head that if I have hitherto failed in making the reader feel the important influence which I attribute to the practical experience, the habits, the opinions, in short to the manners of the Americans upon the maintenance of their institutions, I have failed in the principal object of my work. Whether laws and manners are sufficient to maintain democratic institutions in other countries besides America. The Anglo-Americans, if transported into Europe, would be obliged to modify their laws, distinction to be made between democratic institutions and American institutions. Democratic laws may be conceived better than, or at least different from, those which the American democracy has adopted. The example of America only proves that it is possible to regulate democracy by the assistance of manners and legislation. I have asserted that the success of democratic institutions in the United States is more intimately connected with the laws themselves and the manners of the people than with the nature of the country. But does it follow that the same causes would of themselves produce the same results if they were put into operation elsewhere? And if the country is no adequate substitute for laws and manners, can laws and manners in their turn prove a substitute for the country? It will readily be understood that the necessary elements of a reply to this question are wanting. Other peoples are to be found in the new worlds besides the Anglo-Americans, and as these people are affected by the same physical circumstances as the latter, they may fairly be compared together. But there are no nations out of America which have adopted the same laws and manners, being destitute of the physical advantages peculiar to the Anglo-Americans. No standard of comparison therefore exists, and we can only hazard an opinion upon this subject. It appears to me, in the first place, that a careful distinction must be made between the institutions of the United States and democratic institutions in general. When I reflect upon the state of Europe, its mighty nations, its populous cities, its formidable armies, and the complex nature of its politics, I cannot suppose that even the Anglo-Americans, if they were transported to our hemisphere with their ideas, their religion, and their manners, could exist without considerably altering their laws. But the democratic nation may be imagined, organized differently from the American people. It is not impossible to conceive a government really established upon the will of the majority, but in which the majority, repressing its natural propensity to equality, should consent, with a view to the order and the stability of the state, to invest a family or an individual with all the prerogatives of the executive. A democratic society might exist, in which the forces of the nation would be more centralized than they are in the United States. The people would exercise a less direct and less irresistible influence upon public affairs, and yet every citizen invested with certain rights would participate, within his sphere, in the conduct of the government. The observations I made amongst the Anglo-Americans induced me to believe that democratic institutions of this kind, prudently introduced into society, so as gradually to mix with the habits and to be interfused with the opinions of the people, might subsist in other countries besides America. If the laws of the United States were the only imaginable democratic laws, or the most perfect which is possible to conceive, I should admit that the success of those institutions affords no proof of the success of the democratic institutions in general, and a country less favored by natural circumstances. But as the laws of America appear to me to be defective in several respects, and as I can readily imagine others of the same general nature, the peculiar advantages of that country do not prove that democratic institutions cannot succeed in a nation less favored by circumstances if ruled by better laws. If human nature were different in America from what it is elsewhere, or if the social condition of the Americans engendered habits and opinions amongst them different from those which originate in the same social condition in the old world, the American democracies would afford no means of predicting what may occur in other democracies. If the Americans displayed the same propensities as all other democratic nations, and if their legislators had relied upon the nature of the country in the favor of circumstances to restrain those propensities within due limits, the prosperity of the United States would be exclusively attributable to physical causes, and it would afford no encouragement to a people inclined to imitate their example without sharing their natural advantages, but neither of these suppositions is borne out by facts. In America the same passions are to be met with as in Europe, some originating in human nature, others in the democratic condition of society. Thus in the United States I found that restlessness of heart which is natural to men when all ranks are nearly equal and the chances of elevation are the same to all. I found the democratic feeling of envy expressed under a thousand different forms. I remarked that the people frequently displayed in the conduct of affairs a consummate mixture of ignorance and presumption, and I inferred that in America men are liable to the same failings and the same absurdities as amongst ourselves. But upon examining the state of society more attentively, I speedily discovered that the Americans had made great and successful efforts to counteract these imperfections of human nature and to correct the natural defects of democracy. Their diverse municipal laws appeared to me to be a means of restraining the ambition of the citizens within a narrow sphere and of turning those same passions which might have wrecked havoc in the state to the good of the township or the parish. The American legislators have succeeded to a certain extent in opposing the notion of rights to the feelings of envy, the permanence of the religious world to the continual shifting of politics, the experience of the people to its theoretical ignorance, and its practical knowledge of business to the impatience of its desires. The Americans then have not relied upon the nature of their country to counter-poise those dangers which originate in their constitution and in their political laws. To evils which are common to all democratic peoples they have applied remedies which none but themselves had ever thought of before. The manners and laws of the Americans are not the only ones which may suit a democratic people, but the Americans have shown that it would be wrong to despair of regulating democracy by the aid of manners and of laws. If other nations should borrow this general and pregnant idea from the Americans without however intending to imitate them in the peculiar application which they have made of it, if they should attempt to fit themselves for that social condition, which it seems to be the will of Providence to impose upon the generations of this age, and so to escape from the despotism or the anarchy which threatens them, what reason is there to suppose that their efforts would not be crowned with success? The organization and the establishment of democracy in Christendom is the great political problem of the time. The Americans unquestionably have not resolved this problem, but they furnish useful data to those who undertake the task. Importance of What Preceeds with Respect to the State of Europe It may readily be discovered with what intention I undertook the foregoing inquiries. The question here discussed is interesting not only to the United States, but to the whole world. It concerns not a nation, but all mankind. If those nations whose social condition is democratic could only remain free as long as they are inhabitants of the wilds, we could not but despair of the future destiny of the human race. For democracy is rapidly acquiring a more extended sway, and the wilds are gradually peopled with men. If it were true that laws and manners are insufficient to maintain democratic institutions, what refuge would remain open to the nations except the despotism of a single individual? I am aware that there are many worthy persons at the present time who are not alarmed at this latter alternative and who are so tired of liberty as to be glad of repose, far from those storms by which it is attended. But these individuals are ill acquainted with the haven towards which they are bound. They are so deluded by their recollections as to judge the tendency of absolute power by what it was formerly and not by what it might become at the present time. If absolute power were re-established amongst the democratic nations of Europe, I am persuaded that it would assume a new form and appear under features unknown to our forefathers. There was a time in Europe when the laws and the consent of the people had invested princes with almost unlimited authority, but they had scarcely ever availed themselves of it. I do not speak of the prerogatives of the nobility, of the authority of Supreme Courts of Justice, of the corporations and their chartered rights, or of the provincial privileges which serve to break the blows of the sovereign authority and to maintain a spirit of resistance in the nation. Independently of these political institutions, which however oppose they might be to personal liberty, serve to keep alive the love of freedom in the mind of the public and which may be esteemed to have been useful in this respect, the manners and opinions of the nation can find the royal authority within barriers which were not less powerful, although they were less conspicuous. Religion, the affections of the people, the benevolence of the princes, the sense of honor, family pride, provincial prejudices, custom, and public opinion limited the power of kings, and restrained their authority within an invisible circle. The constitution of nations was despotic at that time, but their manners were free. Princes had the right, but they had neither the means nor the desire of doing whatever they pleased. But what now remains of those barriers which formally arrested the aggressions of tyranny? Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary which divided good from evil is overthrown. The very elements of the moral world are indeterminate. The princes and the people of the earth are guided by chance, and none can define the natural limits of despotism and the bounds of license. Long revolutions have forever destroyed the respect which surrounded the rulers of the state, and since they have been relieved from the burden of public esteem, princes may hence-forward surrender themselves without fear to the seductions of arbitrary power. When kings find that the hearts of their subjects are turned towards them, they are clement, because they are conscious of their strength, and they are sherry of the affection of their people, because the affection of their people is the bulwark of the throne. A mutual interchange of good will then takes place between the prince and the people, which resembles the gracious intercourse of domestic society. The subjects may murmur at the sovereign's decree, but they are grieve to displease him, and the sovereign chastises his subject with the light hand of parental affection. But when once the spell of royalty is broken in the tumult of revolution, when successive monarchs have crossed the throne, so as alternately to display to the people the weakness of their right and the harshness of their power, the sovereign is no longer regarded by any as the father of the state, and he is feared by all as its master. If he be weak, he is despised. If he be strong, he is detested. He himself is full of animosity and alarm. He finds that he has as a stranger in his own country, and he treats his subjects like conquered enemies. When the provinces and the towns form so many different nations in the midst of their common country, each of them had a will of their own, which was opposed to the general spirit of subjection. But now that all parts of the same empire, after having lost their immunities, their customs, their prejudices, their