Santo Domingo: An Address Delivered in St. Louis, Missouri, on January 13, 1873
SANTO DOMINGO: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN ST. LOUIS,
MISSOURI, ON 13 JANUARY 1873
New National Era, 23 January 1873. Other texts in St. Louis Democrat, 14 January 1873.
From January to March 1871, Douglass served as assistant secretary to a
special investigating committee sent by the U.S. government to study the
feasibility of annexing that island. Douglass began lecturing on Santo Domin-
go within a month of his return to this country. He used the address both to
provide his audiences with a physical and historical description of Santo
Domingo and to foster public support for President Ulysses S. Grant’s effort to
annex that nation. Douglass wrote out his text for this lecture and revised it
several times for presentation in various cities, including Baltimore, Boston,
Rochester, and Chicago, during the next year. Douglass suspended delivery of
“Santo Domingo” to campaign for Grant’s reelection during the summer and
fall of 1872, but he briefly revived it for the winter lecture season of 1872-73.
The text republished here is of one of the last known presentations of the
“Santo Domingo” lecture, which occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, on the
evening of 13 January 1873. Although well advertised, the address drew an
audience that filled only two-thirds of the seats at the Temple Theater. A
prominent Missouri lawyer Enos Clarke introduced Douglass and numerous
local dignitaries sat on the platform. During Douglass’s two-hour talk, accord-
ing to the St. Louis Globe, the “interest awakened by the distinguished
speaker called forth frequent applause.” Although the most complete report of
this or any delivery of “Santo Domingo,” the St. Louis Globe text, as re-
published in Douglass’s own New National Era, unfortunately only summa-
rizes some portions of the lengthy lecture. See Appendix A, text 8, for précis
of alternate texts. Baltimore American and Commercial Advertiser, 25 April
1871; NNE, 25 May, 26 October 1871, 2 May 1872; Boston Daily Evening
Transcript, 15 November 1871; NASS, 25 November 1871; Chicago Tribune,
30 December 1871; St. Louis Democrat, 10, 11, 12, 13 January 1873; Bangor
(Me.) Daily Whig and Courier, 15 March 1873.
Among that vast group of islands known as the West Indies, adjacent to the
American continent, and, by neighborhood at least, entitled to share its
institutions and destiny—almost touching our shores—extending away
from the coast of Florida far into the broad Atlantic, fringing the Gulf of
Mexico and the blue Carribbean sea, as with a wreath of fragrant tropical
fruits and flowers, chiefly occupied by colored people, dominated by two
governments, both republican in form yet both despotic and military in
fact: Hayti on the west, with a population of seven or eight hundred
thousand, and ten thousand square miles of territory; Dominica on the east,
with a population of one hundred and fifty thousand, and twenty-two
thousand square miles of territory, a country nearly as large as Ireland, and
capable of sustaining a population a great deal larger; between the seven-
teenth and twentieth lines of latitude, six days from New York, three days
from Key West, stands the beautiful island of Santo Domingo,1This Caribbean island and its political divisions are known to history by various names. The native Indian inhabitants called the island Quisqueya or Hayti, “the land of the mountains." Christopher Columbus, who landed there in 1492, honored the country of his patrons by naming the island Espanola (Hispaniola), although it was also referred to as Santo Domingo, actually the name of the Spanish colony that survived until 1795, when it was ceded to France. The western part of the island, which Spain had ceded to France in 1697, was known as Saint-Domingue until 1804, when it became the independent republic of Haiti. Although Douglass here uses Santo Domingo to mean the island as a whole, he elsewhere and more properly restricts his usage of that name to designate the independent nation that occupied the eastern two-thirds of the island, otherwise known as the Dominican Republic or, less frequently, Dominica. Douglass apparently overestimates Santo Domingo’s land area and Haiti's population. Rayford W. Logan, Haiti and the Dominican Republic (New York, 1968), 3; Samuel Hazard, Santo Domingo, Past and Present; with a Glance at Hayti (New York, 1873), 484; AAC, 1870, 675. the subject
of my lecture this evening and the subject of much controversy in certain
quarters.
LAYS POLITICS ASIDE
It is not, however, my purpose to treat the subject in a spirit of political
controversy or party feeling, and not altogether from a patriotic stand-
point.
