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 ■^^•v^': 
 
SLAVERY 
 
 AND THE RACE PROBLEM 
 
 IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE 
 TO THE STATE OF GEORGIA. 
 
 Address of 
 
 HON. WM. H. FLEMING, 
 
 Before the Alumni Society of the State University, 
 
 Athens, June 19, 1906. 
 
 Boston : 
 
 Dana Estes & Company, 
 
 Publish EKS. 
 
ion one of the highest honors to which any American can aspire. 
 I deem your speech a real milestone in the path of progress, and 
 with your consent, I should be glad to reprint it in an attractive 
 form to extend its circulation as far as I can. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 Dana Estes." 
 
 A prompt reply contained the consent to the publica- 
 tion, and in offering it to the public, the editor felt that the 
 endorsement of the leaders of political and moral move- 
 ments throughout the country would be of service in ex- 
 tending its influence. He, therefore, addressed President 
 Roosevelt for this purpose, and the following are excerpts 
 from the correspondence regarding this subject: 
 
 "July 23rd, 1906. 
 *' To THE President, 
 
 My Dear Sir : — 
 
 I think it beyond doubt that your atten- 
 tion has been attracted to the patriotic and important speech of 
 the Honorable William H. Fleming of Georgia. 
 
 I have asked of him, as per enclosed copy of my letter to 
 him of July 5th, the privilege of reprinting this in an attractive 
 form to extend its benefits as widely as possible. It seems to me 
 to mark an epoch in this agitation, and I am informed that since 
 the delivery of this speech the Committee of the Georgia legisla- 
 ture has reported against the passage of the disfranchisement 
 bill without a dissenting vote. I believe this to be largely the re- 
 sult of Mr. Fleming's great speech. 
 
 If it would be entirely proper for you, in view of your exalted 
 official position, to commend the sentiments of this speech, and 
 permit such commendation to be used in an introduction to the 
 speech, I should be pleased to receive the same from you. 
 
 The publication of the speech is not intended as a commer- 
 cial transaction. ***** 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 Dana Estes." 
 
"Oyster Bay, N. Y,, July 25, 1906. 
 " My Dear Mr. Estes : 
 
 I am glad that you are to publish ex-Congress- 
 man Fleming's noteworthy speech in more permanent form than 
 it is possible ordinarily to publish such speeches. ***** 
 
 Mr. Fleming's speech is admirable, alike for its fearlessness, 
 its sanity, and the high purpose which it shows. The problems 
 of any one part of our great common country should be held to 
 be the problems of all our country — at least to the extent that 
 all our people should give their hearty and respectful sympathy 
 to those who in their own neighborhood, are trying to solve their 
 particular problems aright. In each locality we have our own 
 special and peculiar difiEicuUies ; and when a brave and honest 
 man does good work in meeting the peculiar difficulties of his 
 own region, he not only does good therein, but by example and 
 influence he helps Americans in other parts of our great common- 
 wealth manfully to grapple with the various evils which they in 
 their turn, have to strive against. 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 Theodore Roosevelt." 
 
 At the writer's especial request, Mr. Fleming has fur- 
 nished him with a few excerpts from the many letters of 
 approval which he has received from all parts of the coun- 
 try; and especially from leaders of opinion in the South. 
 In his reply he says : " Many of the strongest commenda- 
 tions which my speech has received have been given to 
 me in person by word of mouth, and, consequently, do not 
 appear in written form that could be used." Among the 
 many received by letters may be quoted the following from 
 Judge John L. Hopkins of Atlanta: 
 
 "I have read your speech more than once. It is satisfying. 
 In some of its parts it has been comforting to me — in all, inter- 
 esting. The preparation of such a paper is a valuable service to 
 the state. It was needed — it was just the right thing." 
 
(Hon. Harry Hammond, Beach Island, S. C, letter June 27th.) 
 "Van Hoist, a northern sympathizer, said a century and a 
 half must elapse before a verdict could be reached as to the wis- 
 dom of emancipation. The solution of the race problem advo- 
 cated by you — Justice to the Negro — needs no time for its 
 confirmation. It is registered among the indisputable truths of 
 eternity itself." 
 
 (Former Congressman W.m. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga.) 
 
 "I thank you with all my he:irt for the address made at the 
 Athens Commencement. Yours were words of sober caution 
 and profound prudential wisdom." 
 
 (Emory Speer, U. S. District Judge, letter June 27th.) 
 
 " I have received the pamphlet print of your great speech on 
 Slavery and the Race Problem in the South. I had the happi- 
 ness of hearing this appeal to the intelligence and sense of 
 justice of our people, and I cannot well overstate the pleasure it 
 gave me to see with what enthusiasm the Alumni body of our 
 Alma Mater present received such a fearless and truthful exposi- 
 tion of great and salutary truths." 
 
 (James R. Randal, New Orleans, Author of " Maryland, My 
 Maryland," letter June 27th.) 
 
 "The speech was a masterpiece. No one else could have 
 done it." 
 
 (Judge VV. H. HuLSEY, Atlanta, Ga., letter June 29th.) 
 
 "Reading your address from start to finish, it pleases me to 
 
 say that every patriotic Georgian ought to feel grateful to you for 
 
 giving to your state a clear, forceful and masterly presentation in 
 
 your Athens address of what may be termed the Negro Problem." 
 
 (Hon. MooRFiELD Storey, Boston, Mass., letter June 29th.) 
 "It is a courageous thing to stand up in one's country and 
 speak as you have done, and such courage is very much needed 
 today. You have never lacked that quality, and I hope your 
 example will be an inspiration to others." 
 
(Judge Joel Branhan of Rome, Ga., letter June 23rd.) 
 
 " I want to thank you for your grand speech on the disfran- 
 chisement of the negro before the Alumni of the University of 
 Georgia on the 19th inst., which I have just had the pleasure of 
 reading. It is truthful, honest and unanswerable." 
 
 (R. F. Campbell, Ashville, N. C., letter June 25th.) 
 
 "In intellectual strength and moral soundness, it takes the 
 place easily among the very best things ever written or spoken 
 on this subject." 
 
 (Congressman W. M. Howard, Atlanta, Ga., letter June 25 th.) 
 
 " I am very glad to get the speech, not because it is a reve- 
 latiori to me of your views on this question, but especially to know 
 precisely what you said in view of the criticism I have seen in 
 the papers about it. The speech is up to the very best of your 
 ability, and I am proud of you as a friend and a citizen of Geor- 
 gia because of the pertinence and power of the speech. I am 
 glad that you made it when and where you did. It is the strong- 
 est and clearest voice that has been heard since this issue became 
 state wide." 
 
