Questions to consider:

*What race does Grant consider to be the truly "American" race? (he calls the early white British colonists "native Americans.")
*What does Grant think about "Indians" and "Negroes"?
*What does Grant think about the "new Immigrants" and their impact on America?




Looking at any group of negroes in America, it is easy to see that while they are all essentially negroes, whether coal black, brown, or yellow, the great majority of them have varying amounts of Nordic blood in them, which has modified their physical structure without transforming them in any way into white men. This miscegenation was, of course, a frightful disgrace to the dominant race, but its effect on the Nordics has been negligible, for the simple reason that it was confined to white men crossing with negro women, and not the reverse process, which would, of course, have resulted in the infusion of negro blood into the American stock.

The United States of America must be regarded racially as a European colony, and owing to current ignorance of the physical bases of race, one often hears the statement made that native Americans of Colonial ancestry are of mixed ethnic origin. This is not true. At the time of the Revolutionary War the settlers in the thirteen Colonies were not only purely Nordic, but also purely Teutonic, a very large majority being Anglo-Saxon in the most limited meaning of that term. The New England settlers in particular came from those counties of England where the blood was almost purely Saxon, Anglian, and Dane.

New England, during Colonial times and long afterward, was far more Teutonic than old England; that is, it contained a smaller percentage of small, Pre-Nordic brunets. Any one familiar with the native New Englander knows the clean cut face, the high stature and the prevalence of gray and blue eyes and light brown hair, and recognizes that the brunet element is less noticeable there than in the South.

The Southern States were populated also by Englishmen of the purest Nordic type, but there is to-day, except among the mountains, an appreciably larger amount of brunet types than in the North. Virginia is in the same latitude as North Africa, and south of this line no blonds have ever been able to survive in full vigor, chiefly because the actinic rays of the sun are the same regardless of other climatic conditions. These rays beat heavily on the Nordic race and disturb their nervous system, wherever the white man ventures too far from the cold and foggy North.

The remaining Colonial elements, the Holland Dutch, the Palatine Germans, who came over in small numbers to New York and Pennsylvania, were also purely Teutonic, while the French Huguenots who escaped to America were drawn much more largely from the Nordic than from the Alpine or Mediterranean elements of France. The Scotch-Irish, who were numerous on the frontier of the middle Colonies were, of course, of pure Scotch and English blood, although they had resided in Ireland two or three generations. They were quite free from admixture with the earlier Irish from whom they were cut off socially by bitter religious antagonism, and they are not to be considered as "Irish" in any sense.

There was no important immigration of other elements until the middle of the nineteenth century, when Irish Catholic and German immigrants appear for the first time upon the scene.

The Nordic blood was kept pure in the Colonies, because at that time among Protestant peoples there was a strong race feeling, as a result of which half-breeds between the white man and any native type were regarded as natives and not as white men.

There was plenty of mixture with the negroes as the light color of most negroes abundantly testifies, but these mulattoes, quadroons, or octoroons were then and are now universally regarded as negroes.

There was also abundant cross breeding along the frontiers between the white frontiersman and the Indian squaw, but the half-breed was everywhere regarded as a member of the inferior race.

In the Catholic colonies, however, of New France and New Spain, if the half-breed were a good Catholic he was regarded as a Frenchman or a Spaniard, as the case might be. This fact alone gives the clew to many of our colonial wars where the Indians, other than the Iroquois, were persuaded to join the French against the Americans by half-breeds who considered themselves Frenchmen. The Church of Rome has everywhere used its influence to break down racial distinctions. It disregards origins and only requires obedience to the mandates of the universal church. In that lies the secret of the opposition of Rome to all national movements. It is the imperial as contrasted with the nationalistic ideal, and in that respect the inheritance is direct from the Empire.

Race consciousness in the Colonies and in the United States, down to and including the Mexican War, seems to have been very strongly developed among native Americans, and it still remains in full vigor to-day in the South, where the presence of a large negro population forces this question upon the daily attention of the whites.

In New England, however, whether through the decline of Calvinism or the growth of altruism, there appeared early in the last century a wave of sentimentalism, which at that time took up the cause of the negro, and in so doing apparently destroyed, to a large extent, pride and consciousness of race in the North. The agitation over slavery was inimical to the Nordic race, because it thrust aside all national opposition to the intrusion of hordes of immigrants of inferior racial value, and prevented the fixing of a definite American type, such as was clearly appearing in the middle of the century.

The Civil War was fought almost entirely by unalloyed native Americans. The German and Irish immigrants were at that time confined to a few States, and were chiefly mere day laborers and of no social importance. They played no part whatever in the development or policies of the nation, although in the war they contributed a certain number of soldiers to the Northern armies. These Irish and German elements were of Nordic race, and while they did not in the least strengthen the nation either morally or intellectually, they did not impair its physique.

