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NEGRO SUFFRAGE IS NOT A
FAILURE
MOORFIELD STOREY
NEGRO SUFFRAGE IS NOT A
FAILURE
AN ADDRESS BEFORE THE NEW ENGLAND SUFFRAGE
CONFERENCE MARCH 30, 1903
by
MOORFIELD STOREY
BOSTON
Geo. H. Ellis Co., Printers, 272 Congress Street
1903
Thirty-three years ago the Fifteenth Amendment became
a part of the Constitution, and the negro, already a citizen
and assured of his right to life, liberty, and property by the
Fourteenth Amendment, was secured against the denial of
his right to vote by reason of his race. The adoption of this
amendment marked the end of a long struggle for justice.
Nearly a century before had " our fathers brought forth on
this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal" ; but they
lacked the courage to build as well as they knew, when they
framed their government. " In the necessities of the hour,"
to quote the words of Emerson, " they overlooked the moral
law, and winked at a practical exception to the bill of rights
they had drawn up. They winked at the exception, believing
it insignificant. But the moral law, the nature of things, did
not wink at it, but kept its eyes wide open. It turned out
that this one violation was a subtle poison, which in eighty
years corrupted the whole body politic, and brought the alter¬
native of extirpation of the poison or ruin to the republic."
While insisting that all men were created with an equal right
to life and liberty, they undertook to hold nearly half a mill¬
ion men as slaves, and apparently believed that this attempt
was safe. Yet at the very outset of the experiment began
the irrepressible conflict, which steadily increasing in vio¬
lence and bitterness culminated in the civil war with all its
frightful suffering and loss. This was the penalty which the
nation paid for persisting in a policy of injustice: it was the
inevitable consequence of that policy, and not till the flower
of our youth on both sides was in large measure dead or dis¬
abled by wounds,— not till we had suffered as many plagues
as were visited upon Pharaoh, did we resolve to do right.
4
While the wounds of the war were still bleeding and its les¬
son was fresh in our minds, we decided to do justice and
secured the equal rights of all men by appropriate additions
to our fundamental law. It was the supreme moment in our
history. The nation then reached its highest moral level,
and judged by its national action seemed to share the faith
which Charles Sumner thus expressed :
" Show me a creature with lifted countenance looking to
heaven, made in the image of God, and I show you a Man
who of whatever country or race, whether bronzed by equa¬
torial sun or blanched by polar cold, is with you a child of
the Heavenly Father, and equal with you in all the rights of
human nature."
For a generation the wisdom of this course has not been
questioned at least in the North. The Republican party has
pointed with pride to its achievements in behalf of human
freedom and equal rights, and upon these has rested its claim
to the support of the moral forces in the nation. Lincoln,
Sumner, Andrew, Seward, Chase, the authors of its policy,
have been its Saints and Prophets and have been held in the
highest honor.
Now, however, we are told that the policy of justice is
wrong, that it was a mistake to treat negroes as citizens, and
that it is expedient now to deprive them of the right to vote
which they have in theory at least enjoyed so long. Secre¬
tary Root, who is a spokesman of the Republican Ad¬
ministration, tells us that negro suffrage "has proved a
failure." Dr. Lyman Abbott, its devoted supporter, says,
" Suffrage must wait for education. Education is primary :
political rights are secondary. We have tried the experiment
of giving to the Negro suffrage first and education afterward,
and bitterly has the country suffered from our blunder." The
Boston Herald says, " It is now we think generally recog¬
nized that a mistake was made at the close of our civil war
in according suffrage generally to the emancipated negro."
These are quoted as different expressions of essentially the
same view coming from different quarters, and it is a view
5
which doubtless is for the moment very common. Its expres¬
sion encourages many men in the South to resolve, as the
Charleston Evening Post openly says : "We will subordinate
the negro and not worry about the fundamental forms of gov¬
ernment." In a word, these thinkers say that the policy of
justice has failed, while others like the New York Sun even
suggest that we must repeal the Fifteenth Amendment and
try oppression again.
Yet it may well be doubted whether those who express
these views have not spoken upon a hasty general impression
rather than a careful study of the conditions which confronted
this country at the end of the civil war, and whether they
have considered either the purpose or the results of the policy
then adopted. Justice in human government never fails, and
any one who concludes in a given case that it has failed, must
revise his premises.