traditions and their names, are subjected and accustomed to the same laws, it is not more difficult to oppress them collectively than it was formally to oppress them singly. Whilst the nobles enjoyed their power, and indeed long after that power was lost, the honour of aristocracy conferred an extraordinary degree of force upon their personal opposition. They afford instances of men who, notwithstanding their weakness, still are entertained a high opinion of their personal value, and dared to cope single-handed with the efforts of the public authority. But at the present day, when all ranks are more and more confounded, when the individual disappears in the throng, and is easily lost in the midst of a common obscurity, when the honour of monarchy has almost lost its empire without being succeeded by public virtue, and when nothing can enable man to rise above himself, who shall say at what point the exigencies of power and the servility of weakness will stop. As long as the family feeling was kept alive, the antagonist of oppression was never alone. He looked about him, and found his clients, his hereditary friends, and his kinsfolk. If this support was wanting, he was sustained by his ancestors, and animated by his austerity. But when patrimonial estates are divided, and when a few years suffice to confound the distinctions of a race, where can family feeling be found? What force can there be in the customs of a country which has changed and is still perpetually changing its aspect, in which every act of tyranny has a precedent, and every crime an example, in which there is nothing so old that its antiquity can save it from destruction, and nothing so unparalleled that its novelty can prevent it from being done? What resistance can be offered by manners of so pliant a make that they have already often yielded? What strength can even public opinion have retained when no twenty persons are connected by a common tie, when not a man, nor a family, nor a chartered corporation, nor a class, nor a free institution, has the power of representing or exerting that opinion, and when every citizen, being equally weak, equally poor, and equally dependent, has only his personal impotence to impose to the organized force of the government? The annals of France furnish nothing analogous to the condition in which that country might then be thrown, but it may more aptly be assimilated to the times of old, into those hideous eras of Roman oppression, when the manners of the people were corrupted, their traditions obliterated, their habits destroyed, their opinions shaken, and freedom expelled from the laws can find no refuge in the land. When nothing protected the citizens, and the citizens no longer protected themselves, there was the sport of man, and princes wearied out the clemency of heaven before they exhausted the patience of their subjects. Those who hoped to revive the monarchy of Henry IV, Louis XIV, appear to me to be afflicted with mental blindness, and when I consider the present condition of several European nations, a condition to which all the others tend, I am led to believe that they will soon be left with no other alternative than democratic liberty or the tyranny of the Caesars. And indeed it is deserving of consideration whether man are to be entirely emancipated or entirely enslaved, whether their rights are to be made equal or wholly taken away from them, whether the rulers of society were reduced either gradually to raise the crowd to their own level or to sink the citizens below that of humanity, would not the doubts of many be resolved, the consciences of many be healed, and the community prepared to make great sacrifices with little difficulty? In that case the gradual growth of democratic manners and institutions should be regarded, not as the best, but as the only means of presuming freedom. And without liking the government of democracy, it might be adopted as the most applicable first remedy for the present ills of society. It is difficult to associate a people in the work of government, but it is still more difficult to supply it with experience and to inspire it with the feelings which it requires in order to govern well. I grant that the caprices of democracy are perpetual, its instruments are rude, its laws imperfect, but if it were true that soon no just medium would exist between the empire of democracy and the dominion of a single arm, should we not rather incline towards the former than submit voluntarily to the latter? If complete equality be our fate, is it not better to be leveled by free institutions than by despotic power? Those who, after having read this book, should imagine that my intention in writing it has been to propose the laws and manners of the Anglo-Americans for the imitation of all democratic peoples would commit a very great mistake. They must have paid more attention to the forum than to the substance of my ideas. My aim has been to show by the example of America that laws and especially manners may exist which will allow a democratic people to remain free. But I am very far from thinking that we ought to follow the example of the American democracy and copy the means which it has employed to attain its ends, for I am well aware of the influence which the nature of a country and its political precedence exercise upon a constitution. And I should regard it as a great misfortune for mankind if liberty were to exist under the same forms. But I am of opinion that if we do not succeed in gradually introducing democratic institutions into France and if we despair of imparting to the citizens those ideas and sentiments which first prepare them for freedom and afterwards allow them to enjoy it there will be no independence at all either for the middling classes or the nobility, for the poor or for the rich but an equal tyranny overall. And I foresee that if the peaceable empire of the majority is founded amongst us in time we shall sooner or later arrive at the unlimited authority of a single despot. End of Chapter 17 Principle Causes Maintaining the Democratic Republic Part 4 This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Democracy in America Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville translated by Henry Rave Chapter 18 The Future Condition of Three Races in the United States Part 1 The present and probable future condition of the three races which inhabit the territory of the United States. The principle part of the task which I had imposed upon myself has now performed I've shown as far as I was able the laws and the manners of the American democracy. Here I might stop but the reader would perhaps feel that I had not satisfied his expectations. The absolute supremacy of democracy is not all that we meet with in America. The inhabitants of the new world may be considered from more than one point of view. In the course of this work my subject has often led me to speak of the Indians and the Negroes but I've never been able to stop in order to show what place these two races occupy in the midst of the democratic people engaged in describing. I've mentioned in what's spread and according to what laws the Anglo-American Union was formed. But I could only glance at the dangers which menace that confederation whilst it was equally impossible for me to give a detailed account of its chances of duration independently of its laws and manners. When speaking of the United Republican States I hazarded no conjectures upon the permanence of Republican forms in the new world and when the commercial activity which reigns in the union I was unable to inquire into the future condition of the Americans as a commercial people. These topics are collaterally connected with my subject without forming a part of it. They are American without being democratic and to portray democracy has been my principal aim. It was therefore necessary to postpone these questions which I now take up as the proper termination of my work. The territory not occupied or claimed by the American Union spreads from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific Ocean. On the east and west its limits are those of the continent itself on the south that advances nearly to the tropic and it extends upward to the icy regions of the north. The human beings who are scattered over this place do not form as in Europe so many branches of the same stock. Three races naturally distinct and I might almost say hostile to each other are discoverable amongst them at first glance. Almost insurmountable barriers have been raised between them by education and by law as well as by their origin and outward characteristics. But fortune has brought them together on the same soil where although they are mixed they do not amalgamate and each race fulfills its destiny apart. Among these widely differing families of men the first which attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power and in enjoyment is the white or European the man pre-eminent and in subordinate grades the Negro and the Indian. These two unhappy races have nothing in common neither birth nor features nor language nor habits. Their only resemblance lies in their misfortunes. Both of them occupy an inferior rank in the country they inhabit. Both suffer from tyranny and if their wrongs are not the same they originate at any rate with the same authors. If we reason from what passes in the world we should almost say that the European is to the other races of mankind what man is to the lower animals. He makes them subservient to his use and when he cannot subdue he destroys them. Oppression has at one stroke deprived the descendants of the Africans of almost all the privileges of humanity. The Negro of the United States has lost all remembrance of his country. The language which his forefathers spoke was never heard around him. He abjured their religion and forgot their customs when he ceased to belong to Africa without acquiring any claim to European privileges. But he remained halfway between the two communities. Sold by the one repulsed by the other. Finding not a spot in the universe to call by the name of country except the faint image of a home which the shelter of his master's roof affords. The Negro has no family. Woman is merely the temporary companion of his pleasures and his children are upon an equality with him from the moment of their birth. It might have called a proof of God's mercy or a visitation of his wrath that man in certain states appears to be insensible to his extreme wretchedness and almost affects with a depraved taste the cause of his misfortunes. The Negro who is plunged in this abyss of evils scarcely fails his own calamitous situation. Violence made him a slave and the habit of servitude gives him the thoughts and desires of the slave. He ignores his tyrants more than he hates them and finds his joy and his pride in the servile imitation of those who oppress him. His understanding is degraded to the level of his soul. The Negro enters upon slavery as soon as he is born. Now he may have been purchased in the womb and have begun his slavery before he began his existence. Equally devoid of wants and of enjoyment and useless to himself he learns with his first notions of existence that he is the property of another who has an interest in preserving his life and that the care of it does not devolve upon himself. Even the power of thought appears to him a useless gift of providence and he quietly enjoys the privileges of his debasement. If he becomes free, independence is often felt by him to be a heavier burden in slavery for having learned in the course of his life to submit to everything except reason he is too much unacquainted with her dictates to obey them. A thousand new desires beset him and he is destitute of the knowledge and energy necessary to resist them. These are masters which it is necessary to contend with and he is learned only to submit and obey. In short he sinks to such a depth of wretchedness that while servitude brutalizes liberty destroys him. Oppression has been no less fatal to the Indian than to the Negro race but its effects are different. Before the arrival of white men in the new world the inhabitants of North America live quietly in their woods enduring the vicissitudes