THE
'NEGRO QUESTION.
BY
JOSEPH PAREI8H, M.D.
PHILADELPHIA:
PERK IN FINE A 1IIGGINS. PUBLISHERS ANJ) BOOKSELLERS,
No. Sti North Fourth Strret.
1864.
THE
'NEGRO QUESTION
BY
JOSEPH PARRISH, M.D.
PHILADELPHIA:
PERKINPINE & HIGGINS, PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS
^o. 56 North Fodrth Street.
1864.
It is generally conceded that slavery is dead. That it is so,
in fact, may be said of some portions of our country only ; that
it promises to be so everywhere, in the early future, may be
anticipated with confidence. The question of its abolition,
therefore, need not be discussed.
But, what to do with the millions whom slavery has op¬
pressed, and who are now becoming free, is the vital question
of the day—vital to the country—to the race—to the cause of
humanity, the world over.
In these few pages, I propose to offer some reflections which
are the result of observation and inquiry, concerning the pres¬
ent status of freedmen in those portions of our territory re¬
cently recovered by the Federal army, which may throw some
light upon this question.
They are free by the exercise of military power, and it has
thus become one of the functions of the War Department, to take
them in charge.
They are helpless, friendless, scattered, without civil law or
social bonds. The army rescues them, and throws around them
a defence. The medical bureau furnishes hospitals, and hos¬
pital care to the needy. The incompetent, from age and in¬
fancy, are collected in asylum camps, while the able-bodied
men are taken into the service as soldiers, or put to work on
fortifications or farms. This seems to be the most natural
provision that can be made for them under the necessary rigi¬
dity of a war policy.
They have escaped into our lines, or remained in their
homes, as their masters have escaped before our advancing
forces, without any defined relation to the Government, or to
4
each other. The army supply-list does not contemplate the
demands of these thousands, and while the clemency of the
Government has prevented, as far as possible, immediate suf¬
fering, the claims upon private benevolence for clothing, &c.,
have been answered with a profusion and alacrity, that are
characteristic of American philanthropy and enterprise.
At this phase of the work, however, difficulties are apt to
arise from the exuberance of public sympathy and effort on
the one hand, and the inflexible ritual of the army code on the
other. These comforts and clothing so generously bestowed,
are forwarded, and of necessity, fall into the hands of military
agents, who distribute them according to their judgment, or
under orders from their superiors. If these distributions prove
to be, or are supposed to be misapplied in any way, suspicions
and objections on the part of donors, grow into avowed dis¬
trust and opposition, so that the work is hindered.
Kindly intentions and generous offices, both on the part of
Government officials, and of benevolent people, instead of
being co-ordinate, and co-operative, become distinct and antago¬
nistic. Such is now the state of things, to some extent, in the
valley of the Mississippi. On the Atlantic coast, a more
complete organization of the work, under the direction of
Major-General Butler, has in some measure, modified these
contradictory elements; and yet even in this department,
obstacles will grow out of the fact that the channel of an inflexi¬
ble military order, is too narrow in the people's estimation, for
the free current of their liberality.
We have to learn wThat war is, and what are its demands.
It is certain that nothing can be done at present for the relief
of this people, except through the war power. The military
government is the only government of these newly recovered
lands. Military officers are the only officers for the adminis¬
tration of law, and the preservation of order. There are no
magistrates, no courts, no justice, save that of the sword.
Every agent representing private bounty—every teacher re¬
presenting an educational society—every minister sent out from
a church, all act in their respective spheres by sufferance ; they
5
are allowed by the military power to remain at their posts.
This state of things is a necessity. It can only be removed
when civil law is restored. We must therefore, use this chan¬
nel* of communication in order to reach the objects of our
sympathy.
Next, the Government is represented in these disorganized
regions by its treasury agents, who take possession of aban¬
doned lands, and seek to turn them to account. No man can
of right, occupy the soil without the consent of the Government,
which has become its temporary proprietor.
