t from what has been said already that the idea of the Negro
current about 1830 in the United States was not very exalted. It was
seriously questioned if he was really a human being, and doctors of
divinity learnedly expounded the "Cursed be Canaan" passage as applying
to him. A prominent physician of Mobile[1] gave it as his opinion that
"the brain of the Negro, when compared with the Caucasian, is smaller by
a tenth ... and the intellect is wanting in the same proportion," and
finally asserted that Negroes could not live in the North because "a
cold climate so freezes their brains as to make them insane." About
mulattoes, like many others, he stretched his imagination marvelously.
They were incapable of undergoing fatigue; the women were very delicate
and subject to all sorts of diseases, and they did not beget children
as readily as either black women or white women. In fact, said Nott,
between the ages of twenty-five and forty mulattoes died ten times as
fast as either white or black people; between forty and fifty-five fifty
times as fast, and between fifty-five and seventy one hundred times as
fast.

[Footnote 1: See "Two Lectures on the Natural History of the Caucasian
and Negro Races. By Josiah C. Nott, M.D., Mobile, 1844."]

To such opinions was now added one of the greatest misfortunes that have
befallen the Negro race in its entire history in America--burlesque on
the stage. When in 1696 Thomas Southerne adapted _Oroonoko_ from the
novel of Mrs. Aphra Behn and presented in London the story of the
African prince who was stolen from his native Angola, no one saw any
reason why the Negro should not be a subject for serious treatment on
the stage, and the play was a great success, lasting for decades. In
1768, however, was presented at Drury Lane a comic opera, _The Padlock_,
and a very prominent character was Mungo, the slave of a West Indian
planter, who got drunk in the second act and was profane throughout the
performance. In the course of the evening Mungo entertained the audience
with such lines as the following:

Dear heart, what a terrible life I am led!
A dog has a better, that's sheltered and fed.
Night and day 'tis the same;
My pain is deir game:
Me wish to de Lord me was dead!
Whate'er's to be done,
Poor black must run.
Mungo here, Mungo dere,
Mungo everywhere:
Above and below,
Sirrah, come; sirrah, go;
Do so, and do so,