and practicing the virtues and vices common to savage nations. The Europeans having dispersed the Indian tribes and driven them into the desert condemned them to a wandering life full of inexpressible sufferings. Savage nations are only controlled by opinion and by custom. When the North American Indians had lost the sentiment of attachment to their country their traditions were dispersed their traditions obscured and the chain of their recollections broken when all their habits were changed and their once increased beyond measure European tyranny rendered them more disorderly and less civilized than they were before. The moral and physical condition of these tribes continually grew worse and they became more barbarous as they became more wretched. Nevertheless the Europeans have not been able to metamorphose and they have never been able to make them submit to the rules of civilized society. The lot of the Negro is placed on the extreme limit of servitude while that of the Indian lies in the utmost verge of liberty and slavery does not produce more fatal effects upon the first than independence upon the second. The Negro has left all property in his own person and he cannot dispose of his existence without committing a sort of fraud but the savage is his own master and he is unable to act. Parental authority is scarcely known to him. He has never bent his will to that of any of his kind nor learned the difference between voluntary obedience and a shameful subjection and the very name of law is unknown to him. To be free with him signifies to escape from all the shackles of society as he delights in this barbarous independence and would rather perish than sacrifice the least of it civilization has little power over him. The Negro makes a thousand fruitless efforts to insinuate himself amongst men who repulse him. He conforms to the taste of his oppressors, adopts their opinions and hopes by imitating them to form a part of their community. Having been told from infancy that his race is naturally inferior to that of the whites he ascends to the proposition and is ashamed of his own nature. In each of his features he discovers a trace of slavery and if it were in his power he would willingly rid himself of everything that makes him what he is. The Indian on the contrary has his imagination inflated with the pretended nobility of his origin and lives and dies in the midst of these dreams of pride. Far from desiring to conform his habits to ours he loves his savage life as the distinguishing mark of his race and he repels every advance to civilization less perhaps from the hatred which he entertains for it than from a dread of resembling the Europeans. While there is nothing to oppose our perfections and arts but the resources of the desert our tactics nothing but undisciplined courage whilst our well-degested plans are met by the spontaneous instincts of savage life who can wonder if he fails in this unequal contest. The Negro who earnestly desires to mingle his race with that of the European cannot affect it while the Indian who might succeed to a certain extent disdains to make the attempt. The civility of one dooms him to slavery the pride of the other to death. I remember that while I was travelling through the forests which still cover the state of Alabama I arrived one day at the log house of a pioneer. I did not wish to penetrate into the dwelling of the American but retired to rest myself for a while in the margin of a spring which was not far off in the woods. While I was in this place which was in the neighborhood of the creek territory an Indian woman appeared followed by a Negro and holding by the hand a little white girl of five or six years old whom I took to be the daughter of the pioneer. A sort of barburs luxury set off the costume of the Indian. Rings of metal were hanging from her nostrils and ears. Her hair was adorned with glass beads fell loosely upon her shoulders and I saw that she was not married for she still wore that necklace of shells which the bride always deposits in the nutshell couch. The Negro was clad in squalid European garments. They all three came and seated themselves upon the banks of the fountain. And the young Indian taking the child in her arms lavished upon her such fond caresses as mothers give, while the Negro was endeavored by various little artifices to attract the attention of the young Creole. The child displayed in her slightest gestures a consciousness of superiority which formed a strange contrast with her infantile weakness as if she received the attention of her companions with a sort of condescension. The Negro was seated on the ground before her mistress watching her smallest desires and apparently divided between strong affection for the child and servile fear. Whilst the savage displayed in the midst of her tenderness an air of freedom and of pride which was almost ferocious I had approached the group and contemplated them in silence but my curiosity was probably displeasing to the Indian woman for she suddenly rose and the child roughly from her and giving me an angry look plunged into the thicket. I had often chance to see individuals met together in the same place who belong to the three races of men which people in North America. I perceived from many different results the preponderance of the whites but in the picture which I have just been describing there was something peculiarly touching a bond of affection here united the oppressors with the oppressed and the effort of nature together rendered still more striking the immense distance placed between them by prejudice and by law the present and probable future condition of the Indian tribes which inhabit the territory possessed by the union gradual disappearance of the native tribes manner in which it takes place miseries accompanying the forced migrations of the Indians the savages of North America had only two ways of escaping destruction war or civilization they are no longer able to make war reasons why they refused to become civilized when it was in their power and why they cannot become so united they desired instance of the creeks and Cherokees policy of the particular states towards these Indians policy of the federal government none of the Indian tribes which have formally inhabited the territory of New England the Nara Gansets the Mohicans of any existence but in the recollection of man the lean-ups who received William Penn 150 years ago upon the banks of the Delaware have disappeared and I myself met with the last of the Iroquois who were begging alms the nations I have mentioned formally covered the county to the sea coast but a traveler at the present day must penetrate more than 100 leagues into the interior of the continent defined in Indian not only these wild tribes receded destroyed and as they give way or perish an immense and increasing people fill their place there is no instance upon record of so prodigious and growth or so rapid a destruction the manner in which the latter change takes place is not difficult to describe when the Indians were the sole inhabitants of the wilds from whence they have since been expelled they are once were few their arms were of their own manufacture their only drink was the water of the brook instead of the skins of animals whose flesh furnished them with food the Europeans introduced amongst the savages of North America firearms, ardent spirits and iron they taught them to exchange for manufactured stuffs the rough garments which had previously satisfied their unchirred simplicity having acquired new taste without the arts by which they could be gratified the Indians were obliged to have recourse to the workmanship of the whites but in return for their productions the savage had nothing to offer except the rich furs which still abounded in his woods hence the chase became necessary not merely to provide for his subsistence but in order to procure the only objects of barter which he could furnish to Europe whilst the wants of the natives were thus increasing their resources continued to diminish the Indians will not live as Europeans live and yet they can neither subsist without them nor exactly after the fashion of their fathers this is demonstrated by a fact which I likewise give upon official authority some Indians of a tribe on the banks of Lake Superior had killed a European the American government interdicted all traffic with the tribe to which the guilty parties belonged until they were delivered up to justice this measure had the desired effect from the moment when a European settlement is formed in the neighbourhood of the territory occupied by the Indians the place take the alarm thousands of savages wandering in the forests and destitute of any fixed dwelling did not disturb them but as soon as the continuous sounds of European labour are heard in their neighbourhood they begin to flee away and retire to the west where their instinct teaches them that they will find desert of a measurable extent the buffalo is constantly receding semi-sures, clark and cast in their report of the year 1829 a few years since they approached the base of the aline and a few years hence they may even be rare upon the immense plains which extend to the base of the Rocky Mountains I've been assured that this effect of the approach of the whites has often felt at 200 leeks distance from their frontier their influence is thus exerted over tribes whose name is unknown to them and who suffer the evils of usurption long before they are acquainted with the authors of their distress bold adventures soon penetrate into the country the Indians have deserted and when they have advanced about 15 or 20 leeks from the extreme frontiers of the whites they begin to build habitations for civilized beings in the midst of the wilderness this is done without difficulty as the territory of a hunting nation is ill-defined it is the common property of the tribe and belongs to no one in particular so the individual interests are not concerned in the protection of any part of the European family settled in different situations at a considerable distance from each other soon drive away the wild animals which remain between their places of abode the Indians have previously lived in a sort of abundance then find it difficult to subsist and still more difficult to procure the articles of barter which they stand in need of to drive away their game is to deprive them of the means of existence as effectually as if the fields of our agriculturalists were stricken and there were just like famished wolves to prowl through the forsaken woods and quest to prey their instinctive love of their country attaches them to the soil which gave them birth even after it has ceased to yield anything but misery and death at length they are compelled to acquiesce and to depart they follow the traces of the elk the buffalo and the beaver and are guided by these wild animals in the choice of their future country properly speaking therefore it is not the Europeans who drive away the native inhabitants of America it is famine which compels them to recede a happy distinction which had escaped the cause of former times and for which we are indebted to modern discovery the ejections of the Indians very often takes place at the present day in a regular and as it were legal manner when the European population begins to approach the limit of the desert inhabited by a savage tribe the government of the United States usually dispatches envoys to them who assemble the Indians in a large plane and having first eaten and drunk with them accost them in the following manner what have you to do in the land of your fathers before long you must dig up their bones in order to live in what respect is the country you inhabit better than another are there no woods, marshes or prairies except for you dwell and can you live nowhere but under your own sun beyond those mountains which you see at the horizon beyond the lake which binds your territory in the west there lie vast countries where beasts of chase are found in great abundance sell your lands to us and go to live happily in these solitudes after holding this language they spread before the eyes of the Indians firearms woolen garments, kegs of brandy glass