The freed man finds himself in his own birth-place, with the
cabin in which he has been reared, still his only shelter, and
with the fields before him that he has trod with his own weary
feet, and watered with his own sweat, all his life long, his mas¬
ter gone, and a new owner for the plantation. That owner is
the free Government, and he, for the first time, his own pos¬
sessor. He has no fee in the land, no legal claim even upon
himself. He is only free, because the law which made him a
slave, has been broken. by that strong arm which conquered
slavery, and now gives him the opportunity to stand alone, and
feel himself his own. A strange sensation after years of
bondage !
His relation is not only changed to his former master, but it
is changed to the soil—to everything. Once he was classified,
valued, and managed as the plantation and all its appliances
were. He was a part of the stock in business; he knew it,
felt it, abhorred it, but could not help it. Now, he is not a
chattel; he cannot be classified, valued, and managed as prop¬
erty. He is himself. As such, the Government recognizes
him; as such, he claims to be what other men are. He is a
man—a citizen—a soldier—or whatever his opportunities, his
abilities, or his tastes may make him.
Where, then, if we "adopt this theory, is the difficulty in the
solution of the question, "What shall be done with the negro ?"
Feed him, and clothe him through the instrumentalities fur¬
nished by the Government; thus supplementing by private
contributions, what the War Department cannot provide, and
6
he will be fed and clothed for a space, till he can measure his
manhood and find his level. In many places this has already
been done. Witness the sea islands of South Carolina and
elsewhere.
The Military and Treasury Departments of the Government,
(while one defends the people, and the other possesses the land,)
neither proposes to civilize the one, or cultivate the other.
This is the field for christian teaching and skillful labor.
How may it be accomplished ?
First. Admit the manhood of the freedman. Let all the
habiliments of his bondage be cast aside. He has strength,
courage, resolution, endurance—the qualities of physical man¬
hood.
Second. Admit his moral responsibility. He has conscience,
spirit, immortality. He is subject to spiritual influences. He
perceives, thinks, judges. He believes, hopes, adores. He
is an entire man—rude it is true; dwarfed in intellectual vigor
it may be; and yet his entire manhood is undoubted.
Surround him with appliances for the cultivation of these
qualities. Give him the opportunity for civilizing and improv¬
ing himself in all the relations of home, and in all the industries
of the community.
The congregation of the disabled and dependent among
themselves, as of cripples, the aged, and very young, is an un¬
natural state of society. It does not tend to civilization.
The true order is, first the family, then the community of
several families, the school, the church, the hospital, the asylum.
All should belong to each community. No community is per¬
fect without them all. The ministrations of care and duty to the
helpless, should not be removed too far from the common ser¬
vices of life. They constitute a part of the means for promo¬
ting true civilization. Widowhood, infirm age, helpless infancy,
sickness, and death, are household kindred. They serve to
make home dear, Avhere Christian civilization has reached its
highest development. As the fragrance of some plants is
sweetened by the branches or leaves being bruised, so is the
7
fragrance of family affection purified, "where dependence or sor¬
row renders care and watching a part of duty.
The negro race is docile, obedient even to subserviency, of
a strong religious faith, and yet lacking too much the attach¬
ments of family and home. Slavery has made it so, and the
first lesson of freedom should be, to restore these vagrant quali¬
ties of the freedman's heart to their wonted hold upon his
nature.
Recover the family relation. Teach,—not dogmas, but
duties; conjugal, parental, and social.
In labor, let it be for the laborer himself; not for the Gov¬
ernment only, for a company or a proprietor, but for the la¬
borer, his family, his home; that he himself may become the
proprietor, and occupy his own homestead for his wife and
children.
To this end, let the Government hold the soil for purchase,
not by half acres, but by tracts of fifty acres, more or less, for
all deserving persons, who shall earn and hold it in their own
right, being responsible to the law for good citizenship.