 (Prof. W. S. Bean, Clinton, S. C, letter June 25th.) 
 
 "I am delighted with the address, its calmness and fairness 
 of statement, its ample basis of fact, its appeal to a sense of 
 justice and fairness and its belief in the principle that no wrong 
 can be inflicted for political purposes which will not certainly re- 
 act upon the agent at sometime. ***** j ^j^ gj^jj 
 you had such a splendid opportunity, such a fine, intelligent 
 audience, and that you rose to the occasion in a speech that is 
 masterly, statesmanlike and Christian. May you live long to 
 keep up such a good work and find staunch friends to stand by 
 you and your principles." 
 
 (C. P. Goodyear, Brunswick, Ga., letter June 27th.) 
 
 "That was a great and statesmanlike and patriotic speech of 
 yours at the University. The day will come when wise men in 
 Georgia, — good men everywhere, — will appreciate the calm 
 temper and patriotic thought which dictated it." 
 
(George Foster Peabody, New York City, letter June 28th.) 
 "The more I think of the matter, the more do I beHeve that 
 you have done a far-reaching service and that it may well prove, 
 to be the case that no address during the last twenty years has 
 been more important." 
 
 (Ex-Gov. Allen D. Candler, Atlanta, Ga., letter July 4th.) 
 "I have read it with a great deal of interest, and it is with- 
 out exaggeration a gem, and every loyal Georgian who knows 
 Georgia and her career in the past and the apparent insuperable 
 obstacles her people have had to surmount will thank you for it. 
 * * * I think no fitter occasion could have been found for 
 the utterance of the lofty sentiments contained in it than the 
 Commencement of the State University before the Alumni Asso- 
 ciation of the oldest state college in America." 
 
 (T. C. Betterton, Dalton, Ga., letter July 8th.) 
 " Please allow me to say that you have in this address per- 
 formed the highest possible service to your state and to the 
 South. I would that every citizen in our state could read it 
 thoroughly." 
 
 (Rev. Walker Lewis, Augusta, Ga., letter July 15th.) 
 
 "I have just finished the best Sunday reading I have seen in 
 many years. It is your great article on the Race Question. It 
 is masterful, it is unanswerable, it is worthy of a great statesman ; 
 it is Christian philosophy and righteousness." 
 
 (Francis Lynde Stetson, Sterlington, Rockland Co., N. Y., 
 
 letter July 8th.) 
 
 "I consider it the best presentation of the various phases of 
 this difficult question that I have ever seen, and his proposed 
 solution through the ordinary observation of the universal man- 
 date of the moral law attests his sanity." 
 
 "Lake George, N. Y., 3rd July, 1906. 
 "The Honorable William H. Fleming, Augusta, Ga. 
 My Dear Sir : — 
 
 I cannot forbear writing to you of my 
 delight at your great speech, delivered before the Alumni Society 
 
at the University of Georgia. In its insight, its iron logic, its 
 political perspective, and its high morality, it is, I think, one of 
 the greatest constructive addresses of the time ; and these qual- 
 ities mark it as belonging to that class of political literature to 
 which the speeches of Webster, Hayne and Lincoln belong. I 
 would not be guilty of flattery, but such an address at such a 
 time and place is an event which gives one a legitimate pride in 
 human kind, and a joy in the mere fact of living. I have long 
 felt that this time with its problems, on the principle that great 
 occasions make great men, is one which must call into being and 
 action men of the first order, men who are capable of seeing the 
 significance of the time and of meeting its great demands. I 
 think the men are coming, and I hail your speech as a sign that 
 they are coming. Faithfully yours, 
 
 Samuel H. Bishop." 
 
 (Prof. Chas. Eliot Norton, Cambridge, Mass., letter Aug. nth.) 
 "Nothing could be better than its spirit. It would be a most 
 encouraging sign in these confused days should your appeal to 
 the intelligent and moral sympathy of the community be heeded 
 and responded to." 
 
 (Richard C. Ogden, Madison Ave., New York, letter Aug. 12th.) 
 " I appreciate your great contribution to the solution of the 
 one great question that retards the growth of American unity." 
 
 (H. B. Brown, Ex- Justice Sup. Court, U. S., letter Aug. 5th.) 
 '■' I cannot refrain from expressing to you my appreciation of 
 your masterly address of June 19th upon Slavery and the Race 
 Problem. It is quite the most satisfactory of any I have seen 
 upon that subject. I cannot doubt your views will ultimately 
 prevail in the South, as they do already in the North. I have 
 always believed the question of suffrage would finally be solved 
 by the adoption of an educational or property qualification, 
 which, if fairly administered, would answer the purpose. I do 
 not think anyone should be disfranchised solely on account of 
 color." 
 
 The writer has made no attempt to collect the opinions 
 
of the Press, though he has seen many that were as em- 
 phatic in commendation as are the personal opinions here- 
 with submitted. He can not, however, refrain from a brief 
 excerpt from an editorial of the "Augusta (Ga.) Chron- 
 icle:" 
 
 "The speech wa.s pronounced by all who heard it or read it 
 to be the greatest ever delivered from the University platform." 
 
 It may not be inappropriately stated that commercial 
 considerations have had no part in influencing the publica- 
 tion of this speech, that the profits arising from its publica- 
 tion will be devoted to educational work in the South, and 
 that the editor, and not the author, is responsible for the 
 insertion of the quotations on page facing the title page of 
 the work, and the portrait of the author. 
 
 Dana Estes. 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM 
 IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 Brothers of the Alumni Society , Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 It is my purpose to discuss slavery and the race 
 problem in the South, with special reference to our own 
 State of Georgia, 
 
 No public issue is more deserving of thoughtful con- 
 sideration by our people, and no occasion could be more 
 fit for its discussion. This audience is qualified in head 
 and heart to appreciate at its true value every argument 
 that may be advanced, and this platform at our chief seat 
 of learning is so lifted up, that words spoken here may be 
 heard in all parts of the State, echoing among the " Hills 
 of Habersham" and over the "Sea Marshes of Glynn." 
 
 If there be any one present perturbed by a secret 
 doubt as to the propriety of my bringing this subject and 
 this occasion together in the midst of the pending political 
 campaign in Georgia, let me hasten to allay his fears with 
 the assurance that I shall carefully refrain from all offensive 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 personal allusions. Speaking to this very point some 
 weeks before his fatal illness, Chancellor Hill cordially 
 approved of my selection of the race problem for discus- 
 sion at this time before the alumni of the university, and 
 he added with characteristic broadmindedness: "I wish 
 my platform at Athens to be a place for the freest expres- 
 sion of honest thought." 
 