Was it a mistake to give the negroes the right to vote ?
Whether it was or not, is it right now to deprive them of it ?
Has negro suffrage proved a failure? These are questions
not merely for the Southern States, but for us all, since, to
borrow Emerson's statement of a fundamental political maxim,
" Only that State can live in which injury to the least mem¬
ber is recognized as damage to the whole."
What were the conditions which confronted us when the
civil war ended ? The entire social, political, and industrial
system of the Southern States was shattered. Of their men
had been slain more than were killed of Englishmen in all the
wars of England from the Norman conquest till 1865. The
property of the white population was gone, their slaves were
free, some of their cities and many of their homes were in
ruins, their fields were desolate, they had no capital, their
labor was disorganized. They felt that their cause was just,
but that they had been defeated by overwhelming force.
They believed that slavery was right, but slavery had been
abolished. Bereaved, impoverished, and defeated, the white
people of the South could not help feeling the bitterness of
their lot nor could they have any sentiment of cordial loyalty
6
towards their conquerors. Taught from their cradle that the
negroes were an inferior race, they could not help looking
down upon them,— they could not help thinking them unfit
for freedom,— they could not help believing and wishing that
the negroes should be kept in a position of subordination.
We may be sure that the sentiment which resented so bitterly
the entertainment of Booker Washington by the President was
quite as strong a generation ago, when the slaves were first
freed and every master was smarting with the sense of recent
loss.
On the other hand the negroes had inherited only the
curse of slavery, they had with rare exceptions no education,
they had no land, no property, no homes, no money, no habits
of thrift, no experience in caring for themselves. But yester¬
day they had been chattels with no rights and no hopes.
To-day they were free, but in every other respect they were
unchanged.
There were besides these classes some white Union men
whom their neighbors hated with intense bitterness as
traitors to the Southern cause, and whose lives and property
were safe only through the protection afforded by the Federal
troops. No one who will study the records of this period can
doubt that this statement of the conditions which existed in
the South when the war ended is in no respect exaggerated.
What then was necessarily the object to be accomplished
by legislation ? In the answer to this question lies the dif¬
ference between the opposing views upon this subject. The
object was not primarily to secure well-tilled fields, well-
ordered towns, an industrious laboring class, nor even a legis¬
lature, a bench and an executive taken from the ablest men in
the State. All these results had been secured by slavery.
Had these been the object of our policy, slavery need never
have been destroyed. It was because these advantages, the
material prosperity of a few, had been gained by the degrada¬
tion of a whole race,— because millions of human beings had
been denied the rights and hopes of humanity, that slavery
was abolished, and unless we carried the work through we
7
had far better never have begun it. The same reason that
led us to abolish slavery forbade us to establish any legal
inequality between man and man. Anything less than equal¬
ity of rights was sure to be the seed of future trouble. It
would mean slavery modified, but not abolished. The condi¬
tions which confronted Congress were the legitimate fruits of
slavery, and it was the clear duty of the nation to make an
end of the evil, root and branch, to lay the foundation of a free
society deep and sound. The object of our policy was to
make men,— to turn some millions of " chattels" into human
beings, first to secure their freedom against all dangers, and
then to help them from the wretched slough of despond in
which slavery had left them up to the firm ground of self-re¬
specting manhood.
No more difficult problem was ever presented to a law¬
giver. Had the attitude of the white population been differ¬
ent, the way would have been smoother. During the four
years of war which had just ended while the men of the
South were at the front, the women and children were left
in the charge of the negroes, and the trust was faithfully
kept. The negroes tilled the fields and raised the crops
which fed the Southern armies, and in effect carried upon
their backs the soldiers who were fighting to keep them in
slavery. History affords no example of loyalty like this,
and had the masters been willing to accept the situation and
to help their former slaves to become men, they could have
exercised a legitimate control over their actions, and the
transition from slavery to freedom might have been compara¬
tively easy.