Putting aside the special political interest with which events for the
moment have invested Santo Domingo; putting aside the pronounced and
sharply defined differences of opinion to which the proposition to annex a
part of it to the United States has given rise; putting aside the eloquent and
powerful opposition to that measure by one of the nation’s ablest and most
trusted Senators on the one hand,2Charles Sumner. and the earnest support given to it at one
time by one of the nation’s most even minded and trusted Presidents3Ulysses S. Grant. on the
other, whether we consider Santo Domingo geographically with reference
to climate, soil, productions, with commercial and other important re-
sources, or whether we consider it historically—a broader and higher
ground—as illustrating peculiar phases of human nature and social forces,
and furnishing important lessons of civilization, we shall find in Santo
Domingo enough to invite the American people to a more intimate ac-
quaintance with that country, if not to a more intimate relation than has
hitherto subsisted between them.
Of course, like everything else in the world, Santo Domingo may be
viewed and will be viewed from different sides, and policies will be shaped
towards that country from different motives—some high and generous,
and some low and selfish.
MANIFEST NATIONAL PIRACY
But not from the low, the selfish, the ambitious, and rapacious side of
human nature, that side which dreams only of silver, gold, and precious
stones, which is pleased only with wealth and power—chafes and rapines
at natural and necessary limitations of national domain—which, in the
name of manifest destiny, often but another name for manifest national
piracy, would annex the whole continent and adjacent islands to the United
States, without the just rights and feeling of other nations; but from that
nobler, better and more poetic side of our nature—that side which allies
man to the Infinite, which in some sense leads him to view the broad world
as his country and all mankind as his countrymen,4Douglass probably paraphrases the motto that appeared on the masthead of William Lloyd Garrison's Liberator: “Our Country is the World—Our Countrymen are all mankind." would I have the
American people view and study Santo Domingo and determine their
policy concerning it.
This course may seem a little too sentimental and transcendental for
our sordid and practical age and nation; but for this reason I am the more
disposed to press it. “Will it pay?” has become the almost sole test of every
measure, and the pay must be in the shape of dollars, dimes, and cents, or it
is no pay at all.
It may, indeed, be important to know what Santo Domingo can do for
us; but it is vastly more important to know what we can do, and ought to do,
for Santo Domingo. There is but one safe path for individuals or for
nations—both are helped by helping others, and both are hindered by
hindering others.
SUFFERING NATIONS
There are countries, not less than individuals, which have sad stories to
tell the world, and to which the world has been, at times, nobly disposed to
listen.
Poland, crushed and bleeding under the heels of despotic powers,
uttered a shriek which pierced the heart of the civilized world. Kossuth5Louis Kossuth.
turned all eyes and hearts to the wounds of his bleeding country; and for a
time made us all Hungarians. Ireland keeps us in chronic tears by her wail
from across the sea. France, when writhing in the folds of a double calami-
ty, although the author of her own misfortunes, excited a generous sympa-
thy and drowned all reproach.
I invoke this generous sentiment for Santo Domingo. No country is
more bountifully blessed by nature or more woefully cursed by man; no
country is capable of greater service to the world, and there is none which
serves it less. Standing on the verge of civilization, doubtful of her fate,
grimly debating the question whether she is to be saved to peace, order, or
prosperity, or to fall away through anarchy at home and contempt and
neglect by her neighbors, into the measureless depth of ignorance, weak-
ness, and barbarism, that country has indeed a sad story to tell and special
claims upon the sympathy, at least, of the American people.
Of what that story is in all its details and fullness, I can promise but
little in a single lecture. From the nature of the occasion and the limits of the
hour, I cannot do more than hint [at] its character and echo in a feeble way
something of its import.
Interesting to us for her wonderful and easily accessible tropical re-
sources, her splendid bays, and fertile valleys, she is also deeply interest-
ing for being the first American soil trodden by the white race.
FIRST THINGS,
by virtue of being first things—especially when they are the beginning of
great things—when, as in this case, they have opened the way to important
events, have a peculiar fascination. The cradle is ever a sacred object
among household furniture; since Adam men have strained for a glimpse of
the garden.6The story of Adam and the Garden of Eden is recounted in Gen. 2-3.
No event since the first migrations of men has so radically and univer-
sally affected the relations and conditions of mankind as the discovery and
settlement of this continent by the white race; and no part of America has a
higher historic importance from these great events than Santo Domingo.