 At the outset, we should realize that if we are to make 
 any genuine progress toward a right solution of our prob- 
 lem, we must approach it in a spirit of the utmost candor, 
 and with an eye single to the ascertainment of the truth. 
 The pessimist "sailing the Vesuvian Bay" Hstens for the 
 dreaded rumblings of the distant mountain — blind to the 
 wondrous beauties of earth and sky about him. The 
 optimist floating down the placid upper stream pictures to 
 himself an endless panorama of peaceful landscapes — deaf 
 to the thundering cataract of Niagara just below him. 
 But better than pessimism and better than optimism is 
 that philosophy which faces facts as they are, and cour- 
 ageously interprets their meaning. 
 
 Slavery and Christianity. 
 
 In the earlier civilizations slavery was the rule, not the 
 exception. But with the advent of the Christ and His 
 teachings, a silent, gentle, yet all-compelling force began 
 
 lO 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 its work on the universal heart of humanity. Christianity 
 adjusted itself to existing governmental institutions, in- 
 cluding slavery. But it inculcated such lofty doctrines of 
 love and duty, and created such vivid conceptions of a 
 personal God and Father of us all, that it was only a ques- 
 tion of time when Christian peoples could not hold in 
 slavery those of their own faith and blood. 
 
 In England in 1696 the doctrine had obtained wide 
 acceptance that Christian baptism of itself worked a legal 
 manumission of the slave. Argument to that effect was 
 urged by able lawyers in the court of King's Bench in the 
 suit of Chamberlain v. Herney, but the case went off on 
 another ground, and that point was not decided. About 
 the same time, however, the colonies of Maryland, Vir- 
 ginia and South Carolina passed laws that Christian bap- 
 tism should not free the negro slave, "any opinion or 
 matter to the contrary notwithstanding." Thus we see a 
 recognition of the necessity at that period of our history of 
 controlling by statutory enactments this expanding senti- 
 ment of Christian brotherhood among the masses of the 
 people, so as to prevent it from embracing the alien negro 
 race. 
 
 The march of Christian civilization had put an end to 
 white slavery, but negro slavery still flourished, chiefly be- 
 
 II 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 cause the negro was of a different race-blood from his 
 masters. Oneness in faith and blood had grown to mean 
 freedom for the white man. But oneness in faith, without 
 oneness in blood, still meant slavery for the negro. 
 
 Indeed, negro slavery as a historical institution in 
 Western civilization occupies a unique position of its own. 
 It began in the fifteenth century when white slavery had 
 practically ceased. Most other slaveries were incidental 
 results of wars. Negro slavery originated in commerce, 
 in trade and barter, and so continued until it was sup- 
 pressed. 
 
 Justification of Negro Slavery Based on Race- 
 Inferiority. 
 
 When in later 3^ears the institution was summoned be- 
 fore the bar of the world's public opinion, its most logical 
 and profound defenders admitted the wrongfulness of white 
 slavery, but justified negro slavery on the plea of the 
 natural inferiority of the negro race. 
 
 Alexander Stephens, then vice-president of the South- 
 ern Confederacy, in his famous Corner-Stone Speech at 
 Savannah in March, i86i, said: "Many governments 
 have been founded upon the principle of subordination 
 and serfdom of certain classes of the same race. Such 
 were, and are, in violation of the laws of nature. Our sys- 
 
 12 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 tern contains no such violation of nature's laws. With us, 
 all the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are 
 equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro ; sub- 
 ordination is his place." * * * * Referring to the 
 Confederacy, he declared: "Its foundations are laid, its 
 corner stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is 
 not equal to the white man, that slavery — subordination 
 to the superior race — is his natural and normal con- 
 dition." 
 
 The fact of race inequality here stated cannot well be 
 denied. But there is still a fatal flaw in the logic. That 
 flaw lies in the assumption that a superior race has the 
 right to hold an inferior race in slavery. A race can not 
 be justly deprived of liberty merely because it is relatively 
 inferior to another. If so, all other branches of the human 
 family could justly be reduced to slavery by the highest, 
 most masterful branch — and that mastery could only be 
 determined by force of arms. The obligation of the supe- 
 rior to lead and direct does not carry with it the right to 
 enslave. 
 
 Mr. Stephens further declared in his speech: "It is 
 upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly 
 planted, and I can not permit myself to doubt the ultimate 
 
 13 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 success of the full recognition of this principle throughout 
 the civilized and enlightened world," 
 
 Here we have one of the ablest intellects of his day not 
 only asserting that negro slavery was legally and morally 
 right, but predicting that its recognition would become 
 universal throughout the civilized world — a prediction 
 made within five years of its abolition in the United States, 
 and within twenty-seven years of its abolition in Brazil, 
 which marked the final disappearance of human slavery as 
 a legalized institution among civilized peoples. 
 
 Let me say in passing, that this Corner-Stone speech 
 is not to be found in the authorized volume containing the 
 biography and speeches of Mr. Stephens. One can scarce- 
 ly suppress the question : Did the great commoner prefer 
 for posterity to judge him by other speeches? Certain it 
 is, that the views he expressed on negro slavery did not 
 spring from hardness of heart, or want of sympathy with 
 any suffering creature on earth. At his death, his negro 
 body servant in tearful accents pronounced upon him this 
 noble eulogy: "Mars Alec was kinder to dogs than most 
 men is to folks." 
 
 But Mr. Stephens was defending the then existing in- 
 stitution of slavery handed down to his people by their 
 
 14 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 fathers, recognized by historical analogies from the Bible, 
 and sanctioned by the Federal Constitution. His moral 
 nature was uncompromising. There was no way to adjust 
 that moral nature to existing conditions except by making 
 the assumption, which he did make, of the right of a supe- 
 rior race to enslave an inferior race. 
 
 If race environment could so warp the judgment of a 
 great intellect like that of Alexander Stephens, other men 
 may well be cautious lest they miss the truth. 
 
 We need not stop to discuss whether the North or 
 South was the more responsible for negro slavery in 
 America. It takes two to make a bargain. Northern 
 traders sold and Southern planters bought. If Charleston, 
 South Carohna, was one of the chief ports of destination 
 for slave trading vessels, Salem, Massachusetts, was one of 
 the chief ports from whence those vessels sailed. 
 