It was perhaps too much to expect of human nature that
men who had known the negroes as their slaves should
voluntarily help them to .become their equals, that in the
bitterness of defeat and destitution they should be entirely
reasonable. It is enough to recognize the historical facts
without attempting to distribute the blame for the deplora¬
ble conditions which existed. What the student and the
critic, however, must bear constantly in mind is that the feel-
8
ings of the Southern white population, their traditions and their
prejudices, their poverty and their bitterness on the one side,
and the ignorance, destitution, and degradation of the negroes
on the other were stubborn facts, which no legislation could
change. These conditions inevitably meant conflict between
old prejudices and new conditions, suffering for all parties,
misunderstandings and quarrels, in a word all the disagreeable
concomitants of a struggle uphill from wretchedness to bet¬
ter things. Law could not create wealth, assuage grief,
destroy prejudices, or give knowledge. There was no royal
road to a reconstructed society. All that law could do was
to remove obstacles and give opportunities; the rest must
be done by the people themselves. Old men must die,
new men must be born, children must be educated and grow
up under new conditions and with new ideals, wealth must
be created by toil. A long series of years was needed to
eradicate evils, which had been fostered by centuries of
slavery. Whatever course was adopted, trouble was inevi¬
table, and it was equally certain that men would thought¬
lessly blame the laws for evils which no law could cure, but
which were in themselves.
In much that is said upon this question it seems to be
assumed that suffrage was granted to the negroes at the
outset of reconstruction. The fact is exactly the reverse.
The experiment of reconstruction without negro suffrage
was tried first and failed completely.
Passing over as not significant in this connection the early
attempts of Mr. Lincoln to establish governments in Arkansas
and Louisiana, let us pass at once to the reconstruction at¬
tempted by President Johnson. On May 29, 1865, he issued
a proclamation of amnesty and on the same day another pro¬
viding for reconstruction in North Carolina through a conven¬
tion to be chosen only by persons qualified to vote before
secession, thus excluding all colored men from the electorate.
He followed this precedent in all the other states, appoint¬
ing in each a provisional governor and providing for a con¬
stitutional convention, which framed a state government
9
under which elections were held for state officers and mem¬
bers of Congress. Colored men were uniformly excluded
from taking any part in these proceedings, while all white
men were allowed to vote and hold office except a few be¬
longing to certain specified classes who could on special
application be pardoned by the President. The country
had therefore an opportunity to see exactly what reconstruc¬
tion without negro suffrage would mean, and it is to be
observed that the leaders of the Republican party were by
no means agreed in opposing this policy, while very few in
fact were ready to give the negro the ballot. The correspond¬
ence of Mr. Sumner shows how little support he had from
his colleagues in the Senate, and even Thaddeus Stevens
could not get from the Republican Convention of Pennsyl¬
vania any expression in favor of equal suffrage. It was the
course of the Southern States themselves that united Con¬
gress in its support.
If after the lapse of a generation the Charleston Evening
Post can say, "We will subordinate the negro, and not worry
about the fundamental "forms of government," we may be
sure that this determination was present with - far greater in¬
tensity in the first years after emancipation. If Mr. Cox, of
Ohio, could say in the House of Representatives, "No gov¬
ernment farming system, no charitable black scheme, can
wash out the color of the negro, change his inferior nature, or
save him from his inevitable fate. The irrepressible conflict
is not between freedom and slavery, but between black and
white; and, as De Tocqueville prophesied, the black will per¬
ish," we cannot doubt that a like feeling prevailed in the
South.
As a matter of fact the Ku-Klux Klan made its appearance
in 1866, and soon spread all over the South. Its victims
were Union men and negroes, its methods, plaps, and mem¬
bership were secret, and it intimidated, whipped and murdered
men with impunity. Colored schools were closed, schoolmas¬
ters and clergymen shot and hanged, and the testimony makes
it apparent that it was a mqvement to intimidate the negroes
and hold them in subjection.