She is the cradle of American beginnings, and her shores afford the best
points from which to survey the broad course of civilization on this
continent.
I am only
A DISTANT RELATIVE OF THE CAUCASIAN RACE,
and have less to do with its achievements than other branches of the family;
but even I felt a peculiar thrill the first time I stepped upon the soil of Santo
Domingo. I know not whether there was any feeling of race connected with
it or not, and it does not matter whether there was or not. Greatness does
not ask the nation or race of the human race—it kindles enthusiasm in all.
To stand upon that part of American soil where Columbus first stood; to
breathe the American air that Columbus first breathed;7Christopher Columbus actually made his first landfall in the New World at a small island in the Bahamas on 12 October 1492 and then explored neighboring islands and Cuba before arriving at the north coast of Santo Domingo on 6 December 1492. John Parker, "The Columbus Landfall Problem: A Historical Perspective," in Louis De Vorsey, Jr., and John Parker, eds., In the Wake of Columbus: Islands and Controversy (Detroit, 1985), 1-28; La Républica Dominacana: Propaganda Pro-Turismo (Havana, 1932), 7. to view those grand
old mountains covered with the rich verdure of perpetual summer, filling
the air far out over the sea and intoxicating the sense with a delightful
fragrance, lifting their soft, grayish blue summits seven thousand feet
between sea and sky; and to know that they were the first lands to soothe
and gladden the strained and fevered eyes of the great discoverer, might
kindle emotion in the most stolid American of whatever color or race!
Standing there, one saw the head of that mighty Caucasian column, in
its ponderous and portentous march from east to west, shaking the earth by
its ponderous tread, beholding and scattering the nations before it, sweep-
ing down all obstacles in its track, making the lightning its courier to
announce its coming around the world!
In Santo Domingo were first planted the virtues and the vices, the
beauties and deformities of European civilization, and here they may still
be seen in startling antithesis—and, unhappily, the vices preponderate.
Here were first unfolded to the new world the solemn mysteries of the
Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian gospel. Here, under these beautiful
skies, “where every prospect pleases and only man is vile,”8Douglass quotes the first two lines of the second stanza of Reginald Heber’s hymn “Before a Collection Made For the Society For the Propagation of the Gospel," popularly known as “From Greenland's Icy Mountains." Reginald Heber, Hymns, Written and Adapted to the Weekly Church Service of the Year (London, 1827), 139-40. the first
American Christian church was built, and was first displayed that won-
drous symbol of religious power, the cross of Christ.
CHRISTIANITY’S FIRST HOME
Long before old Plymouth Rock had yet a Christian tongue; long
before the Psalms of David were heard on the wild New England shores,
Santo Domingo was the living and active center of American Christianity,
with ramifications extending far into South and Central America.
The foundations of society in Santo Domingo were laid in deep re-
ligious faith. The evidences of this are even now conspicuous to every
traveler. At the time of its colonization, Spain, to whom it belonged, was
the leading nation of the Christian world, and was as remarkable for her
piety as she was for her cruelty. Proud as she was of this stepping-stone to a
continent, and zealous for the true Catholic faith, she sent here her most
famous scholars and her most eloquent divines, gave it her own name, and
made it the center of a vast system for the propagation of the Christian
religion.
It is literally
A LAND OF SAINTS, CROSSES & CHURCHES
The rivers and towns are named for saints, and the land is studded with
crosses. They meet you at every stream, in every valley, and at every turn of
her narrow roads, and wherever met they are objects of respect and rever-
ence by her people. Whether exposed upon the highway or inclosed, they
are always safe. They are hedged by a divinity more vigilant and powerful
than that which doth hedge the lives of kings, for they sometimes fall by the
hand of violence; but no wanton or impious hand will be raised against
these sacred symbols. Wherever human lives have perished and human
bones repose, there they stand to comfort the pious and warn the thought-
less.
CHURCHES
The churches which were early erected in some parts of this island were
upon a scale of magnificence and grandeur hardly surpassed by eccle-
siastical architecture in Spain itself. Even to-day, in the period of her
destitution, these churches are quite imposing, but some of the oldest and
grandest have gone to decay.