 In the earlier days of the Southern colonies there were 
 many strong protests against negro slavery. But once 
 established it continued to grow and flourish until we 
 reached those unhappy days foreshadowed by Mr. Madi- 
 son, when he said in the constitutional convention of 1787 
 that the real antagonism would not arise between the large 
 States on the one hand and the small States on the other, 
 as many seemed to fear, but that "The institution of 
 
 15 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 slavery and its consequences formed the line of discrim- 
 ination." 
 
 Slavery the Irritating Cause of the War. 
 
 No historian can ever truthfully assert that the men 
 who bore the banner of the Confederacy in victory and in 
 defeat with such matchless courage and heroic sacrifice 
 were moved only by the selfish purpose of holding their 
 black fellowmen in bondage. They were inspired by the 
 noblest sentiments of patriotism. So far from being trait- 
 ors to the Constitution of their fathers, which Mr. Glad- 
 stone declared was the " most wonderful work ever struck 
 off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man," 
 they reverenced that great instrument- next to the Bible. 
 So far from trampling it under foot, they held it up as 
 their shield. They appealed to the North and West to 
 recognize the binding obligation of that Constitution, as 
 interpreted by the highest court, only to hear it denounced 
 at last as "a covenant with death and an agreement with' 
 hell." 
 
 And yet, we must in candor admit that the truthful 
 historian will write it down that slavery was the particular 
 irritating cause that forced on the conflict of arms between 
 the sections, though deeper causes lay at the foundation of 
 our sectional differences on centralization and State rights. 
 
 i6 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 When Robert Toombs made his memorable farewell 
 speech in the United States Senate on January 7, 1 861, he 
 laid down five propositions, setting forth the contentions of 
 the South, which, if granted, would have averted disunion. 
 Every one of those five propositions was a clear cut, logi- 
 cal deduction from the original meaning and intent of the 
 Constitution, and all five of them centred around the insti- 
 tution of slavery. 
 
 Again, when the conflict was over and the Constitution 
 was amended at three separate times, two of these amend- 
 ments, the thirteenth and fifteenth, referred exclusively to 
 slavery, and the other, the fourteenth, referred chiefly to 
 slavery. No other historical facts, though there are many, 
 need to be cited to prove that slavery was the immediate 
 precipitating cause of the Civil War. 
 
 The Thirteenth Amendment. 
 The thirteenth amendment, ratified in 1865, abolishing 
 slavery, was a legitimate and necessary result of the arbi- 
 trament of the sword. Mr. Lincoln at first declared that 
 the purpose of the war, on the part of the government, was 
 to preserve the Union and not to free the slaves. But the 
 progress of events had rendered him powerless to confine 
 the struggling forces of social upheaval within that limita- 
 
 17 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 tion — even if his personal views had undergone no 
 change. 
 
 Great was the relief to many thoughtful minds in the 
 South when this fruitful cause of sectional contention had 
 been removed. In an address delivered from this platform 
 in 1 87 1, Benjamin H. Hill gave thanks in fervid metaphor 
 that the "dusky Helen" had left the crumbHng walls of 
 Troy, and that Southern genius, once "bound like Prome- 
 theus" to the rock of slavery, had been loosed from its 
 bonds. 
 
 The Fourteenth Amendment. 
 
 The fourteenth amendment, ratified in 1868, was a 
 combination of judicial wisdom in the first section, of fruit- 
 less compromise in the second section, and of political 
 proscription in the third section. 
 
 The first section of this amendment must now be re- 
 garded as one of the very best parts of the entire instru- 
 ment. It gave for the first time an authorative definition 
 of United States citizenship, and forbade any state to 
 abridge the privileges of such citizens or to deprive any 
 person of life, liberty or property without due process of 
 law, or to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the 
 equal protection of the laws. We had lived nearly three- 
 quarters of a century under a government that had no 
 
 18 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 constitutional or statutory definition of its own citizenship, 
 and with no sufficient jurisdiction in its courts to give ade- 
 quate protection to the equal rights now attaching to that 
 citizenship. 
 
 What constituted one a citizen of the United States 
 had long been a subject of discussion in the public jour- 
 nals, in the executive departments and in the courts. The 
 Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case in 1857, decided 
 that a person of African descent, whether slave or free, 
 was not, and could not be a citizen of a State or of the 
 United States. That decision was, of course, superseded 
 by the fourteenth amendment. 
 
 This first section was profound in its wisdom and far- 
 reaching in its effect upon the rights of life, liberty and 
 property, not only of blacks but of whites. That eminent 
 Southern jurist, the Hon. Hannis Taylor, referring specially 
 to this section, has well said: "From a purely scientific 
 point of view the Constitution of the United States never 
 reached its logical completion until after the adoption of 
 the fourteenth amendment." 
 
 The omission from the original Constitution of a defi- 
 nition of United States citizenship and of a distinct provi- 
 sion against State encroachment on equal rights attaching 
 thereto, carried with it a deep significance. 
 
 19 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 Few facts in our history point more unerringly to the 
 conclusion that in the minds of the framers of that instru- 
 ment, the paramount allegiance of the citizen was to his 
 State, and not to the United States. It was this sense of 
 duty which properly constrained Lee and other lovers of 
 the Union to surrender their high commissions in the 
 Federal army and cast their fortunes with their own seced- 
 ing States. Happily, the future holds for us no possibility 
 of the recurrence of that divided allegiance. 
 
 Historically, under the Constitution, the South was 
 right, both as to slavery and secession, but the simple 
 truth is that public opinion on those two subjects had out- 
 grown the Constitution. 
 
 No man contributed more to the development of pub- 
 lic opinion against disunion than did Mr. Webster. When 
 he made his great speech in 1830 in reply to Mr. Hayne 
 closing with that matchless tribute to the Union flag: 
 " The broad ensign of the Republic, now known and hon- 
 ored throughout the world, still full high advanced" — he 
 created and vitalized and electrified Union sentiment 
 throughout the length and breadth of the land. That 
 speech, more than the word or deed of any other one man, 
 prepared the way for the coming of Lincoln, and made 
 possible the vast armies of Grant. After all, should not 
 
 20 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 Webster be given first place in the Hall of Fame dedicated 
 to Saviprs of the Union? 
 
 The Fifteenth Amendment. 
 
 The fifteenth amendment, ratified in 1872, prohibited 
 the United States or any State, in prescribing suffrage 
 qualifications, from discriminating against citizens of the 
 United States on account of race, color or previous condi- 
 tion of servitude. It did not confer the ballot upon any 
 one — it only prohibited discrimination on account of a 
 specified difference. The right to vote is not a privilege 
 or attribute of national citizenship under either the four- 
 teenth or fifteenth amendment; but the right to be ex- 
 empt from discrimination in voting on account of race is 
 an attribute of national citizenship under the fifteenth 
 amendment. 
 
