Amalgamation
Weekly Banner-Watchman
Athens, Georgia
1889-03-26
page 1, columns 3-4
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Transcribed by Steven F. Riley
A Reply By Rev. S. P. Richardson D. D. to a Sermon By Dr. Talmage, Preached in Brooklyn, N.Y. March 3rd, on “The United States, Immigration Ethology, and the Amalgamation of All the Races.
Text Acts XVII and part of the 20th verse, “And hath made of one blood all nations,” (the whole verse) of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.” The whole verse shows clearly that God, instead of intending to unite by immigration and amalgamation all nationalities, before determined and appointed their bounds of separation. He gave Africa to Ham, Asia to Shem and Europe and the West to Japheth. He also gave form, brain and color to each family suited to develop the countries in which he placed them.
Dr. Talmadge says: “The advantage of the influx of nations, through mighty additions of foreign population to our above population I think God is giving, to fill this land with a race of people 95 per cent superior to anything the world has ever seen. Marriage outside of one own nationality and with another style of nationality is a mighty gain.”
The Doctor then speaks of himself and of the very great gain by mixing the Scotch and Irish. Dr. Talmage knows that the European nations are largely made up of the white or Japhethic race, all of the one primordial race. The Doctor is a great man in some respects, but what would he have been if only his Scotch and Irish blood had been supplemented with a little sprinkling of negro, Indian and Hottentot? He proposes to make (not the North) “but the whole United States a great caldron, in which to mix all races and all nationalities, and to formulate in this caldron, out of all races, a new race or manhood “95 par cent, superior to anything this world has ever seen.”
The Doctor proves, as he thinks, from his garbled text, and from a scientific analysis of one single part of man, “the blood” that all men are the same. Now if the Doctor really wanted to be fair in his presentation of his subject to the world, why did he not subject the hair, skin, bones and odor of all the races to the same analysis? Why just take one thing, “the blood.” All animals have some one thing in common with man, seeing, hearing and tasting belong to the ass as well as the man.
If all the races are one when put into his big caldron, will they not still be one when he takes them out? If the putting of all the races into the big caldron, with all their different colors and odors, would make them all Scotch-Irish, it might be well to put them in, but so far as the experiment has been made up to date, the facts are that in exact proportion as you put in white, black, or yellow, it comes out white, black or yellow in the very same proportion it was put in. If the white and black mix they will be mulattoes in all coming generations.
I have never seen the results of amalgamation on so large a scale as the Doctor proposes with his great caldron; but I have seen the white, black and Indian, all mixed up in one person, but that person was nothing like Dr. Talmage’s beauty nor was he 95 per cent. beyond anything I had ever seen. The white and yellow were very much marred in the mixture, and the black not much improved, if improved at all. The mulatto may, in some respects, be an improvement on the negro, but he is certainly no improvement on the white man, and in the long run the mulatto, like all the other hybrids, becomes extinct. My long observation goes to prove that in mixing the races all are weakened and none are benefitted. All the different families of the same race may be benefitted by mixing, like the Scotch and the Irish, but never by mixing the races. If God had intended the amalgamation of all the races, why did He, by creation, or miraculous interposition separate the races, and appoint them bounds, and give to each the place of his habitation. The negro is not a human invention, nor is the white or yellow man, but a divine appointment. The three colors are primordial, and are not radically changed by food, or climate. The negro was black four thousand years ago, as he is now. God says he cannot change his skin any more than the leopard can change his spots, and yet the Doctor would change God’s decree.
Europe and the North brought the negro from his God-given home, and sold him to the South, then becoming dissatisfied with what they had done, destroyed a half million of Southern white people to set the four million of negroes free. In their modes of warfare they showed that they were capable of the deepest depravity, and really acted worse than common Savages. Now they are dissatisfied with the freedom of the negro, and their most popular and sensational preacher sounded the bugle note on the 3d of March in Brooklyn, N.Y., to rig up a big caldron, into which be proposes to cast both negroes and whites, and stew them both down to a common mulatto, and destroy both the white and black races, and substitute them with a race of mulattoes, a type of humanity God never made. There is not a mulatto or mule in the primordial type, in the kingdom of nature. The Bible, experience and God in universal nature, are all pronounced against the amalgamation of the races. I have never known a Scotch-Irishman, Dutchman or Englishman, not even a cold blooded Yankee to improve their posterity by mixing with negroes and Indians. Nor have I ever known the negro or Indian much improved by mixing with them. The real facts are the negro has no more affinities for the white and yellow races, than they have for him.
Dr. Talmage says: “There was a time when I entertained race prejudices, but thanks to God that prejudice is gone and if I set in a church on one side a black man and on the other side an Indian and before me a Chinaman and behind me a Turk, I would be as happy as I am now standing in the presence of this brilliant auiience. The sooner we get this corpse of race prejudice buried the healthier will be (not our Northern) but American atmosphere.” This is the most pronounced social equality and amalgamation I have ever heard from any man. I have denied, that the Northern churches held any such views, and that it was only a ghost of Southern imagination. Dr. Talmage is a representative mam, and knows the mind and feelings of the North.
Dr. Talmage ought to be a good Presbyterian and let God’s divine decrees alone. Did God not ordain the races? The Doctor ought to be tried for heresy and put out of the church for trying to violate the divine decrees by making mulattoes out of people which God has made white and black. I would suggest to the good Doctor and his brilliant congregation, to make the experiment of mixing the races on a smaller scale, and not have so large a funeral all at onca. Let one of the Doctor’s daughters marry a negro, and another a Chinamen, and another a Hottentot, and then let his Elders follow his exaple, and take time and see if, on a small scale, they can produce a race 95 per cent above anything the world has ever seen. Then show his picture of this new development to his Northern friends, who drive the negro children out of their white public schools. If the North will fix up large gardens and invite the negroes to come up North among their friends, and then enter into a hearty amalgamation, the negro problem may be solved.
If the good Doctor will take the time and pains to review the history of nations, their decay and final fall, he will see that in most instances their ruin was the result, both religiously and politically of mixing nations and amalgamation. God forbade the Jews to mix with other nations. Dr. Talmage, in the face of the Bible, proposes to build up a great nation out of the very causes that have destroyed greater nations. I have no doubt but our good Dr. Talmage and brilliant Brooklyn congregations would suffer crucifixion before they would mix their families with negroes, Chinamen and Hottentots. This great country has been built up, not by the Hametic or Shemetic races, but by the children of Japheth–English, Dutch, Scotch and Irish, and the country will never be injured by the immigration, of those nationalities, or our amalgamation with them. I am English and German, but no negro or Chinaman. An Englishman or Scotchman is not a foreigner in this country, but one of the same white family. —S. P. Richardson.