To deny that the freedmen are, as a class, prepared for then-
new position, is to deny our own experience as a people. We
have opened our ports to the oppressed of other lands, and in¬
vited them alike to our western fields, and our eastern cities, and
they have come with degradation no less than that of Southern
Slaves, with habits and proclivities no more pure and elevated,
and many are now useful citizens of our States, and have added
largely to our productive industry and wealth. Their children
have found free schools, and are rapidly adding increased
intelligence to the mass of society. The situation of the
people in some of the counties of Ireland before emigration
to this land, was, in some respects, analagous to that of the
negro here. They lived in cabins no better than the negro
quarters of South Carolina, and had no better advantages of
education than the field hands of the Sea Islands. And the
result of experiment has proved that both, when emancipated
from the thraldom of aristocratic rule, have risen to enjoy their
manhood with less struggle than it cost them to subdue it.
8
In one respect, the negro has the advantage. His religion
is radiant with hope, his faith solid with endurance, his trust
as peaceful and confident as that of children towards a pa¬
rent ; and when he breaks through his thraldom, these inward
heart impulses make him pliant, and easily adapted to new
scenes and circumstances. He is not bound by the conven¬
tionalities of a priesthood, that retard rather than promote ex¬
pansion, but grows from the concrete to the abstract, out of the
mass into his own individuality—and this is the true instinct
of the civilizing process. It develops genius, power, self-gov¬
ernment, &c., and while it distinguishes man as a unit, enables
him to fill an important place in the aggregate. There must
be instrumentalities employed to perform this task of construc¬
tion and organization. What should they be ?
Take the work as it now stands. Clothing is distributed
freely, sometimes by military, and sometimes by private agents.
Much is wasted or misapplied doubtless, by indiscretion on the
pari of both classes of distributors, and hence the necessity for
a proportionate increase of supplies; for waste and misapplica¬
tion are necessities in such a state of confusion as exists among
unformed communities. Schools are established by private
individuals, societies and churches. They spring up wherever
a teacher may find a foothold, and gather pupils around him.
In this formative condition the field now lies before us, with
the assurance that the circumstances of Avar will continu9 to
re-produce the same routine of occupation and liberation, till
the last acre of Slave territory shall be redeemed.
But it is for a wise philanthropy to take this primal organism
and mould it after a fashion that shall liken it to a healthy
civilization. Men and women of genius, of constructive talent,
of pure benevolence, are needed, not so much in the advance
to gather up the material, as in the rear to mould it when it
may be gathered.
Those who have already imbibed the animus of the cause,
and are capable of appreciating the instincts and aspirations
of the negro ; those who appreciate that according to the infinite
law, the account is to be balanced with the race, are the persons
9
needed for the exigencies of the day. For we did not know
that they gave us corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied our
silver and gold which we prepared for Baal. " Therefore,"
saith the prophet, " will I return to take away my corn in the
time thereof, and in the season thereof, and will recover my
wool and my flax, given to cover your nakedness." Hosea,
ii. 8, 9. We must pay back the debt.
Under the present system of toleration, and even aid, fur¬
nished by the war power, but comparatively little can be done
for the permanent organization of peaceful institutions. It
can only be when civil authority is restored, and religious liberty
and educational talent, and industrial enterprise, all find their
places and their work, that the process of social development can
be perfected. How far this may be fostered by law, and how
far the state laws, when states begin again to assume their for¬
mer relation to the Federal Government, may sympathize with
the true philosophy of elevation and civilization, is a question
of most serious import, and it behooves the Government to an¬
ticipate the obstructions that will be presented by a too early
recognition of state sovereignty, in those sections of the coun¬
try where slavery has corrupted public morals, and rendered
the governing faculty imbecile. First renovate, then allow
state organizations and laws, to resume their former functions.
Until then, build the foundations of civilized society over the
ruins of slavery, by the full exercise of the Federal power, and
the employment of the best available talent in the work of
social organization.