 This amendment was at the time of its adoption a 
 doubtful and dangerous experiment — but once made, it is 
 beyond recall. 
 
 It embodied a distinct addition to the principle set out 
 in the second section to the fourteenth amendment, which 
 latter impliedly permitted a State to deny the ballot to the 
 negro if it were willing to suffer the penalty of a propor- 
 tionate reduction of representation in the lower house of 
 Congress. 
 
 21 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 So far as the negro is concerned, the second section of 
 the fourteenth amendment was a political compromise 
 against him, while the fifteenth amendment was a com- 
 plete declaration of his equal suffrage rights. 
 
 A resolution for a fourteenth amendment, in almost 
 the identical words finally used in this second section in 
 1868, had been up for discussion in the Senate as early as 
 1866. Charles Sumner then denounced it as "a compro- 
 mise of human rights, the most immoral, indecent and 
 utterly shameful of any in our history." 
 
 Mr. Blaine, in his book, "Twenty Years in Congress," 
 took the position that the enactment of the fifteenth 
 amendment operated as a practical repeal of the second 
 section of the fourteenth amendment. He says: "Before 
 the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, if a State should 
 exclude the negro from suffrage the next step would be 
 for Congress to exclude the negro from the basis of appor- 
 tionment. After the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, 
 if a State should exclude the negro from suffrage, the next 
 step would be for the Supreme Court to declare the act 
 was unconstitutional and therefore null and void." 
 
 Some latter-day statesmen, who have introduced bills 
 in Congress to reduce Southern representation, do not 
 seem to agree with Mr. Blaine. 
 
 22 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 Verily, if the party of Sumner should ever abandon the 
 vindication of the fifteenth amendment by substituting for 
 it the compromise of the fourteenth amendment, the shade 
 of that eminent statesman would surely be moved to indig- 
 nation and contempt — if it still concerns itself with mun- 
 dane political affairs. Such a substitute-compromise now 
 could bring no good to either whites or blacks of the 
 South. It would work evil and evil only. 
 Some Reasons for Adopting the Fifteenth Amendment. 
 
 The fifteenth amendment was naturally received with 
 much bitterness by the white people of the South, because 
 many of them interpreted it to mean that our political 
 enemies of the North, who held control of the government, 
 intended thereby to doom the South to perpetual negro 
 domination. 
 
 No doubt many of such advocates were moved by pre- 
 judice and hate, but we of the South, in this day, must not 
 blind ourselves to the fact that this amendment was advo- 
 cated by some men then in public life who were not con- 
 trolled by such base motives, but were patriotically striving 
 to settle a great fundamental question of government on 
 an enduring basis. 
 
 Let us not forget that when Congress passed the joint 
 resolution submitting the fifteenth amendment to the States 
 
 23 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 for adoption, the negroes had already been made citizens 
 of the United States by the fourteenth amendment, and it 
 was impossible to conjoin that status of citizenship with a 
 total exclusion of the negro race from the ballot without 
 undermining some of the foundation principles of our 
 representative Republic. 
 
 Bear in mind, also, that at the time when Congress 
 acted on that resolution in 1869, the negro had already 
 exercised the right of suffrage under the reconstruction 
 acts of Congress, beginning in 1867. It was not under the 
 fifteenth amendment, but under the prior reconstruction 
 acts, that the negroes cast their first ballots. 
 
 So that the issue then was, not whether to give the 
 negroes something they had never possessed, but whether 
 to deny them in the future a privilege they had already 
 actually enjoyed. 
 
 The Southern States were expecting soon to be re- 
 stored to political autonomy. What stand would the 
 white people of those States take as to the rights of their 
 former slaves? To what extremes of pillage and slaughter 
 might not the millions of negroes go under fear of partial 
 or total re-enslavement? These and other questions were 
 hard to answer. To whatever point of the political hori- 
 zon the thoughtful patriot turned his gaze, the clouds were 
 
 24 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 dark and portentous. A crisis was at hand. It had to be 
 met. 
 
 Giving the ballot to five million of newly-freed slaves, 
 of an inferior or backward race, ignorant, unaccustomed to 
 do or think for themselves, could not have been the delib- 
 erate act of wise statesmanship, but only the choice of 
 what seemed to be the lesser of two evils. In truth, the 
 whole plan seems to have been an effort not only to oblit- 
 erate at once, as with a stroke of the pen, all distinctions 
 imposed by law, but to ignore all distinctions imposed by 
 nature. 
 
 Many thoughtful men at the North are now of the 
 opinion that it would have been far better had the military 
 control in the South been continued and the ballot 
 withheld for a time, at least, from the freed man, and 
 finally bestowed upon them by degrees. But that is a 
 dead issue now. 
 
 As a practical measure of procedure, the fifteenth 
 amendment was in many respects harsh and cruel toward 
 the white people of the South, but theoretically it was 
 necessary to round out the Constitution of a representative 
 Republic, based on that equality of citizenship before the 
 law which had already been foreshadowed by the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth amendments. 
 
 25 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 We may well thank God that the South has recovered 
 
 from the immediate shock of these rough post-bellum 
 
 operations in political surgery. In comparison to the past 
 
 — with its civil war and its reconstruction — the future can 
 
 hold no terrors for us. Only let us act with wisdom and 
 
 not lose w^hat we have gained through our suffering. 
 
 Any Future Suffrage Amendment Will Increase Power 
 
 of Congress. 
 
 The fifteenth amendment may, by negative acquies- 
 cence of the American people, become for a time a dead 
 letter, but that three-fourths of the forty-five or more 
 States will ever afifirmatively repeal it for the purpose of 
 allowing five or six Southern States to withhold from our 
 negro citizens, as a race, the right to the ballot, is, to my 
 mind, an hallucination too extreme for serious consider- 
 ation. 
 
 If these post-bellum amendments of the Constitution 
 bearing upon slavery shall ever be altered by future 
 amendments, the alteration will be in the direction of 
 placing under Federal control the entire subject of suf- 
 frage qualifications in all National and State elections. 
 The unmistakable trend of our political and social develop- 
 ment from the beginning of the government has been 
 toward the centre, not away from it. The centripetal force 
 
 26 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 has been stronger than the centrifugal force. Under a law 
 of social gravitation all the parts have been drawn more 
 intimately into one national unity. 
 
 To suppose that this national authority would of its 
 own accord emasculate itself and surrender its own present 
 consolidated power back to the former diverse elements 
 from which it was wrested, would be to reverse every 
 record of political history, and to ignore every lesson of 
 political philosophy. 
 