necklaces, bracelets of tinsel, earrings and looking glasses if when they beheld all these riches they still hesitate it is insinuated that they have not the means of refusing their required consent and that the government itself will not long have the power of protecting them in their rights what are they to do half convinced and half compelled they go to inhabit new desert where the impotent whites will not let them remain ten years in tranquility in this manner the Americans obtain at a very low price whole provinces whilst the riches which the riches of Europe could not purchase the Indians says the report reached the treaty ground poor and almost naked large quantities of goods are taken there by the traitors and are seen and examined by the Indians the women and children become important to have their wants supplied and their influence is soon exerted to ingest the sale their improvidence is habitual and unconquerable the gratification of his immediate wants and desires is the ruling passion of an Indian the expectation of future advantages seldom produces much effect the experience of the past is lost and the prospects of the future are disregarded it would be utterly hopeless to demand a cessation of land unless the means were at hand of gratifying their immediate wants and when their condition and circumstances are fairly considered they don't not just surprise us that they are so anxious to relieve themselves End of Chapter 18 of Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Democracy in America Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville translated by Henry Reath Chapter 18 Part 2 Future Condition of Three Races These are great evils and it must be added that they appear to me to be irreminable I believe that the Indian nations of North America are doomed to perish and that whenever the Europeans shall be established in the shores of the Pacific ocean that race of men will be no more The Indian had only two alternatives of war or civilization in other words they must either have destroyed the Europeans or become their equals At the first settlement of the colonies they might have found it possible by uniting their forces to deliver themselves from the small bodies of strangers who landed on their continent They were sometimes attempted to do it and were on the point of succeeding but the disproportion of their resources at the present day when compared with those of the whites is too great to allow such an enterprise to be thought of Nevertheless there do arise from time to time among the Indian men of penetration who foresee the final destiny which awaits the native population and who exert themselves to unite all the tribes in common hostility to the Europeans Those tribes which are in the neighborhood of the whites are too much weakened to offer an effectual resistance whilst the others giving way to that childish carelessness of the morrow which characterizes savage life wait for the near approach of danger before they prepare to meet it Some are unable, the others are unwilling to exert themselves It is easy to foresee that the Indians will never conform to civilization or that it will be too late whenever they may be inclined to make a determined Civilization is the result of a long social process which takes place in the same spot and is handed down from one generation to another each one proffering by the experience of the last Of all nations those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually lived by the chase Pastoral tribes indeed often change their place of abode but they follow a regular order in their migrations and often return again to their old stations whilst the dwelling of the hunter varies with that of the animal he pursues Several attempts have been made to diffuse knowledge among the Indians without controlling their wandering propensities by the Jesuits in Canada and by the Puritans in New England but none of these endeavors were crowned by any lasting success Civilization began in the cabin but it soon retired to expire in the woods The great error of these legislators of the Indians was their not understanding that in order to succeed in civilizing a people it is first necessary to fix it which cannot be done without inducing it to cultivate the soil The Indians ought in the first place to have been accustomed to agriculture but not only are they destitute of this indispensable preliminary to civilization they would even have great difficulty in acquiring it Men who have once abandoned themselves to the restless and adventurous life of the hunter feel an insurmountable disgust for the constant and regular labor which tillage requires We see this proved in the bosom of our own society but it is far more visible among people whose partiality for the chase is part of their national character Independently of this general difficulty there is another which applies peculiarly to the Indians They consider labor not merely as an evil but as a disgrace so their pride prevents them from becoming civilized as much as their indolence There is no Indian so wretched as not to retain under his hut of bark a lofty idea of his personal worth He considers the cares of industry and labor as degrading occupations He compares the husbandment to the ox which traces the furrow and even in our most ingenious handicraft he can see nothing but the labor of slaves Not that he is devoid of admiration for the power and intellectual greatness of the whites but although the results of our effort surprise him, he contends some means by which we obtain it and while he acknowledges our ascendancy he still believes in his superiority War and hunting are the only pursuits which appear to him worthy to be the occupations of a man The Indian in the dreary solitude of his woods cherishes the same ideas the same opinions as the noble of the middle ages in his castle and he only requires to become a conqueror to complete the resemblance Thus, however strange it may seem, it is in the forests of the New World and not amongst the Europeans who people its coasts that the ancient prejudices of Europe are still in existence More than once in the course of this work I have endeavored to explain the prodigous influence which the social condition appears to exercise upon the laws and the manners of man and I beg to add a few words on the same subject When I perceive the resemblance which exists between the political institutions of our ancestors, the Germans and the wandering tribes of North America between the customs described by tacticus and those of which I have sometimes been a witness I cannot help thinking that the same crawls has brought the same results in both hemispheres and that in the midst of the apparent diversity of human affairs a certain number of primary facts may be discovered from which all the others are derived In what we usually call the German institutions then I am inclined only to perceive barbarian habits and the opinions of savages in what we style feudal principles However strongly the vices and prejudices of the North American Indians may be opposed to their becoming agricultural and civilized Necessity sometimes obliges them to it Several of the southern nations and amongst other the Cherokees and the Creeks were surrounded by Europeans who had landed on the shores of the Atlantic and who either descending the Ohio or proceeding up the Mississippi arrived simultaneously upon their borders These tribes have not been driven from place to place like their northern brethren but they have been gradually enclosed within narrow limits like the game within the thicket before the huntsmen plunge into the interior The Indians who were thus placed between civilization and death found themselves obliged to live by agnonomous labor like the whites They took to agriculture and without entirely forsaking their old habits their manners sacrificed only as much as was necessary to their citizens The Cherokees went further They created a written language established a permanent form of government and as everything proceeds rapidly in the new world before they had all of them closed they set up a newspaper The growth of European habits has been remarkably accelerated among these Indians by the mixed race which has sprung up Deriving intelligence from their father's side using the savage custom of the mother the half blood forms the natural link between civilization and barbarism Wherever this race has multiplied the savage state has become modified and a great change has taken place in the manners of the people The success of the Cherokees proves that the Indians are capable of civilization but it does not prove that they will succeed in it This difficulty which the Indians find in submitting to civilization proceeds from the influence of a general cause which it is almost impossible for them to escape An attentive survey of history demonstrates that in general barbarist nations have raised themselves to civilization by degrees and by their own efforts Whenever they derive knowledge from a foreign people they stood towards it in the relation of conquerors and not of a conquered nation When the conquered nation is enlightened and the conquerors are half savage as in the case of the invasion of Rome by the northern nations or that of China by the Mongols the power which victory bestows upon the barbarian is sufficient to keep up his importance among civilized men and permit him to rank as their equal until he becomes their rival The one has might and a side the other has intelligence The former admires the knowledge and the arts of the conquered the latter envies the power of the conquerors The barbarians at length admit civilized men into their palaces and he turns open his skills to the barbarians but when the side on which the physical force lies also possesses an intellectual preponderance the conquered party seldom becomes civilized it retreats or is destroyed it may therefore be said in a general way that savages go forth in arms to seek knowledge but that they do not receive it when it comes to them and to gain the bread which nourishes him by hard and ignoble labor such are in his eyes the only results which civilization can boast in this much he is not sure to obtain when the Indians undertake to imitate their European neighbors and to tell the earth like the settlers they are immediately exposed to a very formidable competition the white man is skilled in the craft of agriculture the Indian is a rough beginner in an art with which he is unacquainted the former wreaks abundant crops without difficulty the latter meets with a thousand obstacles in raising the fruits of the earth the European is placed amongst a population whose wants he knows and protects the savage is isolated in the midst of hostile people with whose manners, language and laws he is imperfectly acquainted but without whose assistance he cannot live he can only procure the materials of comfort by bartering his commodities against the goods of the European for the assistance of his countrymen is wholly insufficient to supply his wants when the Indian wishes to sell the produce of his labor he cannot always meet with a purchaser the European readily finds a market and the former can only produce at a considerable cost that which the latter vends at a very low rate thus the Indian is no sooner escaped those evils to which barbarous nations are exposed than he is subjected to the still greater miseries of civilized communities and he finds it scarcely less difficult to live in the midst of our abundance than in the depths of his own wilderness he has not yet lost the habits of his erratic life the traditions of his fathers and his passion for the chaser still alive within him the wild enjoyments which formerly animated him in the woods painfully excite his troubled imagination and his former privations appear to be less king his former perils less appalling he contrasts the independence which he possessed among his equals with the servile position which he occupies in civilized society on the other hand the solitudes which were so long his free home are still at hand which will bring them back to him once more the whites offer him a sum which seems to be considerable for the ground which he has