MORTALITY AND RACE IN AMERICA.
[FROM OTIR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
New York, September 8, 1865. " WE have just passed through what the correspondent of the London Times says is called here "in barbarous language a heated term." I am quite sure that the correspondent wrote thus in ignorance of the manner in which we use the phrase which he pro- nounces barbarous. During a few years past an amiable, but slightly crack-brained enthusiast upon the subject of meteorology, wrote with unremitting assiduity to the New York newspapers the results of his observations, made at all times of day and at unseemly times of night in very airy costume, of the thermometer and the weathercock. His letters were published and read because, amid much twaddle, there were some interesting statements, and also because the simple-minded absorption of "the weather sage of Brooklyn Heights," as he came to be called, was very amusing. He broached a theory, and a very small and feeble tap it was, of what he called "heated terms." The public laughed, and in good-natured ridicule spoke of any hot day as a heated term. The newspaper reporters use the phrase thus, and everybody who is to the manner born understands the joke without the use of italics or quotation marks. This little instance of fault-finding upon insufficient knowledge might prove an instruc- tive example to a thoughtful traveller. The weather of the last week or ten days is the worst of our whole year. It usually comes in August, but whenever it comes we call it dog-day weather. The air is full of moisture. The sun rises hidden by a dense mist, which, however, does not descend upon the earth. The heat is nevertheless very oppressive, and there is no breeze. Perspiration is profuse, and yet affords no relief. It stands in great drops on the foreheads, or pours down the faces of those who make the least exertion. A gentleman who has lived in India told me that it is much like the weather of that country. We have but little of it, only two or three weeks in the course of the summer, but they are the sickliest of our year. More children, especially nurslings, die at this period than at any? other.
The presence of the unhealthiest season of our year and the westward march of the cholera have given occasion for the recent publication of some statistics of mortality, which have not only an immediate interest to us, but an important bearing upon the ques- tions of the physical characteristics and the predominance of race among the people of this country. But before examining these statistics it will be instructive, and to me amusing, to consider European opinion upon these subjects. The reports of corre- spondents and tourists as to the physical degeneracy of the English race in the United States I once had occasion to refer to, upon occasion of the battles of the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, and the flank marches of the Army of the Potomac upon Richmond, which elicited so many expressions of surprise in England that men were able to keep up for so long such a ceaseless alternation of fighting and marching. But professed men of science have recently expressed similar opinions as to the degeneracy in question, and have made statements which, if they were only true, would go far to sustain those opinions. At the second reported meeting of the Anthropological Society of London, a Mr. Bollaert is recorded as saying that "the whites in the United States are becoming extinct," and a Dr. Seeman as saying that "he could from his own experience con- firm Mr. Bollaert's observations as to the comparative infertility of the descendants of Europeans living in America and of the offspring of mixed marriages. He had generally found that Americans have only two or three children," and that "he fully believed that the present population of the United States would die out if it were not constantly recruited from Europe." My acquaintance with the names of eminent anthropologists is too limited to enable me to judge how much deference is due to the opinions of these gentlemen, but whoever they are, you shall see how plain a tale will put them down, and all whose brains, like theirs, are filled with these foolish vagaries. Among these appears to be Mr. Desor, a German whose name we have heard in this country, and who writes, in an article contributed to a scientific paper, about our physical degeneracy having reached such a point that "the most intelligent Americans clearly perceive that the increasing delicacy of form, especially in the women, ought if possible to be arrested." He adds a passage implying that to correct this tendency we intermarry freely with the Irish (the man must be mad), announcing with a profundity which cannot be over-estimated that "it has been observed that the finest women are descended from European parents." This announcement rivals that of one of our registrars, who prepared tables showing the ages, races, and con- dition of the persons who were married in New York in 1859-60; and since 1860, he has also prepared tables showing how many of each sex were married ; and, strange to say, there appears always to have been exactly the same number of each ! All our tables of statis- tics, however, are not of this character, although they are generally almost as accurate ; and from some of them, which have been re- cently published, the following insignificant facts appear.