 Indeed, when the resolution for the fifteenth amend- 
 ment was under discussion in the Senate in 1869, an 
 amendment to that resolution was offered to confer upon 
 Congress the full power to prescribe the qualifications for 
 voters and officeholders, both in the States and in the 
 United States. 
 
 It was not adopted then because the time was not ripe. 
 But we may accept it to be as certain as any future move- 
 ment of this kind can be, that if the Constitution shall be 
 amended on the subject of the suffrage that amendment 
 will not restore lost power to the States, but will confer 
 more power on the National government. The less we 
 agitate it the better. 
 
 Numerical Relation of Races. 
 
 We have now reached the stage in our discussion 
 
 27 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 where we may best consider what is, to my mind, the most 
 important factor in our problem, namely, the numerical 
 relation of the whites and the blacks of the Southern 
 States. Having the advantage in land-holdings and all 
 other forms of wealth, in intellect, in racial pride and 
 strength, our white supremacy can never be overthrown 
 except by force of numbers. For many years after the 
 war we could not rid ourselves of the apprehension that at 
 some day in the future we might be borne down by numer- 
 ical majorities. These fears were not wholly unfounded at 
 that time. 
 
 In slavery, under the fostering care, as well as the 
 commercial interest of the master, the negroes multiplied 
 in a greater ratio than the whites. What effect would the 
 new social order of freedom have on that ratio of increase? 
 Was the Caucasian race of the South face to face with a 
 pitiless force that might gradually but inevitably over- 
 whelm it by sheer weight of numbers? If so, would that 
 race yield, or would it adopt extreme measures for self- 
 preservation? These were momentous and perturbing 
 questions. 
 
 The census of 1870, coming first after the war, could 
 give very little basis for deduction of any sort. But when 
 the census figures of 1880 were made known and were 
 
 28 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBI-EM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 compared with those of 1870, that comparison revealed a 
 most ominous situation. Three States, South Carolina, 
 Mississippi and Louisiana, each had at that time an actual 
 black majority, and the per cent of gain for the negroes in 
 the Southern group of States, as shown by the statistical 
 experts, was far in excess of that of the whites, being 34.3, 
 as against 27.5 per cent from all sources. 
 
 Judge Tourgee's Prophecies Not Fulfilled. 
 
 Judge Albion W. Tourgee, in his book, "An Appeal 
 to Caesar," published in 1884, declared that in the year 
 1900 every State between Maryland and Texas would 
 have a black majority. 
 
 Time has exposed the falsity of that prediction. Not 
 one of those States between Maryland and Texas that had 
 a white majority in 1880 had lost it in 1900. On the con- 
 trary, every such State increased its white majority, while 
 South Carolina, from 1890 to 1900, reduced her negro 
 majority by 2,412, and Louisiana in the same period 
 changed a negro majority of 798 into a white majority of 
 78,818. 
 
 The white majority in the ten distinctively Southern 
 States was increased by 1,002,662 from 1890 to 1900. In 
 the same period our white majority in Georgia rose from 
 
 29 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 119,542 to 146,481. In every Southern State, except 
 Mississippi, where pecuhar conditions prevailed, the mar- 
 gin of safety for white supremacy, even on the basis of 
 numbers, has increased. 
 
 These predictions of negro majorities were not confined 
 to writers of fiction, like Judge Tourgee. Professor Gil- 
 Uam, a statistician of high repute, announced that among 
 the whites of the old slave States the rate of natural in- 
 crease from 1870 to 1880 was 20 per cent, while that of 
 the blacks in the same States was 35 per cent. 
 
 With these figures as a basis he reached the conclusion 
 that the 6,000,000 of Southern blacks in 1880 would in- 
 crease to 12,000,000 in 1900. But when the census takers 
 of 1900 had counted every colored man, woman and child 
 in the whole United States, the total footed up only 8,383,- 
 994, which is 3,616,006 less than the professor had pre- 
 dicted would be found in the Southern States alone. 
 
 Judge Tourgee, using these percentages, given by Pro- 
 fessor Gilliam, argued that all the conditions pointed to a 
 greater discrepancy in the future. 
 
 But the census of 1900 shows that the rate of increase 
 of the blacks in the South Atlantic States, where the con- 
 ditions are most favorable, was only 14.3 per cent from 
 1890 to 1900, instead of 35 per cent, as reported for a 
 
 30 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 previous decade, while that of the whites stood substan- 
 tially at its previous record of 20 per cent. 
 
 It is now an accepted fact that the census of 1870 did 
 not give a complete enumeration of the negroes in the 
 South, and this deficiency, by comparison with the more 
 accurate census of 1880, necessarily showed a greater pro- 
 portionate increase among the negroes than among the 
 whites. It was this error in figures that lead to all these 
 unfounded predictions, which for a time hung like a pall 
 over the South. 
 
 Margin of Safety for White Supremacy Steadily 
 
 Increasing. 
 
 But the census figures of 1890 and 1900 supplied the 
 necessary data for a correct comparison. The resulting 
 demonstration was that instead of the whites of the South 
 being overwhelmed with a deluge of negroes, the certainty 
 of contmued white supremacy has steadily increased with 
 every decade. 
 
 One cause of this comparative decline of the negroes 
 in numbers is to be found in the fact that they have no 
 source of supply from immigration, while the whites are 
 receiving constant accessions from other States and from 
 foreign countries. This influx of whites, comparatively 
 small at present, will undoubtedly continue and become 
 
 31 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 larger with our growing industrial prosperity, which was 
 never on so firm a foundation as now. The completion of 
 the Panama canal will accelerate the development of our 
 resources and give new impetus to white immigration, and 
 thus help vastly in the solution of our problem. 
 
 A second cause of this comparative decline is that the 
 death rate among the negroes is abnormally high. In 
 typical Southern cities, where the death rate among the 
 whites stands at the moderate figures of lo to 12 per 
 thousand, it reaches among the negroes from 20 to 25 per 
 thousand. 
 
 It has recently been asserted by some supposedly com- 
 petent authorities that the death rate of the negroes is now- 
 probably in excess of their birth rate, so that an actual 
 numerical decrease has set in, owing largely to the ravages 
 of consumption and certain other diseases. Nature exacts 
 obedience to her laws — she knows neither pity nor re- 
 venge. 
 
 Professor Wilcox of Cornell University and Professor 
 Smith of Tulane University, and others, have undertaken a 
 more far-reaching investigation into the census figures and 
 the facts of ethnological history, and have deduced there- 
 from the conclusion that "the negroes will continue to be 
 a steadily smaller proportion of our population," and that 
 
 32 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 in the course of time they will die out in America from 
 inherent and natural causes. 
 