begun to clear this money of the Europeans might possibly furnish him with the means of a happy and peaceful subsistence in remote regions and he quits supply, resumes his native arms and returns to the wilderness forever the condition of the creeks and the cherries to which I have already alluded sufficiently corroborates the truth of this deplorable picture I myself so in Canada the intellectual difference between the two races is less striking that the English and the masters of commerce in manufacture in the Canadian country that they spread on all sides and confine the French within limits which scarcely suffice to contain them in like manner in Louisiana almost all activity in commerce and manufacture centres in the hands of the Anglo-Americans but the case of Texas is still more striking the state of Texas is a part of Mexico and lies upon the frontier between that country and the United States in the course of the last few years the Anglo-Americans have penetrated into this province which is still thinly peopled they purchase land, they produce the commodities of the country and supplant the original population it may easily be foreseen that if Mexico takes no steps to check this change the province of Texas will very shortly cease to belong to that government if the different degrees comparatively so slight existing European civilisation produce the results of such magnitude the consequences which must ensue from the collision of the most perfect European civilisation with Indian savages may readily be conceived the Indians and the little which they have done have unquestionably displayed as much natural genius as the peoples of Europe and their most important designs but nations as well as men require time to learn whatever may be their intelligence and their zeal whilst the savages were engaged in the work of civilisation the Europeans continued to surround them on every side and to confine them within narrower limits the two races gradually met and they are now in immediate juxtaposition to each other the Indian is already superior to his barbarous parent but he is still very far below his white neighbour with their resources and acquired knowledge the Europeans soon appropriated to themselves most of the advantages which the natives might have derived from the possession of the soil they have settled on the country they have purchased land at a very low rate or have occupied it by force and the Indians have been ruined by a competition which they had not the means of resisting they were isolated in their own country and their race only constituted a colony of troublesome aliens in the midst of numerous and domineering people Washington said in one of his messages to congress we are more enlightened and more powerful than the Indian nations we are therefore bound in honour to treat them with kindness and even with generosity but this virtuous and high-mounded policy has not been followed the opacity of the settlers is usually backed by the tyranny of the government although the Cherokees and the Creeks are established upon the territory which they inhabit before the settlement of the Europeans and although the Americans have frequently treated with them as foreign nations the surrounding states have not consented to acknowledge them as independent peoples and attempts have been made to subject these children of the woods to Anglo-American magistrates' laws and customs destitution had driven these unfortunate Indians to civilization and oppression now drives them back to their former condition many of them abandoned the soil which they had begun to clear and returned to their savage course of life End of chapter 18 part 2 This is a LibraVox recording All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org Democracy in America Volume 1 by Alexis de Tocqueville translated by Henry Reeve Section 35 Chapter 18 Future Condition of Three Races Part 3 In 1830 the state of Mississippi assimilated the Choctaws and Chickasaws to the white population and declared that any of them that should take the title of chief would be punished by a fine of $1,000 and a year's imprisonment When these laws were enforced upon the Choctaws who inhabited that district the tribe assembled their chief communicated to them the intentions of the whites and read to them some of the laws to which it was intended they should submit and they unanimously declared that it was better at once to retreat again into the wilds and consider the tyrannical measures which have been adopted by the legislatures of the southern states the conduct of their governors and the decrees of their courts of justice we shall be convinced that the entire expulsion of the Indians is the final result to which the efforts of their policy are directed The Americans of that part of the union look with jealousy upon the Aborigines They are aware that these tribes have not yet lost their traditions of savage life that the nation has permanently fixed them to the soil it is intended to force them to recede by reducing them to despair The creeks and Cherokees oppressed by the several states have appealed to the central government which is by no means insensible to their misfortunes and is sincerely desirous of saving the remnant of the natives and of maintaining them in the free possession of that territory which the union is pledged to respect and oppose so formidable a resistance to the execution of this design that the government is obliged to consent to the extirpation of a few barbarous tribes in order not to endanger the safety of the American Union But the federal government which is not able to protect the Indians would feign mitigate the hardships of their lot and with this intention proposals have been made to transport them into more remote regions at the public cost Between the 33rd and 37th degrees of North latitude a vast tract of country lies which has taken the name of Arkansas from the principal river that waters its extent It is bounded on the one side by the confines of Mexico on the other by the Mississippi Numberless streams cross it in every direction the climate is mild and the soil productive but it is only inhabited by a few wandering hordes of savages The government of the Union wishes to transport the broken remnants of the indigenous population of the south to the portion of this country which is nearest to Mexico and at a great distance from the American settlements We were assured towards the end of the year 1831 that 10,000 Indians had already gone down to the shores of the Arkansas and fresh detachment were constantly following them But Congress has been unable to excite a unanimous determination in those whom it is disposed to protect Some indeed are willing to quit the seat of oppression but the most enlightened members of the community refuse to abandon their recent dwellings and their springing crops They are of the opinion that the work of civilization once interrupted will never be resumed They fear that those domestic habits which have been so recently contracted may be irrevocably lost in the midst of a country which is still barbarous and where nothing is prepared for the subsistence of an agricultural people They know that their entrance into those wilds will be opposed by inimical hordes and that they have lost the energy of barbarians without acquiring the resources of civilization to resist their attacks Moreover, the Indians readily discovered that the settlement which is proposed to them is merely a temporary expedient Who can assure them that they will at length be allowed to dwell in peace in their new retreat The United States pledged themselves to the observance of the obligation but the territory which they at present occupied was formally secured to them by the most solemn oaths of Anglo-American faith The American government does not indeed rob them of their lands but it allows perpetual incursions to be made on them In a few years the same white population which now flocks around them will track them to the solitudes of the Arkansas They will then be exposed to the same evils without the same remedies and as the limits of the earth will at last fail them, their only refuge is the grave The Union treats the Indians with less cupidity and rigor than the policy of the several states but the two governments are alike destitute of good faith The states extend what they are pleased to term the benefits of their laws to the Indians with a belief that the tribes will recede rather than submit and the central government which promises a permanent refuge to these unhappy beings is well aware of its inability to secure it to them The Secretary of War in a letter written to the Cherokees April 18th, 1829 declares to them that they cannot expect to retain possession of the lands at that time occupied by them but gives them the most positive assurance of an uninterrupted peace if they would remove beyond the Mississippi as if the power which could not grant them protection then would be able to afford it to them hereafter Thus the tyranny of the states obliges the savages to retire The Union by its promises and resources facilitates their retreat and these measures tend to precisely the same end By the will of our Father in Heaven the Governor of the whole world said the Cherokees in their position to Congress The red man of America has become small and the white man great and renowned When the ancestors of the people of these United States first came to the shores of America they found the red man strong though he was ignorant and savage yet he received them kindly and gave them dry land to rest their weary feet They met in peace and shook hands and token a friendship Whatever the white man wanted and asked of the Indian the latter willingly gave At that time the Indian was the Lord and the white man the Supplient But now the scene has changed The strength of the red man has become weakness As his neighbors increased in numbers his power became less and less and now of the many and powerful tribes who once covered these United States only a few are to be seen a few whom a sweeping pestilence has left The northern tribes who were once so numerous and powerful are now nearly extinct Thus it has happened to the red man of America Shall we who are remnants share the same fate The land on which we stand we have received as an inheritance from our fathers who possessed it from time immemorial as a gift from our common father in heaven They bequeathed it to us as their children and we have sacredly kept it as containing the remains of our beloved men This right of inheritance we have never seeded nor ever forfeited permit us to ask what better right can the people have to a country than the right of inheritance and immemorable, peaceable possession We know it is said of late by the state of Georgia and by the executive of the United States that we have forfeited this right but we think this is said gratuitously At what time have we made the forfeit? What great crime have we committed whereby we must forever be divested of our country and rights? Was it when we were hostile to the United States and took part with the king of Great Britain during the struggle for independence? If so, why was not this forfeiture declared in the first treaty of peace between the United States and our beloved men? Why was not such an article as the following inserted in the treaty? The United States give peace to the Cherokees but for the part they took in the late war declared them to be but tenants at will to be removed when the convenience of the states within whose chartered limits they live shall require it That was the proper time to assume such a possession but it was not thought of nor would our forefathers have agreed to any treaty whose tendency was to deprive them of their rights in their country Such as the language of the Indians their assertions are true their forebodings inevitable From whichever side we consider the destinies of the aborigines of North America their calamities appear to be irremediable If they continue barbarous, they are forced to retire If they attempt to civilize their manners the contact of a more civilized community subjects them to oppression and destitution They perish if they continue to wander