It has been a subject of general remark for many years that the rate of mortality was very much greater among foreigners, and es- pecially among the children of foreigners, than among our own people ; and since 1860 a record has been kept in the Registrar's office of this county of the parentage of the children under one year of age, as well as of the nativity and nationality of adults for whom burial permits were granted. In 1860 the total native population in the city and county of New York was 429,952, the total foreign population, 383,717. The total of deaths was 25,645. The total of adult deaths was 11,073. But although the excess. of the native over the foreign population at that time was more than 46,000, the number of deaths of adults born abroad was 7,810, and that of adult natives 3,263, the excess of foreigners being more than two to one. These figures refer only to adults. The total of deaths of foreigners of all ages was 20,680; that of the deaths of natives only 4,965, the excess being more than four to one. Of children of foreign parents there died 10,947; of children of native parents only 1,702. In brief, the records since 1860 to the present time show that of the deaths of children of one year old and under in this county eighty-eight per cent, were of children born of foreign parents. These ratios have been found upon examination to be those also of Boston and Phila- delphia. There is yet one other fact, dependent i a great measure upon those above stated, which is not less interest- ing and significant. It is that the ratio of increase in the native population of New York for the five years preceding 1860 was 40 per cent., while that of the foreign popu- lation, in spite of the enormous additions by immigration, was only 22i per cent. Not to weary my readers with figures, the tables, which are very minute, show that the immense excess of mortality set down to the foreign population does not apply to our population of English, Scotch, and Welsh birth. The excess in respect to them is very moderate. It is greatest among the Irish ; next among the Germans. But the grand fact remains that about four-fifths of the total of deaths in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston belong to the foreign column of the tables, and that of the children one year old and upwards who die here eighty- eight in the hundred are children of foreign parents. Perhaps these facts may cause the anthropological gentlemen above-named to doubt whether their opinion that the present population of the United States would die out if it were not constantly recruited from Europe is perfectly well founded. But I doubt this. These gentlemen seem to belong to a very large class of Europeans, who have ground it into their own belief that what they call "Ameri- cans" are a queer sort of hybrid creatures, quite unlike, physically, morally, and intellectually, any European people, and of course vastly inferior, and who will soon perish from off the face of the earth, and the sooner the better. Far be it from me to pre- sume to contradict them. I only leave them to deal with the figures.
As to another assertion, made by these anthropologists (which I have seen and heard on the part of many other persons, Europeans, not professed students of this subject, but apparently about as well informed as these professors), the comparative infertility of the descendants of Europeans living in America, I can also speak by book as well as from personal observation. It is not uncommon among families of honourable descent who have been long in this country to print for private, i. e., strictly family use, a genealogi- cal record of the descendants, all of them, of the forefather who first came here. This is done, I suppose, on account of that in- difference to kinship and family ties which all the world knows is characteristic of the "Americans." I have examined many of these records, and have four of them at my band. They are of families who have been from six to nine generations in this coun- try, and the.members of which are now scattered from Plymouth THE BRUCES OF ELGIN. Rock to the State of Ohio, but the bulk of which, with that [To VIE EDITOR OF TUE " SrEcrAron."] indifference to home also characteristic of the " Americans," still Stn,—Permit me to call your attention to one or two points in hover in the Eastern States around the old homesteads. Now the genealogy of this family, regarding the exact nature of their according to these records, families of twelve and thirteen children alleged connection with the Royal line of Bruce, which, as you are not uncommon ; I have known such myself ; seventeen, observe, rests " entirely on conjecture." eighteen ; and even two dozen sometimes appear ; nine and ten It has been well remarked that any Bruce who in the present are common, and less than five rarely are recorded. Long life, too, day asserts his legitimate male descent, direct or collateral, from
is the rule, and the bodily powers and mental faculties are gene- King Robert, ought to be on the throne of these kingdoms, or at rally retained unimpaired to a late period. To men who have had least on that of Scotland. No doubt the unvarying tradition in from six to a dozen uncles and aunts, who have seen their grand- the Clackmannan family (admittedly chiefs of the Elgin line fathers and their great grandfathers hearty, cheery men at three- till their failure in 1772) assumed their representation of the score years and ten, and often living from ten to twenty years B,oyal line, and the story is well known of the old Jacobite lady, past that-period, with the ability to attend to all their duties, it is Mrs. Bruce of Clackmannan, knighting the poet Burns with a rather amusing to hear of anthropologists getting together and sword said to have belonged to the King, observing " that she buzzing over papers setting forth the sterility and the physical had a better right to do so than sinne folk."
