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BENJAMIN BANNEKER, THE NEGRO ASTRONOMER.

In these days, when strong interests, embodied in fierce parties, are clashing, one recalls the French proverb of those who make so much noise that you cannot hear God thunder.  It does not take much noise to drown the notes of a violin; but go to the hill a fourth of a mile off, and the noises shall die away at its base, whilst the music shall be heard.  Those who can remove themselves away from and above the plane of party-din can hear God’s modulated thunder in the midst of it, uttering ever a “certain tune and measured music.”  And such can hear now the great voice at the sepulchre’s door of a race, saying, Come forth!  This war is utterly inexplicable except as the historic method of delivering the African race in America from slavery, and this nation from the crime and curse inevitably linked therewith in the counsels of God, which are the laws of Nature.  If the friends of freedom in the Government do not understand this, it is plain enough that the myrmidons of slavery throughout the land understand it.  And hence it is that we are witnessing their unremitting efforts to exasperate the prejudices of the vulgar against the negro, and to prove degradation, and slavery to be his normal condition.  They point to his figure as sculptured on ancient monuments, bearing chains, and claim that his enslavement is lawful as immemorial custom; but as well point to the brass collars on our Saxon forefathers’ necks to prove their enslavement lawful.  The fact that slavery belonged to a patriarchal age is the very reason why it is impracticable in a republican age,—­as its special guardians in this country seem to have discovered.  But this question is now scarcely actual.  The South, by its first blow against the Union and the Constitution, whose neutrality toward it was its last and only protection from the spirit of the age, did, like the simple fisherman, unseal the casket in which the Afreet had been so long dwarfed.  He is now escaping.  Thus far, indeed, he is so much escaped force; for he might be bearing our burdens for us, if we only rubbed up the lamp which the genie obeys.  But whether we shall do this or not, it is very certain that he is now emerging from the sea and the casket, and into it will descend no more.  Henceforth the negro is to take his place in the family of races; and no studies can be more suitable to our times than those which recognize his special capacity.

The questions raised by military exigencies have brought before the public the many interesting facts drawn from the history of Hayti and from our own Revolution, showing the heroism of the negro, though we doubt whether they can surpass the stories of Tatnall, Small, and others, which have led a high European authority to observe that in this war no individual heroism among the whites has equalled that of the blacks.