from waste to waste and if they attempt to settle they still must perish The assistance of Europeans is necessary to instruct them but the approach of Europeans corrupts and repels them into savage life They refuse to change their habits their solitudes are their own and it is too late to change them when they are constrained to submit The Spaniards pursued the Indians with bloodhounds like wild beasts They sacked the new world with no more temper or compassion than a city taken by storm but destruction must cease and frenzy be stayed The remnant of the Indian population which had escaped the massacre mixed with the conquerors and adopted in the end their religion The conduct of the Americans of the United States towards the Aborigines is characterized, on the other hand by a singular attachment to the formalities of law Provided that the Indians retain their barbarous condition the Americans take no part in their affairs They treat them as independent nations and do not possess themselves of their hunting grounds without a treaty of purchase and if an Indian nation happens to be so encroached upon as to be unable to subsist upon its territory they afford it brotherly assistance in transporting it to a grave sufficiently remote from the land of its fathers The Spaniards were unable to exterminate the Indian race by those unparalleled atrocities which brand them with indelible shame nor did they even succeed in wholly depriving it of its rights but the Americans of the United States have accomplished this twofold purpose with singular felicity legally philanthropically without shedding blood and without violating a single great principle of morality in the eyes of the world it is impossible to destroy men with more respect for the laws of humanity the situation of the black population in the United States and dangers with which its presence threatens the whites The Indians will perish in the same isolated condition in which they have lived but the destiny of the Negroes will become measure interwoven without of the Europeans these two races are attached to each other without intermingling and they are alike unable entirely to separate or to combine the most formidable of all the ills which threaten the future existence of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments or of the future dangers of the United States the observer is invariably led as a primary fact the permanent evils to which mankind is subjected are usually produced by the vehement or the increasing efforts of men but there is one calamity which penetrated furtively into the world and which was at first scarcely distinguished amid the ordinary abuses of power it originated with an individual whose name history has not preserved it was wafted like some accursed germ upon a portion of the soil but it afterwards nurtured itself, grew without effort and spreads naturally with the society to which it belongs I need scarcely add that this calamity is slavery Christianity suppressed slavery but the Christians of the 16th century reestablishment as an exception indeed to their social system and restricted to one of the races of mankind but the wound thus inflicted upon humanity though less extensive was at the same time rendered far more difficult of cure it is important to make an accurate distinction between slavery itself and its consequences the immediate evils which are produced by slavery were very nearly the same in antiquity as they are amongst the moderns but the consequences of these evils were different the slave amongst the ancients belonged to the same race as this master and he was often the superior of the two in education and instruction freedom was the only distinction between them and when freedom was conferred they were easily confounded together the ancients then had a very simple means of avoiding slavery and its evil consequences which was that of enfranchisement and they succeeded as soon as they adopted this measure generally not but in ancient states the vestiges of servitude subsisted for some time after servitude itself was abolished there is a natural prejudice which prompts men to despise whom slavery has been their inferior long after he has become their equal and the real inequality which is produced by fortune or by laws always succeeded by an imaginary inequality which is implanted in the manners of the people nevertheless the secondary consequence of slavery was limited to a certain term amongst the ancients for the freed man bore so entire a resemblance to those born free that it soon became impossible to distinguish him from amongst them the greatest difficulty in antiquity was that of altering the law amongst the modern it is that of altering the manners and as far as we are concerned the real obstacles begin where those of the ancients left off this arises from the circumstance that amongst the modern the abstract and transient fact of slavery is fatally united to the physical and permanent fact of color the tradition of slavery dishonors the race and the peculiarity of the race perpetuates the tradition of slavery no African has ever voluntarily emigrated to the shores of the new world once it must be inferred that all the blacks who are now to be found in that hemisphere are either slaves or freedmen thus the negro transmits the eternal mark of his ignomy to all his descendants and although the law may abolish slavery god alone can obliterate the traces of its existence the modern slave differs from his master not only in his condition but in his origin you may set the negro free but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European nor is this all we scarcely acknowledge the common features of mankind in this child of debasement whom slavery has brought amongst us his physiognomy is to our eyes hideous his understanding weak his taste slow and we are almost inclined to look upon him as being the intermediate between man and the brutes the moderns then after they have abolished slavery have three prejudices to contend against which are less easy to attack and far less easy to conquer than the mere fact of servitude the prejudice of the master the prejudice of the race and the prejudice of color it is difficult for us who have had the good fortune to be born amongst men like ourselves by nature and by law to conceive the irreconcilable differences which separate the negro from the European in America but we may derive some faint notion of them from analogy France was formerly a country in which numerous distinctions of rank existed that had been created by the legislation nothing can be more fictitious than a purely legal inferiority nothing more contrary to the instinct of mankind than these permanent divisions distinguished between beings evidently similar nevertheless these divisions subsisted for ages they still subsist in many places and on all sides they have left imaginary vestiges which time alone can evase if it be so difficult to root out an inequality which solely originates in law how are those distinctions to be destroyed which seem to be based upon the immutable laws of nature herself when I remember the extreme difficulty with which aristocratic bodies of whatever nature they may be are commingled with the mass of the people and the exceeding care which they take to preserve the ideal boundaries of their case in violet I despair of seeing an aristocracy disappear which is founded upon visible and indelible signs those who hope that the Europeans will ever mix with the negroes appear to me to delude themselves and I am not led to any conclusion or by the evidence of facts hitherto wherever the whites have been the most powerful they have maintained the blacks in a subordinate or servile position wherever the negroes have been strongest they have destroyed the whites such has been the only retribution which has ever taken place between the two races I see that in a certain portion of the territory of the united states at the present day the legal barrier which separated the two races is tending to fall away but not that which exists in the manners of the country slavery recedes but the prejudice to which it has given birth remains stationary whosoever has inhabited the united states must have perceived that in those parts of the union in which the negroes are no longer slaves they have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites on the contrary the prejudice of the race appears to be stronger in the states which have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known it is true that in the north of the union marriages may be legally contracted between negroes and whites but public opinion would stigmatize a man who should connect himself with a negroess as infamous and it would be difficult to meet with a single instance of such a union the electoral franchise has been conferred upon the negroes in almost all the states in which slavery has been abolished but if they come forward to vote their lives are in danger if oppressed they may bring an action at law but they will find none but whites amongst their judges and although they may legally service jurors prejudice repulses them from that office the same schools do not receive the child of the black and the european in the theaters gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters in the hospitals they lie apart although they are allowed to invoke the same divinity as the whites it must be at a different altar and in their own churches with their own clergy the gates of heaven are not closed against these unhappy beings but their inferiority is continued to the very confines of the other world when the negro is defunct his bones are cast aside and the distinction of condition prevails even in the equality of death the negro is free but he can share neither the rights nor the pleasures nor the labor nor the afflictions nor the tomb of him whose equal he has been declared to be and he cannot meet him upon fair terms in life or death in the south where slavery still exists the negroes are less carefully kept apart they sometimes share the labor and the recreations of the whites the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain extent and although the legislation treats them more harshly the habits of the people are more tolerant and compassionate in the south the master is not afraid to raise his slave to his own standing because he knows that he can in a moment reduce him to the dust at pleasure in the north the white no longer distinctly perceives the barrier which separates him from the degraded race and he shuns the negro with the more pertinacity since he fears lest they should someday be confounded together amongst the americans of the south nature sometimes reasserts her rights and restores a transient equality between the blacks and the whites but in the north pride restrains the most imperious of human passions the americans of the northern states would perhaps allow the negroes to share his licentious pleasures if the laws of his country did not declare that she may aspire to be the legitimate partner of his bed but he recoils with horror from her who might become his wife thus it is in the united states that the prejudice which repels the negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated and inequality is sanctioned by the manners whilst it is effaced from the laws of the country but if the relative position of the two races which inhabit the united states is such as I have described it may be asked why the americans have abolished slavery in the north of the union why they maintain it in the south and why they aggravate its hardships there the answer is easily given the good of the negroes but for that of the whites that measures are taken to abolish slavery in the united states the first negroes were imported into virginia about the year 1621 in america therefore as well as in the rest of the globe slavery originated in the south thence it spread from once settlement to another but the number of slaves diminished towards the northern states and the negro population was always limited in new england a century had scarcely elapsed since the foundation of the colonies when the attention of the planters was struck by the extraordinary fact that the provinces