 Whether these extreme speculations — for they are 
 speculations — are well founded or not, yet the established 
 facts as to the relative increase of the races have a most 
 important bearing on the solution of our problem. They 
 show that this problem is not near so difficult as it was 
 supposed to be twenty years ago, when false prophets were 
 predicting white submergence. 
 
 And more important still, these facts show that the 
 white people of the South, and especially of the State of 
 Georgia, can now proceed to work out their racial problem 
 on lines of justice to the negro, without imperilling white 
 supremacy. Those fears which once appalled us, we may 
 now dismiss, and let reason resume its sway. 
 
 If future years should develop enough race pride in the 
 negroes to make them concentrate in one locality, they 
 might gain ascendency there and give the world a prac- 
 tical demonstration of their capacity or incapacity as a 
 race-force in civilization. But we see no clear signs of 
 such a movement now, and Georgia, at least, is in no 
 danger of being chosen as the Canaan for that sort of an 
 
 experiment. 
 
 A Working Plan of Justice. 
 
 In seeking a solution of any difficult problem, the first 
 
 33 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 Step should be to eliminate the impossible schemes pro- 
 posed, and then concentrate on some line of operation that 
 is at least possible. We often hear the epigrammatic dic- 
 tum that there are but three possible solutions of our race 
 problem : deportation, assimilation or annihilation. When 
 we bring our sober senses to bear, all three of these so- 
 called possibilities appear to be practical impossibilities. 
 Not one of the three presents a working hypothesis. Phys- 
 ical facts, alone, prevent deportation. Physical facts, 
 stressed by an ineradicable race pride, bar the way against 
 assimilation. Physical facts, backed by our religion, our 
 civilization, our very selves, forbid annihilation. We can 
 not imitate Herod. 
 
 This much seems clear, beyond doubt, that the whites 
 are going to stay in this Southland for all time, and so are 
 the negroes going to stay here in greater or less propor- 
 tions for generations to come. If, then, both races are to 
 remain together, the plainly sensible thing for statesmen of 
 this day to do is to devise the best modus vivcndi, or 
 working plan, by which the greatest good can be accomp- 
 lished for ourselves and our posterity. We of this day are 
 not expected to overload ourselves with the burden of 
 settling all the problems of all future ages. If we take 
 good care of the next few centuries, we may well be con- 
 
 34 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 tent to leave some matters to be attended to by our remote 
 posterity — aided, of course, by Providence. 
 
 Over against that Trinity of impossibilities — deporta- 
 tion, assimilation or annihilation — let us offer the simple 
 plan of justice. 
 
 The first and absolutely essential factor in any working 
 hypothesis at the South, so far as human ken can now 
 foresee, is white suprema'.y — supremacy arising from pres- 
 ent natural superiority, but based always on justice to the 
 negro. 
 
 Those whose stock in trade is "hating the nigger" may 
 easily gain some temporary advantage for themselves in 
 our white primaries, where it requires no courage, either 
 physical or moral, to strike those who have no power to 
 strike back — not even with a paper ballot. But these 
 men will achieve nothing permanent for the good of the 
 State or of the nation by stirring up race passion and 
 prejudice. Injustice and persecution will not solve any of 
 the problems of the ages. God did not so ordain His 
 universe. 
 
 Justly proud of our race, we refuse to amalgamate with 
 the negro. Nevertheless, the negro is a human being, 
 under the Fatherhood of God, and consequently within the 
 Brotherhood of Man — for those two relations are insep- 
 
 35 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 arably joined together. All soul-possessing creatures must 
 be sons of God, and joint heirs of immortahty. 
 
 Moreover, the negro is an American citizen, and is 
 protected as such, by guarantees of the Constitution that 
 are as irrepealable almost as the Bill of Rights itself. Nor, 
 if such a thing a? repealing these guarantees were possible, 
 would it be wise for the South. Suppose we admit the 
 oft re-iterated proposition that no two races so distinct as 
 the Caucasian and the negro can live together on terms of 
 perfect equality ; yet it is equally true that without some 
 access to the ballot, present or prospective, some partici- 
 pation in the government, no inferior race in an elective 
 Republic could long protect itself against reduction to 
 slavery in many of its substantial forms — and God knows 
 the South wants no more of that curse. 
 
 We have long passed the crisis of the disease brought 
 on by the existence of slavery in the blood of the Repub- 
 lic. Let us now build up the body poHtic in health and 
 strength, and guard it against ever again being inoculated 
 with a poison even remotely resembling that deadly virus. 
 Sporadic cases of peonage have already developed in sev- 
 eral States and have been suppressed. Let us provide 
 against every appearance of contagion. 
 
 Race Pride Versus Race Prejudice. 
 
 One of the most serious difficulties about the solution 
 
 36 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 of our problem is to be found in getting the dominant 
 whites of the South to draw a proper discrimination be- 
 tween a laudable pride in our race, and an unworthy preju- 
 dice against the negro race. Prejudice of any sort is 
 hostile to that sound judgment which the Creator gave us 
 for our guide. Race prejudice presents this disturbing 
 element in one of its most unreasoning forms. In violence 
 it ranks next to religious fanaticism. The one is based on 
 a supposed duty to God ; the other on a supposed duty to 
 one's race-blood. The deeper this sense of duty, the more 
 hardened the mind against every appeal to reason. In 
 persecuting the early Christians, Paul thought he was do- 
 ing his duty to God. The men who hanged the witches in 
 New England thought they were doing their duty. 
 
 So, perhaps, may think that ex-preacher, who in our 
 own day has turned playwright, and calling to his aid all 
 the accessories of the stage and all the realisms of the liv- 
 ing drama, seeks to fan into flame the fiercest passions of 
 the whites and blacks. His chief purpose, so far as one 
 can logically deduce it, seems to be to force into immedi- 
 ate conflagration combustible materials, which his heated 
 imagination tells him must burn sometime in the future. 
 Apparently he chafes under the delay of Providence in 
 bringing on the ghastly spectacle, and yearns to witness 
 
 37 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 with his own eyes in the flesh that reign of hell on earth 
 before his own redeemed soul is ushered into the calm, 
 serene and gentle presence of Him whose gospel of love 
 and light he once preached to erring men. 
 