Northern churches are already in the field, occupying as far
as they may, the waste places that have been deserted by
slave-holding teachers, and are preparing to give form and
substance to the crude masses, who, while they cling to their
religion with its strange admixture of truth and superstition,
desire to be recognized and classified in this, as in other rela¬
tions to civilized people.
Neither military or civil law will do more than protect and
foster the labor of churches. The military power opens the
way, and throws the people on to the advancing church, just as
10
it throws them on to the school-teacher, and opens the whole
field to diligent workers.
The agriculturalist is also following up the train, and open¬
ing farms for corn, cotton and tobacco. So far, however, the
labor is chiefly for the profit of the lessee, or the party whom
he represents. Inducements are offered to capitalists to specu¬
late, and tempting figures are presented to show what may be
produced from a given expenditure.
The labor is done by freedmen and freed women; they are
paid, and prove themselves not only competent to earn, but to
husband, and enjoy comforts that they have not before known ;
and yet the capitalist and the Northern farmer, who never
before saw a cotton field—who never knew its productiveness,
and much less how to cultivate it, become the recipient of the
profits, assuming that the negro is unprepared to be a free¬
holder, though from the negro he gets not only all his tobacco
and cotton, but all his knowledge of how to produce them.
If wealthy corporations in the North, would occupy farms
and instruct the freed laborers how to live, and enjoy in the
best manner the fruits of their labor, and apportion to them
certain tracts of land, either as lessees or as proprietors, when
the title to land will admit of transfer, and let the profits go to
stimulate personal thrift and industry, they would be civilizing
a down-trodden people, and accomplishing a great work for
humanity. The negro thus circumstanced, could not only pay
his Government tax, but pay to church, and school fund, and
contribute in all legitimate methods to the general interests of
the community, while he would be individualizing himself, thus
strengthening his own manhood and the manhood of his race.
We do him injustice in claiming for him but little more than
bone and muscle. We are mistaken also when we suppose him to
be in an unexpected position. Long before the wisdom of legis¬
lators, and secretaries, and presidents, saw the day of redemp¬
tion, it was believed, hoped for, anticipated, seen, on every
plantation in the South. They have been not only looking for
this day, but preparing for it, and so far as the disabilities of
the slave code would allow, they have improved their opportu-
11
nities. They claim only to be men, and ask of us to give them
the common rights of humanity, and nothing more. They are
ignorant and thriftless as slaves; but in the atmosphere of free¬
dom all men thrive. Freedom is the normal state of manhood ;
without it, no one can be true to his instincts and his destiny;
with it, all may develop according to their capacity and
advantages.
REVIEW.
Our duty seems to be,
1. To conform to, and co-operate with all the military regu¬
lations concerning the care and conduct of this people, until the
military supremacy shall be withdrawn.
2. To scan well the present temporary organizations of
camps and schools, correct existing evils, and construct a basis
for society that shall comport with the best experience and
knowledge.
3. To employ no persons as teachers but those who appreci¬
ate the wants of an anxious and earnest people; and with a fair
knowledge of human nature, possess an abiding trust in the final
accomplishment of the work under the direction of an all-wise
Providence.
4. In all the industries and economies of life, to have the
best guardians and instructors, who shall devise and execute
means for increasing the productiveness and dignity of labor.
5. To employ no person in any relation to this people, who
may feel it to be a part of his duty or his plan, to use the lash
in the exercise of discipline.
And in entering upon the work, to assume that freedmen
are at once able as honest laborers, to earn an honest living;
that having built houses and ships; worked at all kinds of
mechanical trades; raised cotton, rice, corn and tobacco;
manufactured sugar and turpentine ; wrought in mills for saw¬
ing and grinding; steered vessels of sail and steam ; governed
plantations, and preached the gospel for their masters, they
are still able to enter upon these active pursuits with new incen¬
tives to enterprise, and with fresh promise of reward.