which were comparatively destitute of slaves increased in population, in wealth and in prosperity more rapidly than those which contained the greatest number of negroes in the former however the inhabitants were obliged to cultivate the soil themselves or by hired laborers in the latter they were furnished with hands for which they paid no wages yet although labor and expense were on the one side and ease with economy on the other the former were in possession of the most advantageous system this consequence seemed to be the more difficult to explain since the settlers who all belonged to the same european race had the same habits, the same civilization the same laws and their shades of difference were extremely slight time however continued to advance and the anglo-americans spreading beyond the coasts of the atlantic ocean penetrated farther and farther into the solitudes of the west they met with a new soil and an unwanted climate the obstacles which opposed them were of the most various character their races intermingled the inhabitants of the south went up towards the north those of the north descended to the south but in the midst of all these causes the result occurred at every step and in general the colonies in which there were no slaves became more populace and more rich than those in which slavery flourished the more progress was made the more it was shown that slavery which is so cruel to the slave is prejudicial to the master End of Chapter 18 Part 3 Chapter 18 Part 4 of Democracy in America This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville translated by Henry Reeve Section 36 Chapter 18 Future Condition of Three Races Part 4 But this truth was most satisfactorily demonstrated when civilization reached the banks of the Ohio the extreme which the Indians had distinguished by the name of Ohio or beautiful river waters one of the most magnificent valleys that has ever been made the abode of man undulating lands extend upon both shores of the Ohio whose soil affords inexhaustible treasures to the laborer on either bank the air is wholesome and the climate mild and each of them forms the extreme frontier of a vast state that which follows the numerous windings of the Ohio upon the left is called Kentucky that upon the right bears the name of the river these two states only differ in a single respect Kentucky has admitted slavery but the state of Ohio has prohibited the existence of slaves within its borders thus the traveler who floats down the current of the Ohio to the spot where that river falls into the Mississippi may be said to sail between liberty and servitude and a transient inspection of the surrounding objects will convince him as to which of the two is most favorable to mankind upon the left bank of the stream the population is rare from time to time one decries a troop of slaves loitering in the half desert fields the primeval forest recurs at every turn society seems to be asleep man to be idle and nature alone offers a scene of activity and of life from the right bank on the contrary a confused hum is heard which proclaims the presence of industry the fields are covered with abundant harvests the elegance of the dwellings announces the taste and activity of the laborer and man appears to be in the enjoyment of that wealth and contentment which is the reward of labor the state of Kentucky was founded in 1775 the state of Ohio only 12 years later but 12 years are more in America than half a century in Europe at the present day the population of Ohio exceeds that of Kentucky by 250,000 souls these opposite consequences of slavery and freedom may readily be understood and they suffice to explain many of the differences which we remark between the civilization of antiquity and that of our own time upon the left bank of the Ohio labor is confounded with the idea of slavery upon the right bank it is identified with that of prosperity and improvement on the one side it is degraded on the other it is honored on the former territory no white laborers can be found for they would be afraid of assimilating themselves to the negroids on the latter no one is idle for the white population extends its activity and its intelligence to every kind of employment thus the men whose task it is to cultivate the rich soil of Kentucky are ignorant and lukewarm whilst those who are active and enlightened either do nothing or pass over into the state of Ohio where they may work without dishonor it is true that in Kentucky the planters are not obliged to pay wages to the slaves whom they employ but they derive small profits from their labor whilst the wages paid to free workmen will be returned with interest in the value of their services the free workmen is paid but he does his work quicker than the slave and the rapidity of execution is one of the great elements of economy the white sells his services but they are only purchased at the times at which they may be useful the black can claim no remuneration for his toil but the expense of his maintenance is perpetual he must be supported in his old age as well as in the prime of manhood in his profitless infancy as well as in the productive years of youth payment must equally be made in order to obtain the services of either class of men the free workmen receives his wages and money the slave in education in food in care and in clothing the money which a master spends in the maintenance of his slaves goes gradually and in detail so that it is scarcely perceived the salary of the free workmen is paid in around some which appears only to enrich the individual who receives it but in the end the slave has cost more than the free servant and his labor is less productive the influence of slavery extends still further it affects the character of the master and imparts a peculiar tendency to his ideas and his tastes upon both banks of the Ohio the character of the inhabitants is enterprising and energetic but this vigor is very differently than the two states the white inhabitant of Ohio who is obliged to subsist by his own exertions regards temporal prosperity as the principal aim of his existence and as the country which he occupies presents inexhaustible resources to his industry and ever varying lures to his activity his acquisitive order surpasses the ordinary limits of human cupidity he is tormented by the desire and he boldly enters upon every path which fortune opens to him he becomes a sailor a pioneer an artisan or a laborer with the same indifference and he supports with equal constancy the fatigue and the dangers incidental to these various professions the resources of his intelligence are astonishing and his avidity in the pursuit of gain amounts to a species of heroism but the Kentucky mourns not only labor but all the undertakings which labor promotes as he lives in an idle independence his taste are those of an idle man money loses a portion of its value in his eyes he covet's wealth much less than the pleasure and excitement and the energy which his neighbor devotes to gain turns with him to a passionate love of field sports and military exercises he delights in violent bodily exertion he is familiar with the use of arms and is accustomed from a very early age to expose his life in single combat thus slavery not only prevents the whites from becoming opulent but even from desiring to become so as the same causes have been continually producing opposite effects for the last two centuries in the British colonies of North America they have established a very striking difference between the commercial capacity of the inhabitants of the south and those of the north at the present day it is only the northern states which are in possession of shipping manufacturers railroads and canals the difference is perceptible not only in comparing the north with the south but in comparing the several southern states almost all the individuals who carry on commercial operations or who endeavor to turn slave labor to account in the most southern districts of the union have emigrated from the north the natives of the northern states are constantly spreading over that portion of the American territory where they have less to fear from competition they discover resources there which escaped the notice of the inhabitants and as they comply with the system with which they do not approve they succeed in turning it to better advantage than those who first founded and who still maintain it where I inclined to continue this parallel I easily prove that almost all the differences which may be remarked between the characters of the Americans in the southern and in the northern states have originated in slavery but this would divert me from my subject and my present intention is not to point out all the consequences of servitude but those effects which it has produced upon the prosperity of the countries which have admitted it the influence of slavery upon the production of wealth must have been very imperfectly known in antiquity as slavery then obtained throughout the civilized world and the nations which were unacquainted with it were barbarous and indeed Christianity only abolished slavery by advocating the claims of the slave at the present time it may be attacked in the name of the master and upon this point interest is reconciled with morality as these truths became apparent in the United States slavery receded before the progress of experience servitude had begun in the south and had then spread towards the north but it now retires again freedom which started from the north now descends uninterruptedly towards the south amongst the great states Pennsylvania now constitutes the extreme limit of slavery to the north but even within those limits the slave system is shaken Maryland which is immediately below Pennsylvania is preparing for its abolition and Virginia which comes next to Maryland is already discussing its utility and its dangers no great change takes place in human institutions without involving amongst it causes the law of inheritance when the law of primigenitor obtained in the south each family was represented by a wealthy individual who was neither compelled nor induced to labor and he was surrounded as by parasitic plants by the other members of his family who were then excluded by law from sharing inheritance and who led the same kind of life as himself the very same thing then occurred in all the families of the south still happens in the wealthy families of some countries in Europe namely that the younger sons remain in the same state of idleness as their elder brother without being as rich as he is this identical result seems to be produced in Europe and in America by wholly analogous causes in the south of the United States a typical race of whites formed an aristocratic body which was headed by a certain number of privileged individuals whose wealth was permanent and whose leisure was hereditary these leaders of the American nobility kept alive the traditional prejudices of the white race in the body of which they were the representatives and maintained the honor of an active life this aristocracy contained many who were poor but none who would work others preferred want to labor and consequently no competition was set on foot against negro laborers and slaves and whatever opinion might be entertained as to the utility of their efforts it was indispensable to employ them since there was no one else to work no sooner was the law of primigenitor abolish than fortunes began to diminish and all the families of the country were simultaneously reduced to a state in which labor became necessary to procure the means of subsistence several of them have since entirely disappeared and all of them learned to look forward to the time at which it would be necessary for everyone to provide for his own wants wealthy individuals are still to be met with but they no longer constitute a compact and hereditary body nor have they been able to adopt a line of conduct in which they could persevere and in which they could infuse into all ranks of society the prejudice which stigmatized labor was in the first place abandoned by common consent the number of needy men was increased and the needy were allowed to gain a laborious subsistence without blushing for