One of the most conspicuous and splendid of the latter class is the old
church of San Francisco,9Constructed by the Franciscan friars in 1503 on a plateau overlooking the town of Santo Domingo, the monastery and church of San Francisco were, at the time of Douglass's visit, a ruin “covered with vine and moss." Hazard, Santo Domingo, 232; Louise L. Cripps, The Spanish Caribbean: From Columbus to Castro (Boston, 1979), 49; La Republica Dominica, 87. in the city of Santo Domingo. Three centuries
ago this was the most splendid and spacious church in all the island. It is
now a shapeless ruin, and has been so for more than half a century. It
conveys an impressive lesson of the transient character of the most endur-
ing and sacred works of men. From the thickness of its walls and the broad
acres which it covers and the material of which it was built, it looks as if
meant by its builder to stand forever, but less than four centuries have
touched it, and lo! it is gone. lts domes, its towers, its turrets, its altars, its
pulpits, its galleries, have fallen. Both its priests and its many sounding
bells are silent.
Here and there you may see, amid the general destruction, something
of the former pride and glory of this once sacred old structure—a grand old
Roman archway, a majestic pillar, an angle in the inner wall strongly built,
which have in some degree resisted the destructive artillery and the ele-
ments. But these imply no hope of resurrection. They are only gloomy
monuments over the shapeless graves of the dead, and destined to fall soon
to the dust like the rest. They only bring to mind something of the pride and
the ambition and energy that called them into existence.
THE POWERS OF CONTRAST
It is impressive and solemn in any case to walk among the ruins of
former greatness, but the very vigor of tropical nature made this place more
impressive than ordinary ruins in other latitudes. lt illustrated the effect of
positive contrast. It was a theatre upon which life and death, youth and age,
vigor and decay, struggled for the mastery. Favored by all her forces of
climate and soil, nature, among these mouldering walls, reveled in ruin,
danced in the jaws of death, and sent forth delicious odors from the crum-
bling effeteness. The banana, the palm-tree, the cocoa-nut, the zapodelia,
the coffee-plant, the orange and lemon, the graceful oleander, with various
other tropical growths, twined about by many vines and creepers of beau-
tiful flowers, all flourished here. Many of these have shot up thirty or forty
feet above the holy altars, where, two hundred years ago, the wealth and
splendor of Santo Domingo knelt in pride and pomp to pray.
There are still several fine old churches in this ancient city; but even
they are marked for destruction. Tropical heat and insular moisture, as
mighty in destruction as in creation, are already making sad havoc with
these venerable piles, and they will soon be in the dust with their sister,
already described.
THE HEART ACHES
amid this desolation that no restoring hand is visible above these grand old
structures, and we instinctively wish we could breathe a little of American
life into the people.
In the United States we may contemplate decay with complacency, for
her destruction and creation go hand in hand. Time wears, fires burn,
floods and famines sweep away in an hour the wealth of years. They are but
passing shadows on the nation’s brow. Chicago and Boston, ashes to-day,
but iron and granite to-morrow.10Originating in a barn owned by Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, the great fire that engulfed over three square miles of Chicago, Illinois, on 8-9 October 1871 destroyed at least 17,450 buildings, killed more than 250 persons, and caused an estimated $400 million worth of damage. In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire broke out in a Sumner Street business establishment on the evening of 9 November 1872. Before being contained the next day, it consumed sixty-five acres of the city’s business district, resulting in losses valued at approximately $75 million. Individuals and organizations throughout the nation contributed relief funds to the stricken cities, which began rebuilding immediately after the disasters. Elias Colbert and Everett Chamberlin, Chicago and the Great Conflagration (Cincinnati, 1871); Robert Cromie, The Great Chicago Fire (New York, 1958); Russell H. Conwell, History of the Great Fire in Boston, November 9 and 10, 1872 (Boston, 1873); AAC, 1872, 503-04. But Santo Domingo, vegetating in the
thick miasma of an effete civilization, has no power to rebuild her old waste
places.
THE CITY
On the south side of this island, at the mouth of the Ozama, a beautiful
river, navigable for small crafts thirty or forty miles into the interior, stands
the ancient city of Santo Domingo,11Samuel Hazard, who visited Santo Domingo at the same time as the U.S. Commission of which Douglass was a member, confirms most of Douglass’s description of the size, layout, and architecture of the capital city of Santo Domingo. Other sources, however, estimate the city’s population in 1873 at fifteen thousand. Hazard, Santo Domingo, 212-28; AAC, 1873, 705-06. famous as the capital of the country.