IO
The legislatures established under the Johnson proclama¬
tion passed a great variety of laws, well devised to keep the
negroes in practical slavery. Some made it a criminal offence
for a negro to leave his employer before the expiration of a
term of service fixed by a written contract. It was made a
crime to entice a laborer away, or, after he had left his em¬
ployer, to harbor or feed him. Any person was authorized by
force and without process to carry a deserting laborer back to
his employer, and was to be compensated for so doing. Freed-
men were made vagrants for acting as ministers without a
license or for unlawfully assembling by day or night. Whites
who usually associated with colored people, persons who en¬
tered a plantation without the owner's consent, colored people
who intruded themselves into any religious or other public as¬
sembly of white persons, were made criminals, and in this way
negroes were deprived of the right to meet and were cut off
from information as to their rights, while white teachers,
whom the white people would not receive, were punished for
living with their colored pupils. These laws were enforced
by stripes, and the system also grew tip of selling colored men
under decree of court into service for limited times. In some
places colored men were seized and sold in this way without
any pretence of law, and it was apparent that unless such
practices were checked virtual slavery would soon be estab¬
lished. Such evils grow rapidly by neglect. Early in 1866
a statute was passed to prevent a practice, thus described in
a letter read by Mr. Sumner to the Senate on January 9,
1866.
" Another big trade is going on,— that of running negroes
to Cuba and Brazil. They are running through the country
dressed in Yankee clothes hiring men, giving them any price
they ask, to make turpentine on the bay, sometimes on the
rivers, sometimes to make sugar. They get them on the cars.
Of course the negro don't know where he is going. They
get him to the bay and tell him to go on the steamer to go
around the coast, and away goes poor Cuffee to slavery again.
They are just cleaning out this section of the country of the
likeliest men and women in it."
11
The testimony from private sources was voluminous, and
much is given in the speech made by Mr. Sumner on Decem¬
ber 20, 1865. One writer says, "The Southerners are too
smart not to see that slavery is dead, but many of them hope
as long as the black race exists here to be able to hold it in a
condition of practical serfdom."
The negroes were ignorant of their rights and easily in¬
fluenced, and it soon became apparent that they would
ignorantly make the most improvident contracts, and become
embarrassed by debts to the whites, which afforded a ready
means of keeping them in compulsory servitude. Debt alone
often enslaves free men, but it could easily be made more
effective by such methods as are disclosed in the following
advertisement: — ,
Public Sale. The undersigned will sell at the court
house door in the city of Annapolis at twelve o'clock M. on
Saturday 8th December 1866 a negro man named Richard
Harris for six months convicted at the October term 1866 of
the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court for larceny and
sentenced by the Court to be sold as a slave.
Wm. Bryan,
Sheriff Anne Arundel County.
A Wilmington newspaper reported that an official examina¬
tion made by General Ames and others established that
" The negroes have been cruelly treated not only by the
civilians, but also by the civil authorities.
" Two negroes were tied up and publicly whipped by the
sheriff at the sentence of a magistrate."
" Other negroes were tied up to trees and whipped and left
tied to the trees until a storm came up and prostrated the
tree and the poor negroes fell with them.
"Citizens exercised the authority of masters over the
negroes and punished them at their will with such severity as
to them seemed fit."
A meeting of white citizens in South Carolina resolved
that the freedman should be compelled to contract with his
former owner, pledged its members not to contract with any
12
freedman who did not bring a discharge from his former
owner, and under no circumstances to rent land to a freed¬
man. From every State came the tales of oppression, cruelty,
and outrage, and they were confirmed by the report of Carl
Schurz sent as a special commissioner by the President to
report on conditions in the Southern States. His conclusion
was definite that it " would hardly be possible to secure the
freedman against oppressive legislation and private persecu¬
tion unless he be endowed with a certain measure of political
power," and that "although the freedman is no longer con¬
sidered the property of an individual master, he is considered
the slave of society, and all independent state legislation will
share the tendency to make him such."
To save the Union we had given the negro his freedom,
and had enlisted him in our army. To preserve his freedom
and to make sure that the work just done at such frightful
cost was done forever, it was necessary to give him the ballot.
Mr. Schurz's report was made as early as December, 1865,
and the facts which have been cited were known to Congress
about the same time. Yet there was no precipitate action.
A committee was appointed after debate to inquire into the
conditions existing in the Southern States, and not till Feb¬
ruary 6, 1867, did Thaddeus Stevens report his bill to set
aside the Johnson governments, put the Southern States
under military control, and provide for a new reconstruction.