their exertions thus one of the most immediate consequences of the partable quality of estates has been to create a class of free laborers as soon as competition was set on foot between the free laborer and the slave the inferiority of the latter became manifest and slavery was attacked in its fundamental principle which is the interest of the master as slavery recedes the black population follows its retrograde course and returns with it to wars those tropical regions from which it originally came however singular this fact may at first appear to be it may be readily explained although the Americans abolished the principle of slavery they do not set their slaves free to illustrate this remark I will quote the example of the state of New York in 1788 the state of New York prohibited the sale of slaves within its limits which was an indirect method of prohibiting the importation of blacks thence forward the number of negroes could only increase according to the ratio of the natural increase of population but eight years later a more decisive measure was taken and it was enacted that all children of slave parents after July 4th 1799 should be free no increase could then take place and although slaves still existed slavery might be said to be abolished from the time at which a northern state prohibited the importation of slaves no slaves were brought from the south to be sold in its markets on the other hand as the sale of slaves was forbidden in that state an owner was no longer able to import a portion of his slave who thus became a burdensome possession otherwise than by transporting him to the south but when a northern state declared that the son of the slave should be born free the slave lost a large portion of his market value since his posterity was no longer included in the bargain and the owner had then a strong interest in transporting him to the south thus the same law prevents the slaves of the south from coming into the northern states of the north to the south the want of free hands is felt in a state in proportion as the number of slaves decreases but in proportion as labor is performed by free hands slave labor becomes less productive and the slave is then a useless or onerous possession whom it is important to export to those southern states where the same competition is not to be feared thus the abolition of slavery does not set the slave free but it merely transfers him from one master to another and from the north to the south the emancipated negroes and those born after the abolition of slavery do not indeed migrate from the north to the south but their situation with regard to the Europeans is not unlike that of the aborigines of America they remain half civilized and deprived of their rights in the midst of a population which is far superior to them in wealth and knowledge where they are exposed to the tyranny of laws and the intolerance of the people on some accounts they are still more to be pitied than the Indians since they are haunted by the reminiscence of slavery and they cannot claim possession of a single portion of the soil many of them perish miserably and the rest congregate in the great towns where they perform the meanest offices and lead a wretched and precarious existence but even if the number of negroes continued to increase as rapidly as when they were still in the state of slavery as the number of whites augments with twofold rapidity since the abolition of slavery the blacks would soon be as it were lost in the midst of a strange population a district which is cultivated by slaves is in general more scantily people than a district cultivated by free labor moreover America is still a new country and a state is therefore not half people at the time when it abolishes slavery no sooner is an end put to slavery than the want of free labor is felt and a crowd of enterprising adventurers immediately arrive from all parts of the country who hastened a profit by the fresh resources which are then open to industry the soil is soon divided amongst them and a family of white settlers takes possession of each tract of country besides which European immigration is exclusively directed to the free for what would be the fate of a poor immigrant who crosses the Atlantic in search of ease and happiness if he were to land in a country where labor is stigmatized as degrading thus the white population grows by its natural increase and at the same time by the immense influx of immigrants whilst the black population receives no immigrants and is upon its decline the proportion which existed between the two races is soon inverted the negroes constitute a scanty remnant a poor tribe of vagrants which is lost in the midst of an immense people in full possession of the land and the presence of the blacks is only marked by the injustice and the hardships of which they are the unhappy victims in several of the western states the negro race has never made its appearance and in all the northern states it is rapidly declining thus the great question of its future condition is defined within a narrow circle where it becomes less formidable though not more easy of solution the more we descend towards the south the more difficult does it become to abolish slavery with advantage and this arises from several physical causes which it is important to point out the first of these causes is the climate it is well known that in proportion as Europeans approach the trophics they suffer more from labor many of the Americans even assert that within a certain latitude the exertions which a negro can make without danger are fatal to them but I do not think that this opinion which is so favorable to the indolence of the inhabitants of southern regions is confirmed by experience the southern parts of the union are not hotter than the south of Italy and of Spain and it may be asked why the European cannot work as well there as in the latter two countries has been abolished in Italy and in Spain without causing the destruction of the masters why should not the same thing take place in the union I cannot believe that nature has prohibited the Europeans in Georgia and the Florida's under pain of death from raising the means of subsistence from the soil but their labor would unquestionably be more irksome and less productive to them than to the inhabitants of New England as the free workman thus loses a portion of his superiority over the southern states there are fewer inducements to abolish slavery the Spanish government formerly caused a certain number of peasants from the Edcores to be transported into a district of Louisiana called Atacampus by way of experiment these settlers still cultivate the soil without the assistance of slaves but their industry is so languid as scarcely to supply their most necessary wants all the plants of Europe grow in the northern parts of the union the south has special productions of its own it has been observed that slave labor is a very expensive method of cultivating corn the farmer of corn land in a country where slavery is unknown habitually retains a small number of laborers in his service and at seed time and harvest he hires several additional hands who only live at his cost for a short period but the agricultureist in the slave state is obliged to keep a large number of slaves the whole year around in order to sew his fields and to gather in his crops although their services are only required for a few weeks but slaves are unable to wait till they are hired and subsist by their own labor in the mean time like free laborers in order to have their services they must be bought slavery, independent of its general disadvantages, is therefore still more inapplicable to countries where the corn is cultivated than to those which produce crops of a different kind the cultivation of tobacco, of cotton and especially of the sugar cane demands on the other hand unremitting attention and women and children are employed in it whose services are of but little use in the cultivation of wheat thus slavery is naturally more fitted to the countries from which these productions are derived tobacco, cotton, and the sugar cane are exclusively grown in the south and they form one of the principal sources of wealth of these states if slavery were abolished the inhabitants of the south would be constrained to adopt one of two alternatives they must either change their system of cultivation and then they would come into competition with the more active and more experienced inhabitants of the north or if they continue to cultivate the same produce without slave labor they would have to support the competition with other states of the south which might still retain their slaves thus peculiar reasons for maintaining slavery exist in the south which do not operate in the north but there is yet another motive which is more cogent than all the others the south might indeed rigorously speaking abolish slavery but how should it rid its territory of the black population slaves and slavery are driven from the north by the same law but this two fold result cannot be hoped for in the south the arguments which I have deduced to show that slavery is more natural and more advantageous in the south than in the north sufficiently prove that the number of slaves must be far greater in the former districts it was to the southern settlements that the first Africans were brought and it is there that the greatest number of them have always been imported as we advance towards the south the prejudice which sanctions idleness increases in power in the states nearest to the tropics there is not a single white laborer the negroes are consequently much more numerous in the south than in the north and as I have already observed this disproportion increases daily since the negroes are transferred to one part of the union as soon as slavery is abolished in the other thus the black population augments in the south not only by its natural fecundity but by the compulsory immigration from the north and the African race has causes of increase in the south very analogous to those which so powerfully accelerate the growth of the european race in the north in the state of main there is one negro in 300 inhabitants in massachusetts one in a hundred in new york two in one hundred in pennsylvania three in the same number in maryland 34 in virginia 42 and lastly in south carolina 55 percent such as the proportion of the black population to the whites in the year 1830 but this proportion is perpetually changing as it constantly decreases in the north and augments in the south it is evident that the most southern states of the union cannot abolish slavery without incurring very great dangers which the north had no reason to apprehend when it emancipated its black population we have already shown the system by which the northern states secure the transition from slavery to freedom by keeping the present generation in chains and setting their descendants free by this means the negroes are gradually introduced into society and whilst the men who might abuse their freedom are kept in a state of servitude those who are emancipated may learn the art of being free before they become their own masters but it would be difficult to apply this method in the south to declare that all the negroes born after a certain period shall be free is to introduce the principle and the notion of liberty into the heart of slavery the blacks whom the law thus maintains in a state of slavery from which their children are delivered are astonished at so unequal a fate and their astonishment is only the prelude to their impatience and irritation thence forward slavery loses in their eyes that kind of moral power which it derived from time and habit it is reduced to a mere palpable of use of force the northern states had nothing to fear from the contrast because in them the blacks were few in number and the white population was very considerable but if this faint dawn of freedom were to show two millions of men their true position the oppressors would have reason to tremble after having a franchise the children of their slaves the Europeans of the southern states would very shortly be obliged to extend the same benefit to the whole black population end of section 36