It would be well worth the voyage for an American to view this strange
assemblage of dwellings. Facing the south, looking out upon a view bound-
ed in that direction by sea and sky, surrounded on three sides by towering
mountains, it makes from its sea approach, a pleasant impression; but
distance here, as elsewhere, lends enchantment12Douglass paraphrases a line from Thomas Campbell's poem Pleasures of Hope, Part 1, line 7. W. A. Hill, The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, With Notes and a Biographical Sketch (London, 1851), 1. to the view. Its harbor is
studded by grim old forts, built according to very ancient Spanish science,
formidable to the eye, but feeble to the hand.
For the most part the city is well planned and suited to protect its
inhabitants from the fierce rays of the tropical sun. The streets are long,
straight, and narrow, lined on either side with low, flat-roofed, red-tiled
brown houses, very solid and very gloomy and spiritless. A striking feature
of these dwellings is their
SIMILARITY.
They look as if they were planned by the same architect, built by the same
workmen, of the same material, completed on the same day, and occupied
by the same family.
The uniformity of the houses may be in part due to the
UNCHANGING CHARACTER OF THE CLIMATE,
but it is probably due more to the unchanging and uniform religion of the
people. Spain tolerated no diversity in religious opinion. One church, one
priesthood, one faith, one baptism, conduces to oneness in other direc-
tions. Among their many other needs the people of Santo Domingo would
be the better for some of our denominational rivalries and conflicting
creeds. They would impart to them a healthy activity, which is now one of
their greatest wants, and we could spare them a few of these without any
loss to our affectionate religious relations.
SAN DOMINGO CUSTOMS
Our American love of ornament shows itself everywhere, and es-
pecially at the street doors of our dwellings. Nothing of this variety is ever
seen in Santo Domingo. The front door here is of the barn-door pattern, and
often used as a bam-door. The Spaniard in his spurs does not deign to
dismount his fine Arabian steed till within the walls of his house, and he
rides into his front door booted and spurred, his horse being as much at
home there as the man.
Bad as are the doors the windows of Santo Domingo are still more
shocking. Paddy would say they were designed to let out the dark rather
than let in the light. Though broad enough and high enough they stand so
far above the floors as to conceal the heads of all but the tallest inmates.
They are innocent of glass or curtains, and being vertically barred with iron
they give the street side more the appearance of a prison wall than of the
residence of innocent and sane persons.
The wall about the old city is a marked feature of the place and tells of
the old-time wars with the Indians. It looks fight, but means none. It would
stand no chance against the shot and shell of modern warfare.
Well, thus housed, doored, windowed, and facing the glorious South,
where a blue sea meets a sky still more blue, with mountains in the rear and
upon either side—you have the ancient city of San Domingo, founded by
Columbus—the first Indo-Caucasian metropolis of the New World.
Once it boasted a population of 70,000 souls; now it has but 7,000.
Once it was the scene of wealth and splendor; now it is for the most part the
abode of destitution. Once it was full of the hum and din of busy commerce;
now it is as silent as a New England Sabbath.
RELIGIOUS TENACITY
One thing, however, may be truthfully said of this fine old city. In all
the vicissitudes of conflict, decay, and ruin, it has clung with marvelous
tenacity to religion. At the faintest dawn of each day, while the darkness is
still upon sea and sky—long before Americans would think of stirring
forth for anything less important than money, the ears of all Santo Domingo
are saluted with a perfect tumult of church bells, summoning them to their
altars and their prayers; and the summons are not in vain, for at the first
wild clamorous clang and jingle of these, the people start out and may be
seen wending their way through the darkness with solemn step to their
several houses of prayer.
SUPERSTITION
Of course where there is so much religion there is much superstition.
They believe as firmly in miracles to-day as did the early Christians. There
is a cross in old St. Michael’s Church which they believe to be as potent to
open the windows of Heaven as the prayers of an ancient prophet were to
shut them. They insist that this cross brought into the streets at proper times
has saved the island from drought and famine on more occasions than one.
Rain always follows the exhibition of this cross, if it is only exhibited at the
proper time; and hence the priest must keep a sharp look-out upon the
weather. To argue with them is of no avail. Contradictions are nothing to
faith. It usually supports one improbable fact by adducing another still
more improbable.