This bill which passed in March, 1867, over the President's
veto contained the provision for negro suffrage under which
the Southern States were again reconstructed, and this re¬
view shows that reconstruction with only white suffrage had
then been tried for nearly two years. The measure finally
adopted was of proved necessity. Thus and thus only could
the lives and the property of colored men and white Union
men be protected. They needed every weapon that we could
place in their hands, and this weapon was among them.
But the case does not end here. We had been contending
with a system founded on the inequality of men. That was
the root of slavery. If slavery was abolished, its root must
13
be extirpated. It was not enough to say, "The negroes shall
have some rights, but may not have others." It was not
enough to say that they were somewhere between beasts and
men. Any such concession to the claims of slavery only
meant another contest sooner or later to complete their eman¬
cipation. Unless they had the right to vote, they could not
protect their other rights.
Nor was it safe to say, "You can vote when you are edu¬
cated." They needed the vote in order to get education.
They were substantially all ignorant in 1865, and if the power
had been in the hands of the whites or the educated people,
which meant the same thing, could they have been trusted to
provide the negroes with the means of education in order that
they might thus acquire the suffrage and obtain control of the
State ? The whites were then obstructing colored education,
whipping and in some cases shooting the teachers. To have
put the white people in control, while making colored suffrage
conditional upon education, would have been to offer the
whites continued power on condition of keeping the negroes
ignorant. Would that have been statesmanship, or would
that have smoothed the negroes' path to freedom ? The wise
course was to cut deep once for all, to remove all inequality,
to give the negro all the legal rights of every other man, and
then to let him with such help as we could give gradually
work his way up.
Such a policy is moreover to be defended upon the ground
till lately maintained by us all, that the way to make a man is
to treat him as a man; that responsibility is in itself the best
educator. It is not easy to state the argument and to
illustrate at the same time the change of view into which
many men have been driven by our Asiatic policy, better than
by the following quotation from Dr. Lyman Abbott, who in
his book on "Christianity and Social Problems" published in
1896, quotes Carlyle's argument,— "If thou do know better
than I what is good and right, I conjure you in the name of
God force me to do it: were it never by such brass collars,
whips and handcuffs, leave me not to walk over precipices,"
14
and then answers it well and wisely thus : "No, this is not
liberty : it is servitude. . . . Freedom assumes not that
every man can safely govern himself, but first that it is safer to
leave every man to govern himself than to put any man under
the government of any other class ; and, secondly, that there
is such potentiality of self-governing power in every man,
such capacity to learn by his blunders, that he will acquire a
wisdom and self-restraint through the very perils of self-
government, which he will never acquire under the protect¬
ing government of others wiser and better than himself."
It was that he might protect his new freedom and his
newly acquired rights and that he might also learn to be a
man through exercising the powers and feeling the responsi¬
bilities of a man that we gave the ballot to the negro.
And now we are told that negro suffrage has proved a
failure, by a leader of the Republican party. What does he
mean? Colored men vote in every Northern State. Has
any one claimed that they have proved in practice less dis¬
criminating or less competent to vote than their white neigh¬
bors ? Surely no Republican leader can claim this without
stultifying himself, since they have as constantly supported
that party as the immovable hosts of Pennsylvania. Colored
suffrage is not a failure in the North, where it is exercised
freely, and if this is so the color is no disqualification. Is
it a failure in Maryland or Kentucky or Missouri? No
complaints come from those states. It is then in the Southern
States if anywhere that it has proved a failure.
How stands the account there ? Go back to Appomattox
and recall in memory the hosts of negroes who then filled the
Southern States, ignorant, poor, degraded, with no land, no
home, no capital, and all the weaknesses and vices which
centuries of slavery had entailed upon them. Visit the same
region now, after the lapse of only a single generation, think
of Booker Washington and Hampton with its students, count
the farms which are owned by negroes, number their bank
deposits, see how many positions of use and influence they
occupy, and then say that the policy of justice has failed
i5
and that it was wrong to recognize the negro as a man.
Where in history has a race from such a depth risen so
rapidly ? Did the early English, the Irish, the Germans or
any other race during the dark ages advance as quickly?
