unintelligent or the superficially informed. Such indisposition or
incapacity leads to erroneous conclusions. Nothing but an appeal to
facts involving careful and painstaking labor and a wise sifting of
facts, that myth and legend be eliminated, should claim the attention
of thinking men. It must be confessed, however, that in any discussion
that relates to the comparative status of the Negro over against his
standing in slavery full and accurate data are lacking. The
statistical science of to-day was unknown then, and it is next to the
impossible to affirm positively the relative superiority or
inferiority of present day growth over those of that day. This
statement is not made to deny the truth of the immense stride of the
latter times, but it is made as a reasonable off-set to those
prejudicial and dogmatic declarations of the superior conditions of
slavery over those of freedom. Dogmatism is the argument of the bigot.
It is not wide of the truth, to say that the claims of certain writers
that the Negro has retrograded physically, morally and socially, lacks
the confirmation of veritable data. It is admitted that the modern
diseases of civilized life have made inroads into his hardy nature,
but the universal declaration of inferiority is not proved. It is also
true that in isolated cases physicians of that day noted the
comparative freedom of the blacks from the maladies of ennui and
bacchanalian feastings, but no half-kept record of that day is before
us to justify the statement that the Negro of to-day is superior to
his mighty sire of ante-bellum fame that stood between the plow
handles all day and danced or shouted all night. The increase of
zymotic diseases is admitted, but there has been a corresponding
increase of power in many lines that will more than counteract this
baleful growth.

Again, over against this admission may be placed another statement of