US Government Censures Declaration of Independence

 
 

President James Madison

"Next to the case of the black race within our bosom, that of the red on our borders is the problem most baffling to the policy of our country."
 

Dr. Albert Schweitzer
Winner of the 1952 Nobel Prize for Peace

Schweitzer gave his life to help the colored race in Africa.  He decried the abuses that the European races had heaped upon the people there.  He said it would take a book to contain the record of all that had occurred between the two peoples.  If anyone knew the Negro, it was Albert Schweitzer

From his 1961 book, "From My African Notebook":

"I have given my life to try to alleviate the sufferings of Africa. There is something that all white men who have lived here like I must learn and know: that these individuals are a sub-race. They have neither the intellectual, mental, or emotional abilities to equate or to share equally with white men in any function of our civilization. I have given my life to try to bring them the advantages which our civilization must offer, but I have become well aware that we must retain this status: the superior and they the inferior. For whenever a white man seeks to live among them as their equals they will either destroy him or devour him. And they will destroy all of his work. Let white men from anywhere in the world, who would come to Africa, remember that you must continually retain this status; you the master and they the inferior like children that you would help or teach. Never fraternise with them as equals. Never accept them as your social equals or they will devour you. They will destroy you."

From "On the Edge of the Primeval Forrest"

"The Negro is a child, and with children nothing can be done without the use of authority.  We must, therefore, so arrange the circumstances of daily life that my natural authority can find expression.  With regard to the Negroes, then, I have coined the formula:  "I am your brother, it is true, but your elder brother.'"

"The White man who preaches to backward races a doctrine of equality not only demeans himself and his own race, but forfeits his opportunity to be of real service.  What is called the "liberal ferment" among backward peoples who are shouting democracy from Latin America to Africa is too often not at all a struggle for freedom under law on the part of peoples capable of self-government, as was the case in the American Revolution, but rather a demand for license under lawlessness on the part of peoples totally incapable of self-government.  As the aforesaid foreign observers have so often reported, and as any traveler can confirm for himself, these peoples do not really desire or understand freedom and its responsibilities; they wish equality and the capture for themselves of the fruits of the intelligence and enterprise of others.  They wish White men to continue pumping in capital and management while they take over the product.  For evil or stupid Whites to encourage ferment of this sort is folly and retrogression for all concerned.  Before we press too hard for the handing over of all colonial empires to the natives, we had better ask ourselves whether we are ready to give the United States back to the Indians and whether humanity as a while would be better off if we did."

"Let us consider another aspect of the matter.  In many instances, when the White colonial powers moved into the more backward areas, they put a stop to all sorts of horror and cruelty.  Liberals and churchmen cried out to have this done, just as they now cry out to turn the natives back to the freedom that originally produced the horror.  Writing in 1893 of conditions in Kenya, where Tom Mboya now vies for power with Jomo Kenyatta, the "bloody spear" of the Mau Mau, Lord Lugard said:  "...Such is African life, for the African knows no peace.  One day you may see peace and plenty, well-tilled fields and children playing in the sun; on the next you may find the corpses of the men, the bodies of the children half-burnt in the flames which consumed the village, while the women are the captives of the victorious raiders.  Not against the slave trade alone are our efforts needed."

Henry Clay

There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and violence. Transplanted to a foreign land, they will carry back to their native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law and liberty. May it not be one of the great designs of the Ruler of the universe (whose ways are often inscrutable by short-sighted mortals), thus to transform an original crime, into a signal blessing to that most unfortunate portion of the globe?

President Abraham Lincoln

(From Fragments: Notes for Speeches, September 1859, Vol. III, p.399 of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln)

"Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogism as this?"

(Fourth Debate with Stephen Douglas at Charleston, Illinois on September 18, 1858, Vol. III, p. 145-146 of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln).

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the White and Black races--that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people, and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and Black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race. . . I give. . . the most solemn pledge that I will to the very last, stand by the law of the State, which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes."