Few men who know the conditions of 1865 could have dared
to hope that the negro race would have been where it is in
I9°3- Justice has not failed. It has won a conspicuous
success. This record is the most convincing proof that the
way to elevate and civilize a man is to recognize him as a
man and to trust him.
But there was bad government in the South, reckless ex¬
travagance, an orgy of corruption after negro suffrage was
granted. It is true that for a few years, beginning in 1868
and ending at various times up to 1876, corrupt men chosen
by negro votes controlled the Southern States. Whose
fault was that ? New voters were misled and voted for dis¬
honest men. They were misled in most cases by dishonest
Southern white men, and this was made possible because
the honest Southern white men in disgust refused to lead
them right," or to exercise their just influence. But if this
were not so, can we insist that the color is the cause?
While Pennsylvania bows to Quay : while Montana elects
Clark; while Addicks owns Delaware; while the trials at
St. Louis reveal the nature of her rulers, and Minneapolis is
punishing Ames, are we sure that white suffrage is a success ?
Is it color, or our common humanity which is at fault?
Some of the staid New England voters of Rhode Island and
Connecticut, to go no further, are purchasable. Would it
not indeed be surprising if in the first eight years after their
enfranchisement, deserted by their proper leaders and dom¬
inated by bad men, the freedmen had shown a charac¬
ter and a hatred of corruption which their white brothers do
not show after centuries of civilization and self-government ?
Had they done so, they would have shown themselves not
only not inferior, but far superior to their white neighbors.
Can we condemn a race to permanent inferiority because of
this experience, while we close our eyes to the corruption
i6
which through the campaign fund buys elections ? Some
men buy offices, some buy clauses in the tariff, some buy
seats in the Senate, some franchises in state or city, and
among them are some of our political and financial leaders.
Can they be sure that the negroes who nearly a generation
ago sold their votes were conspicuously inferior to themselves
on that account ?
Indeed in the Southern States since 1876 negro suffrage
has not been tried and therefore has not failed. The Ku-
Klux Klan and the tissue paper ballot are not negro suffrage.
Force and fraud have failed, injustice has failed, as they al¬
ways will fail in a universe governed by moral laws, but their
failure is not the failure of equal suffrage. The solid South
is the answer to any claim that negro suffrage is responsible
for any failure in the government of the South since 1876.
We of the North perhaps wisely have left the negro to
assert his rights, believing that " who would be free himself
must strike the blow." He has shrunk from a contest of
strength with the whites and perhaps also wisely, for the
gradual gain which the race is making in education, expe¬
rience, manhood, property and standing is making it impos¬
sible long to deny their right to vote. Under the educa¬
tional and property qualifications in the present Southern
Constitutions they will gradually be admitted to suffrage,
and when the whites divide, as they inevitably must, one
party or the other will turn for allies to these potential voters
and will open wide the door for their admission to full politi¬
cal rights. Meanwhile suffrage has done its work. It has
prevented the re-enslavement of the negroes, and from now
on the struggle should be easier.
There is one thing that can delay their progress, and that
is the attempt to hold them inferior to their neighbors, too
readily acquiesced in by Northern men. That Southern men
should have this prejudice with their inheritance is natural.
That Northern men should educate themselves to share it is
monstrous. Men say that the negro must be disfranchised
to save civilization, but it may be doubted if a man is civilized
17
himself who preaches this doctrine. To such may be com¬
mended Lord Russell's definition of civilization : —
" What indeed is true civilization ? By its fruit you shall
know it. It is not dominion, wealth, material luxury; nay,
not even a great literature and education widespread — good
though these things be. Civilization is not a veneer. It
must penetrate to the very heart and core of societies of
men. Its true signs are thought for the poor and suffering,
chivalrous regard and respect for women, the frank recogni¬
tion of human brotherhood, irrespective of race or color or
nation or religion, the narrowing of the domain of mere force
as a governing factor in the world, the love of ordered free¬
dom, abhorrence of what is mean and cruel and vile, cease¬
less devotion to the claims of justice."
This true civilization is never advanced by looking down
upon our fellows because they are poorer or more ignorant
than ourselves.