degeneracy of the English race in America. Especially is it so to Tradition, however, in those days is reckoned an unsafe guide, those who refer to the Peerage and Baronetage and compare these and no genealogist now receives any evidence but that of charters, records with those of which I have just spoken, or, where they do services, and similar unerring though prosaic landmarks of time. not exist, with the family Bible. And in point of vigour and You cite a charter (December 9, 1359) by King David Bruce to likeliness the present generation shows no falling off from its his " eonsanguinens " (or kinsman) Robert de Brays, of the castle predecessor. Mr. Desor's talk about the "increasing delicacy of of Clackmannan, &c., and add that there is no evidence who he form, especially among the women," here is simply an exhibition of was, other than this general statement of his relationship to the sheer ignorance. The fact is just the contrary. Our young women King. It may be here observed that the term '4 corusanguineus," now are fuller and firmer in figure than their mothers were. The though in later times the invariable style used in regard to the truth is that the women of the last generation sought of all things nobility or great barons, was in the fourteenth century a mark of to be elegant and delicate. They ate little, they laced much ; peculiar distinction or regard. Now it is not generally known that they wore thin clothing, and little of it ; and they took little out- King Robert Bruce had a natural son, also Robert Bruce, who in door exercise, and that in paper-soled slippers. The effect of this 1322 had a charter from his father of the lands of Liddesdale, was pernicious. Girls, or their mothers, now are wiser. They which had been forfeited by William de &mils, the last of a have learned that a woman's figure should not be like an hour- family renowned in Border tradition, who for nearly 200 years glass ; they live generously ; they walk and ride ; and they weer were among the greatest barons in the kingdom, and themselves stout shoes. Any man of observation whose memory can go back had claims on the Scottish Crown. (Robertson's Index, p. 12, twenty years can see, in consequence, a very .marked improve- No. 54; p. 15, No. 2.) De Soulis forfeited his vast estates by ment, especially among the more cultivated people. But the adhering to the faction of Edward I. and Balliol. It is true that repute made for us by tourists in the days of the hour-glasses and this Royal gift to doubtless a favourite though natural son, was in the paper-soled slippers still clings to us—among tourists and twenty years afterwards the subject of a dispute between the anthropologists Steward of Scotland and William Douglas "de Laudonia " or In a previous letter I have shown the immense preponderance of " Lothian " (the " Flower of Chivalry"). It is recorded as follows the native element in our armies during the late war. In connec- in the Munimenta Vet. Corn. de Mortoun (published by the Benne- tion with the present subject it is interesting to notice that although tyne Club), pp. 46, 47 :—"In 1342, in presence of King David we called for men in such multitudes, and had thirty-six reasons for II. and his Council, assembled at Aberdeen in the Church of disability to twenty-three in the British and twenty in the French the Friars Preachers, there eompeared Sir Robert, the Steward army, the ratio of rejection in the British service is reported at of Scotland, asking seisin and possession of the ' Valley of 317.3 per 1,000; lathe French, 324.4, but in ours only 285.52, by Lydale,' by reason of the King's grant made to him at the which the anthropologists will see that the advantage VMS greatly time when he conferred on him the order of knighthood. in favour of the degenerating "Americans," in spite of their more The Steward's claim was opposed by Sir William of Douglas, rigid tests of physical ability. And this perhaps accounts for some who asserted that the said bulls of Liddesdale belonged
of that marching and fighting. to him by reason of the ward of the son and heir of Sir A brief consideration of these facts will make manifest one ins- Archibald of Douglas, and produced Sir Archibald's charter of portant point as to the population of the United States. It is that infeftment. This objection was overruled, chiefly on the ground its character has not been and will not be seriously affected by the that at the alleged time of the grant Sir Archibald was Warden enormous emigration hither from Ireland and Germany. The of the Kingdom, and could not therefore alienate the King's lands, effects of crowded living and dissipated habits must of course be especially in favour of himself. The King therefore, in presence taken into consideration in estimating the causes and the results of of his Council, forthwith gave the Steward seisin of the lands of the rate of mortality in cities above recorded. But the Irish and Liddesdale. Two days afterwards he granted to Sir William of the Germans, especially the former, cling to the cities, and there Douglas all the lands of the Valley of Lydale which belonged to we see that their mortality is so enormously in excess of that of the Sir William de Sculls, as held by him before his forfeiture of the Yankees, that even emigration cannot raise their ratio of increase same to the King's father. This deed is witnessed by the Steward above 22i in five years, while the 'Yankee increase is 40 per cent. of Scotland," afterwards Robert IL In the rural districts, except in the very far West, they have corn- Supposing, then, as seems probable, that Robert Bruce the paratively little hold upon the country. For instance, evenin Ohio, natural son, had been dispossessed by one or other of these power.
at the census of 1860 there were only 168,000 Germans in a popula- ful competitors, what can be more likely than that he, if alive, tion of 2,000,000, and the Irish were "nowhere." In the second or his son (who would doubtless also bear so honoured a name generation the German becomes a mere Yankee (which, by the as "Robert") should receive from King David the compensating way, the Irishman does not) ; but even in the matter of blood it gift of Clackmannan, &c., in 1359? In the total absence of will be seen that although emigrants come here by the hundred any historical notice of another Robert de Brays besides the thousand, there is no prospect of an appreciable change in the Bastard, it is, to say the least, highly probable that he and composition of the people who fought honeet, blundering, old King the grantee of Clackmannan were one and the same, or father George, and established this Republic. and son.
No public event of interest has taken place during the past Bastardy, as is well known, was no bar to social standing in
week except the convention of the Democratic party of New York those days. The great line of the" Black" Douglases was itself at Albany. By this body the " Copperhead" faction was swept carried on (to the exclusion of legitimate female heirs) by the well-
summarily away; President Johnson's policy of re-organization by known entail of 1342, in the person of Archibald, the third Earl, the committing the remodelling of local constitutions and the question natural son of the "Good" Sir James, and his son Archibald, the of suffrage entirely to the States was approved ; and offtcers, some fourth Earl (the Douglas of flomildon Hill and Shrewsbury, immor-
of whom had been Republicans, were nominated. It is not at all talized by Shakespeare), married the Princess Margaret, daughter improbable that the Democrats upon this platform may come into of Robert III. Nay, it has been conclusively proved by the power again in this State, especially if negro suffrage is pressed learned John Riddell that George Douglas, first Earl of Angus,
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