CONTRASTS
The manner of spending Sunday in Santo Domingo would be scan-
dalous and shocking in the eyes of a Puritan. The people divide the day
between praying and cock-fighting.13At the time of Douglass's visit to Santo Domingo, cockfighting was a popular national “sport” that even government officials patronized, although Samuel Hazard heard that “the best of Cubans, as well as Dominicans, speak of the cockpit with abhorrence, and hope for its abolition." In the United States, cockfighting, banned in New England, was particularly popular in the South and West and in New York City, attracting large numbers of immigrants and blacks. Hazard, Santo Domingo, 223, 228-29; Page Smith and Charles Daniel, The Chicken Book (Boston, 1975), 98-104. The church and the cock-pit stand on
the same street, and give themselves impartially to the piety of one and the
brutality of the other.
It would be difficult to describe scenes more disgusting than those of
the cock-pit; but the people indulge in the cruel sports of the place with no
sense of their cruel and shocking character.
CONSCIENCE AT HOME AND ABROAD
Conscience is a great monitor, but it speaks differently in different
latitudes. It usually says what it is educated to say. In Boston it says cock-
fighting is a sin; in San Domingo it says cock-fighting is an innocent
amusement. The cocks like to fight; God has made them so, and they like to
see His handiwork.
I have spoken of the deep religiousness of the people of San Domingo;
but it does not seem here, more than elsewhere, religion and morality are
inseparable. Cock-fighting on Sunday, or on any other day, cruel though it
may be, is not the only fact that proves this.
Strict attention to the forms and ordinances of Christian worship has
not been crowned with social order, stability, and happiness. Religion in
San Domingo has shown itself much like the same article elsewhere—
immensely human; less the guide than the reflection of human nature—and
sometimes the worst side of human nature.
The friends of Santo Domingo are sometimes asked to explain why it is
that the population of Santo Domingo is so sparse, and that its civilization
is so feeble? They say if the climate is good and healthy, if the people are
religious, and nature has opposed no inseparable obstacle to progress in
that quarter, why is it that Santo Domingo is a failure.
AN EXPLANATION
I do not know that I can answer this natural question satisfactorily to
those who urge it upon me, and yet I think I see the true explanation.
Religion and civilization, no more than religion and morality, are insepara-
ble. The colored people of this country are very religious, but they do not
invent steam plows, electric telegraphs, sewing machines, and many other
useful things in the way of human well-being.
The history of Santo Domingo affords a full explanation of her present
destitution.
Since the day that the daring genius of Columbus pierced the nights of
ages, and opened to one world the sources of wealth, knowledge, and
power, and to another an unutterable woe to this day—that island has been
swept by consecutive storms of deadly forces.
Within the brief space of her civilized life she has endured more woes
than are ordinarily crowded into a thousand years of national life.
Dark and sanguinary as may have been the barbarism of that island
prior to its discovery and settlement by the Spaniards, the state of things
which then existed seems to have been far more friendly than after they fell
into the hands of the Christian Spaniard.
EXTERMINATED.
In less than half a century after its invasion nearly one million of its
native population were exterminated. At the end of thirty years of Spanish
possession only 60,000 of the 1,000,000 which Columbus found on the
island survived. These saved themselves only by flight to the mountains of
Samaria.14Douglass repeats the estimates of the aboriginal population of Santo Domingo that the earliest Spanish explorers and missionaries had reported home. Twentieth-century scholars believe the native Arawak inhabitants of the island numbered fewer than half that figure at the time of Spanish conquest. The Arawaks possessed a highly organized society ruled by local and regional chieftains, or caciques, but Christopher Columbus and subsequent Spanish governors militarily subdued them by the early sixteenth century. The Spaniards impressed the native Indian population to work in their gold mines and later on their sugar plantations. Forced dislocation and brutal treatment of the Arawaks resulted in many deaths and decreased reproduction. The Spanish monk and historian Bartolomé de las Casas is probably responsible for the plausible estimate that only sixty thousand natives survived on Santo Domingo in 1509. Despite some efforts at reform of the treatment of the native population, most of the remaining Arawaks either fell victim to epidemics of smallpox and other diseases that swept the island in the 1510s or disappeared through intermarriage with the Spanish colonists or the African slaves being imported as a new work force. By the middle of the sixteenth century, little remained of the native Arawak culture except in tiny bands located in remote parts of the island, such as the Sanama Mountains, situated on the peninsula of the same name in northeastern Santo Domingo. Carl Ortwin Sauer, The Early Spanish Main (Berkeley, 1966), 6, 37-69, 83-95, 148-56, 200-12; Logan, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, 10-11, 27-30; Hazard, Santo Domingo, 33-44. They made the strength of the hills their strength and their life.