There is a genuine danger, however, that in the reaction
which is now taking place against the fundamental principles
of liberty a serious injury may be done to the principles and
the ideals of this generation. An evil tendency unchecked
gathers force until its consequences work in time a cure at
the expense of the community, as was the case with slavery.
This country belongs to our colored fellow-citizens as much
as it does to us. It is their birthplace, their home, and it will
be the home of their children. They have every right which
we can claim, and their descendants and ours will dwell here
side by side. Their lives will not be made happier or more
harmonious by our dwelling on the peculiar qualities which
make the negroes in our judgment inferior to ourselves, nor
will our country prosper through any effort to deprive them
of any rights or to keep them from rising. Civilization and the
highest political wisdom alike require that we should recognize
the brotherhood of these as well as of all our fellow-citizens.
We should do our best to elevate them, and at least be silent
about any defects which we cannot cure, all the more because
it is we who held them as slaves and are responsible for their
i8
weakness and ignorance. We cannot degrade them and not
degrade ourselves; their gain is our gain; injustice to them
is injustice to us. In the words of Whittier:
" Laws of changeless justice bind oppressor with oppressed,
And close as sin and suffering joined we march to fate abreast."
For this reason it is the duty of every patriotic American to
cease discussing the inferiority of the negro, or attaching to it
any political ^r social consequences. It is our duty to resist
any attempt anywhere to deprive them of that equality of
rights, which as Mr. Sumner said is "the first of rights."
With time and sympathy the differences between men largely
disappear. Of undesirable social consequences, so often dwelt
on, there is no danger. The two races dwell together in
every Northern State and no complaint on this ground has
been made. It has no more real terrors than any other scare¬
crow.
Let it once be agreed that the negro is inferior and that on
this account he may be deprived of political rights, and it will
not be long before other men are discovered who are also
unfit to hold them. Ignorance is the real disqualification, and
that is not peculiar to any color. There are many now who
consider our foreign born citizens a great menace to our
government, and their rights may go next. There are many
who think that only men who pay a property tax should have
a vote, and they would exclude the poor. The moment the
doctrine of equal rights is abandoned, who shall draw the
line ?
Dazzled by a new ambition we have abandoned our prin¬
ciples, and are seeking to deprive a foreign nation of its lib¬
erty. We justify this by assuming that they are our infe¬
riors. How quickly do we learn the truth of Lincoln's words :
" They who deny freedom to others deserve it not themselves
and under a just God will not long retain it." Just as
Northern men in the war with slavery found free speech, free
meeting, and personal liberty endangered at home, so now the
attempt to conquer a brown race generates a feeling which
l9
endangers the liberties of our own colored citizens. The
connection is clear. It is openly avowed in the Southern
press. Thus the Charleston Evening Post says : —
"It is quite evident that the discrimination against the dark
races in the Philippines which is enforced by the Government
under the direction of the Republican policy . . . must make
the sponsors tolerant of, if not actually sympathetic with the
discrimination which is practised in the Southern States and
which is essential in this section to the maintenance of a high
civilization. ... We should not only go with, but drive the
Republicans along the road of race discrimination in the Phil¬
ippines, and before they could turn about they would find
themselves shut within the confines of the South's traditional
and essential race policy."
Our crime in the Philippines endangers the fruit of our long
contest with slavery, and every friend of freedom must stand
alike for the equal rights of the negroes in this country and
the independence of the Filipinos in Asia. In both cases
liberty is in danger and the peril comes from the great Re¬
public whose honor should be dearer to her children than
all the wealth of the Indies.
We may be sure, however, that the cause of right is not
beaten. The time will come and at no distant date when
this people will again believe with Lincoln, will again be
proud of the great Declaration, when the follies and offences
of to-day will be remembered with the bitterest regret and
when the false prophets of injustice and oppression will be
forgotten. Not many years ago a mob of respectable Bos-
tonians dragged Garrison through the streets of Boston with
a rope about his neck. No statue or picture of any man in
that mob adorns any public place in that city, but in the
centre of its proudest quarter stands the statue of Garrison
and on its base is inscribed his lofty motto :
" My country is the world : my countrymen are all mankind."
His example and his triumph forbid us to falter.