There has been little or no Indian blood taken into the veins of the native American, except in States like Oklahoma and in some isolated families scattered here and there in the Northwest. This particular mixture will play no very important role in future combinations of race on this continent, except in the north of Canada.

The native American has always found, and finds now, in the black men, willing followers who ask only to obey and to further the ideals and wishes of the master race, without trying to inject into the body politic their own views, whether racial, religious, or social. Negroes are never socialists or labor unionists, and as long as the dominant imposes its will on the servient race, and as long as they remain in the same relation to the whites as in the past, the negroes will be a valuable element in the community, but once raised to social equality their influence will be destructive to themselves and to the whites. If the purity of the two races is to be maintained, they cannot continue to live side by side, and this is a problem from which there can be no escape.

The native American by the middle of the nineteenth century was rapidly becoming a distinct type. Derived from the Teutonic part of the British Isles, and being almost purely Nordic, he was on the point of developing physical peculiarities of his own, slightly variant from those of his English forefathers, and corresponding rather with the idealistic Elizabethan than with the materialistic Hanoverian Englishman. The Civil War, however, put a severe, perhaps fatal, check to the development and expansion of this splendid type, by destroying great numbers of the best breeding stock on both sides, and by breaking up the home ties of many more. If the war had not occurred these same men with their descendants would have populated the Western States instead of the racial nondescripts who are now flocking there.

The prosperity that followed the war attracted hordes of newcomers who were welcomed by the native Americans to operate factories, build railroads, and fill up the waste spaces - "developing the country" it was called.

These new immigrants were no longer exclusively members of the Nordic race as were the earlier ones who came of their own impulse to improve their social conditions. The transportation lines advertised America as a land flowing with milk and honey, and the European governments took the opportunity to unload upon careless, wealthy, and hospitable America the sweepings of their jails and asylums. The result was that the new immigration, while it still included many strong elements from the north of Europe, contained a large and increasing number of the weak, the broken, and the mentally crippled of all races drawn from the lowest stratum of the Mediterranean basin and the Balkans, together with hordes of the wretched, submerged populations of the Polish Ghettos.

With a pathetic and fatuous belief in the efficacy of American institutions and environment to reverse or obliterate immemorial hereditary tendencies, these newcomers were welcomed and given a share in our land and prosperity. The American taxed himself to sanitate and educate these poor helots, and as soon as they could speak English, encouraged them to enter into the political life, first of municipalities, and then of the nation.

The result is showing plainly in the rapid decline in the birth rate of native Americans because the poorer classes of Colonial stock, where they still exist, will not bring children into the world to compete in the labor market with the Slovak, the Italian, the Syrian, and the Jew. The native American is too proud to mix socially with them, and is gradually withdrawing from the scene, abandoning to these aliens the land which he conquered and developed. The man of the old stock is being crowded out of many country districts by these foreigners, just as he is to-day being literally driven off the streets of New York City by the swarms of Polish Jews. These immigrants adopt the language of the native American; they wear his clothes; they steal his name; and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals, and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race.

As to what the future mixture will be it is evident that in large sections of the country the native American will entirely disappear. He will not intermarry with inferior races, and he cannot compete in the sweat shop and in the street trench with the newcomers. Large cities from the days of Rome, Alexandria, and Byzantium have always been gathering points of diverse races, but New York is becoming a cloaca gentium which will produce many amazing racial hybrids and some ethnic horrors that will be beyond the powers of future anthropologists to unravel.

One thing is certain: in any such mixture, the surviving traits will be determined by competition between the lowest and most primitive elements and the specialized traits of Nordic man; his stature, his light colored eyes, his fair skin and blond hair, his straight nose, and his splendid fighting and moral qualities, will have little part in the resultant mixture.

The "survival of the fittest" means the survival of the type best adapted to existing conditions of environment, to-day the tenement and factory, as in Colonial times they were the clearing of forests, fighting Indians, farming the fields, and sailing the Seven Seas. From the point of view of race it were better described as the "survival of the unfit."

This review of the colonies of Europe would be discouraging were it not that thus far little attention has been paid to the suitability of a new country for the particular colonists who migrate there. The process of sending out colonists is as old as mankind itself, and probably in the last analysis most of the chief races of the world, certainly most of the inhabitants of Europe, represent the descendants of successful colonists.

Success in colonization depends on the selection of new lands and climatic conditions in harmony with the immemorial requirements of the incoming race. The adjustment of each race to its own peculiar habitat is based on thousands of years of rigid selection which cannot be safely ignored. A certain isolation and freedom from competition with other races, for some centuries at least, is also important, so that the colonists may become habituated to their new surroundings.