The lecturer then went on to speak of the
WEALTH OF THE ISLAND,
the curse of slavery which wrought numerous troubles, and the part taken
by the black race in their long struggle for freedom in the island.
He then referred to his visit to Santo Domingo as one of the commis-
sion and indorsed fully the report of that body.15The U.S. Santo Domingo Commission published an official report on its investigation of conditions on that island soon after its return home in 1871. Report of the Commission of Inquiry to Santo Domingo, Senate Executive Document, no. 9, 42nd Cong., 1st sess., 1871.
Speaking of the annexation of Santo Domingo to the United States, he said
that a large majority of the people of that island favored the project, believing
that by placing their country under a strong and enlightened government they
will put an end to revolutions and secure peace and prosperity.
WHY WE WANT IT
What do we want with Santo Domingo? it is asked. What do we want
of land any way? What do we want of sugar and the tropical fruits, of
mahogany, of lignum vitae, and all the choice woods used in manufactur-
ing? What do we want of a productive soil and the rich products of any
country? We want them for men—for human beings to live in and be
happy. What did we want of Alaska and of other territories that have been
purchased.16The United States purchased the territory of Alaska from imperial Russia for $7.2 million in 1867. ACC, 1867, 36-37. If a good excuse can be found for purchasing these lands,
surely we can find good reason for receiving into our family without money
this beautiful and rich land.
THE PEOPLE DESIRE ANNEXATION
They want Saxon and Protestant civilization. They have tried the Latin
and Catholic rule, let them have a chance to try free thought and free
religious opinions.
Mr. Douglass held up to ridicule the arguments of Mr. Schurz that
civilization would not flourish in that latitude.17In a U.S. Senate speech on 11 January 1871, Missouri's Carl Schurz, a leading critic of the Grant administration, drew upon the ideas of geographic determinism to argue against both the creation of a commission of inquiry to visit Santo Domingo and the annexation of that nation by the United States. “But it must not be forgotten," he asserted, “that Anglo-Saxon vigor stands here upon its own congenial ground; from the very atmosphere its energies receive their inspiration, and by the very necessity of things Anglo-Saxon vigor is here the absorbing element, the assimilating force. But how is it in the tropics? The Anglo-Saxon invading them meets there the mixed Latin, Indian, and African races upon their own congenial ground. There they receive their characteristic qualities under the influences of tropical nature; there they are the natural growth of the soil, and the Anglo-Saxon appearing as a mere exotic plant, they will not be be the assimilating force. And what will be the consequence? Inevitably this: that in the course of time and by the process of assimilation the Anglo-Saxon will lose more than the Africo-Indo-Latin mixture will gain. This will be assimilation indeed, but it will be assimilation downward. Do you want any proof of that? I have already been adverting to the descendants of those Englishmen who had settled the West Indies colonies. Now go there and examine the point of degeneracy they have reached. To be sure, some of the wealthy, who in early childhood were sent to England to be educated there, and who spent there perhaps the greater part of their lives, may have preserved the native vigor of their race; but I refer to the multitude born on West Indian soil, and their children who have continually inhabited it. Have they not become a race, if possible, as miserable as that mixed element which is acknowledged as the indigenous one of the American tropics? You will find that fact confirmed by every intelligent traveler." Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 3d sess., Appendix, 25-34. He also convincingly
answered Mr. Sumner’s theory of wiping out a colored nationality.18Douglass paraphrases the views that Charles Sumner advanced in the U.S. Senate on 24-25 March 1870 and subsequently during the debate over the ratification of the treaty to annex Santo Domingo. Congressional Globe, 41st Cong., 3d sess., 226-31, 244-45; Donald, Sumner and the Rights of Man, 442-43; Tansill, United States and Santo Domingo, 405-06, 432-33. It is
not a nation, said he, it is a small country with 150,000 people who are
being degraded. Let us lift them up to our high standard of nationality.