Said during the October 16, 1858 debate in Peoria, IL with Douglas:

"Now I say to you, my fellow citizen, that in my opinion, the signers of the Declaration of Independence had no reference to the Negro whatever. One great evidence is to be found in the fact that at the time every one of the thirteen colonies was a slaveholding colony, every signer of the Declaration representing a slaveholding constituency, and not one of them emancipated his slaves, much less offered citizenship to them when they signed the Declaration. If they intended to declare the Negro was equal of the white man, they were bound that day and hour to have put the Negroes on an equality with themselves."

Spoken after signing the Emancipation Proclamation (like other presidents, Lincoln sought the repatriation of freed Blacks to Africa):

"I have urged the colonization of the Negroes, and shall continue.  My emancipation Proclamation was linked with this plan.  There is no room for two distinct races of White men in America, much less for two distinct races of Whites and Blacks.

I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal.  Within twenty years we can peacefully colonize the Negro and give him our language, literature, religion, and system of government under conditions in which he can rise to the full measure of manhood.  This he can never do here.  We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable."

(The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Baler, Rutgers University Press, 1953, Vol. V, pages 371-375) Said during a face-to-face meeting with a black group calling themselves "Deputation of Free Negroes" in 1862:

"You and I are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other races. Whether it be right or wrong, I need not discuss; but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living amongst us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this is admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated.

"Your race are suffering, in my judgment, the greatest wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on equality with the White race. On this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you. I cannot alter it if I would.

"I need not recount to you the effects upon White men, growing out of the institution of slavery. See our present condition - the country engaged in war! - our White men cutting one another's throats, none knowing how far it will extend; and then consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race among us there would be no war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or the other. It is better for us both, therefore, to be separated."

"All is race; there is no other truth ,and every race must fall which carelessly suffers its blood to become mixed." - Benjamin Disraeli, Jewish Prime Minister of Great Britain, in Tancred, by Frederick Warne, London, 1868, p. 106.

"No man will treat with indifference the principle of race. It is the key to history, and why history is often so confused is that it has been written by men who are ignorant of this principle and all the knowledge it involves. . . Language and religion do not make a race--there is only one thing which makes a race, and that is blood." - Benjamin Disraeli, in Endymion pp. 249-250. .

"Whatever may be the sociological value of the legal fiction that 'all men are born free and equal,' there can be no doubt that...in its biological application, at any rate, this statement is one of the most stupendous falsehoods ever uttered by man through his misbegotten gift of articulate speech." - Dr. Earnest Hooton, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University, Crime and the Man, p. 342.

"The major cause for American Negroes intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and thus not remedial to a major degree by improvement in environment." - Dr. William Shockley, of Stanford University, Nobel Prize winner

"I am apt to suspect the Negroes to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There scarcely ever was a civilization of their complexion, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation." - David Hume, English philosopher, in his book, Essays, Moral and Political, Vol. II.

"If a man acknowledges the facts of race, he is a racist. I suppose if he acknowledges the facts of sex he is a sexist!" - Carleton Putnam, writer, in an address to the Washington Putnam Letters Club, Feb. 12, 1963. Published in The Mankind Quarterly, Vol. IV, No. 1, pp. 12-27. See p. 19.

"A racist is a man who believes in history, genetics, and his eyes!" - Tom Anderson, Article: "Tom Anderson's Straight Talk on Equality and Race," The Citizen, Jackson, Miss., June 1970.

"As a social anthropologist, I naturally accept and even stress the fact that there are major differences, both mental and psychological, which separate the different races of mankind. Indeed, I would be inclined to suggest that however great may be the physical differences between such races as the European and the Negro, the mental and psychological differences are greater still." - L.S.B. Leakey, in The Progress And Evolution Of Man In Africa (Oxford University Press), 1961.

"It will be seen that when we classify mankind by color, the only one of the primary races, given by this classification, which has not made a creative contribution to any one of our twenty-one civilizations is the Black Race." - Dr. Arnold Toynbee, The Study of History, Vol. I, page 233.

"In most if not all of the newly independent Black nations of Africa, little if anything during the past 5000 or more years can be pointed to as having made a contribution that in any way enhances the life of man." - Walter Arnold, The Evolution of Man in Relation to That of the Earth, Part V, The Mankind Quarterly, Vol. X, No.2 (Oct-Dec 1969) p. 78.