Page:The Negro a menace to American civilization.djvu/94

80 nearer the anthropoid apes than any other known group of people. The word civilization had no meaning for them ; their unrecorded history reached far back into the hazy epochs of savagery. On the other hand, the advanced race, the preoccupiers of the soil upon which subsequently these two races fraternized, represented, in part at least, some of the best stock that had developed in the Old World. They were in reality the seeds of a coming nation, a nation destined to take its place later on as one of the most powerful, most advanced, and most highly civilized nations on the face of the globe. Hundreds, nay, thousands of the former, the blacks from the West Soudan of Africa, were interspersed among these in a manner already described in a former chapter. The crossing of the two races commenced at the very outstart of the vile slavery trade that fetched them hither. Indeed, in those days many a negress was landed upon our shores by her captors already pregnant by some one of the demoniac crew that made up the company of the slaver that brought her over. It is quite likely, too, that many of these negresses were pregnant by blacks in Africa at the time of their capture; some of them died in this state aboard the slavers; others gave birth to their children on the passage across the Atlantic; many were murdered prior to the birth of their children, did the exigencies of the trade demand it. Some, upon being disposed of at the end of the passage, were also carrying unborn children, and, I dare say, were considered to be more valuable upon that account, just as a blooded mare is that has been successfully lined by a high-bred and pedigreed stallion. However this may all be, there is no question