 If the true purpose of this reverend gentleman be to 
 preserve the blood of our race in its purity by creating a 
 sentiment against intermarriage of the whites and blacks, 
 let him confine his play to Chicago and Boston and New 
 York and Philadelphia and other like places, where some 
 few of such marriages are said to occur. As for us in the 
 South, we need no artificial stimulant to arouse our people 
 against that sort of racial intermarriage. Our law forbids 
 it, and that is one law no man or woman ever violates. 
 
 Race Purity. 
 
 In this connection let us of the South realize the hard 
 fact that the greatest obstacle to the preservation of the 
 purity of the blood of our race, about which we hear so 
 much in this day, was removed when slavery was abol- 
 ished. That institution, as indisputable facts too plainly 
 show, wrought much contamination of Caucasian blood. 
 
 In Virginia in 1630 a white man-servant was publicly 
 flogged for consorting with a negro slave, and was re- 
 quired to make public confession of his guilt on the follow- 
 
 38 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 ing Sabbath — but clearly the custom of flogging for that 
 offense must soon have fallen into "innocuous desuetude." 
 
 In calmly considering now the situation that confronted 
 our statesmen of the ante-bellum period, that which most 
 astounds us is their apparent failure to foresee what would 
 have been the inevitable consequence of an indefinite 
 continuance of slavery in its effect on race purity and on 
 relative race numbers. The ratio of increase of the ne- 
 groes was far in excess of the whites. The great laboring 
 middle class, which forms the backbone of every nation's 
 pluck and power, was fast migrating Westward, and the 
 remaining population was rapidly crystalizing into an 
 upper class of white slave holders and a lower class of 
 negro slaves — the latter out-multiplying their masters in 
 numbers. Another one hundred years of slavery would in 
 all probability have doomed the South to absolute negro 
 domination by mere weight of numbers whenever emanci- 
 pation should come — and come it was sure to do at some 
 time in the evolution of the elemental forces that were at 
 work. 
 
 If there be a Providence who watches over the affairs 
 of nations and "slumbers not nor sleeps," we may say in 
 all reverence that he would have made an almost inex- 
 
 39 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 cusable blunder if he had delayed much longer the aboli- 
 tion of slavery. 
 
 Social recognition of the true dignity of labor, which is 
 so necessary to the growth of a vigorous and self-respect- 
 ing middle class, could not be maintained in the presence 
 of slavery where manual toil is so generally regarded as a 
 badge of servitude. 
 
 Negro Race Projected Forward Beyond Natural 
 
 Development. 
 
 When a subject people in the hard school of experi- 
 ence gradually assert themselves and evolve from within 
 the physical, mental and spiritual forces that achieve their 
 freedom, as did the Anglo-Saxons from under the yoke of 
 their Norman conquerors, they come forth by natural 
 growth prepared for the duties and responsibilities of self- 
 government. 
 
 But the negro as a race had undergone no such pro- 
 cess of evolution. His transportation from Africa to 
 America and his transition from slavery to freedom were 
 both the results of external impositions and not of internal 
 development. The power came from without, not from 
 within. He did not win his freedom. It was bestowed 
 upon him. 
 
 Granting that he is only a backward member of the 
 
 40 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE TROBLLM IN IHE SOUTH. 
 
 great human family, which as most evolutionists and 
 Christians beheve, is moving steadily on toward the distant 
 goal of Millennial perfection, yet we cannot fail to see that 
 the negro race was suddenly projected forward into a stage 
 of civilization many generations in advance of its own 
 natural development. 
 
 Is it any wonder, then, that the negro as a race should 
 not be altogether fitted to the laws and customs and politi- 
 cal institutions of those among whom his lot was cast? 
 
 Again, is it any wonder that this advanced civilization 
 should find it necessary at times to apply sterner penalties 
 for the curbing of his savage instincts when he was freed 
 from the accustomed control of his master? 
 
 Unfortunately, soon after emancipation, some of the 
 worst specimens of the blacks began to commit an unpar- 
 donable crime. Instantly the white man placed over the 
 door of his home, whether it were proud mansion or hum- 
 ble cabin, a warning more terrible in its meaning than that 
 which Dante dreamed he saw over the gateway to hell : 
 **Let the brute who enters here leave all hope behind." 
 In the presence of that crime, men do not think, they only 
 feel. 
 
 But how shall we fix bounds for those who rush madly 
 outside the limits of the law? Lynching began with this 
 
 41 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 and similar savage crimes. But, alas, where will they all 
 end? Let us hope that these excesses of both races are 
 merely incidental factors in our problem, and that they will 
 soon diminish and eventually disappear. 
 
 Abhorrent as are the crimes of some degenerate mem- 
 bers of the negro race, we Southern people can never for- 
 get the simple faith and tragic loyalty of those thousands 
 of slaves who guarded and protected the women and chil- 
 dren at home, while the men were at the front fighting to 
 drive back an invading foe whose victory meant freedom 
 to those slaves themselves. 
 
 Negro Military Salute Confederate Monument. 
 Nor is there a total dearth of touching incidents in 
 these latter days. Only about a year or so ago, a negro 
 military company from Savannah came marching in full 
 array up Broadway in Augusta. In front of them, rising 
 toward the sky in beautiful, artistic proportions, stood a 
 marble monument erected by loving women to the dead 
 Confederacy. At its base were statues of Lee and Jackson 
 and Cobb and Walker, and hfted high up above them all 
 on the top of the towering shaft stood the statue of a pri- 
 vate Confederate soldier. No white military company, no 
 camp of maimed Confederate veterans ever pass that 
 monument without giving it the honor of a form.al salute. 
 
 42 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 As the negro military comes nearer, one of two gentle- 
 tlemen standing in the doorway of a building nearby says : 
 "Let us watch now and see if those fellows will salute the 
 Confederate monument." The other gentleman explains 
 that no salute will be given because it will not occur to the 
 commanding officer, but that the omission will not be in- 
 tended as an affront. Scarcely are the words spoken, 
 when the negro captain, in clear, ringing tones that prove 
 the sincerity of his tribute, gives the command to salute, 
 and every black arm instantly obeys that command. 
 There was cheering among the white bystanders. 
 When the great Wade Hampton lay upon his death 
 bed he made this prayer: "God bless all my people — 
 white and black — God bless them all." 
 
 Suffrage Qualifications. 
 While the issue of political control under the fifteenth 
 amendment still confronted the Southern States, Missis- 
 sippi, having the greatest negro majority, led off with her 
 Constitution of 1891 providing an educational qualification 
 for voting. There being more illiterate blacks than illiter- 
 ate whites in Mississippi, the necessary effect of this law 
 was to promote white supremacy. But the law on its face 
 did not discriminate against the negro on account of his 
 race. It covered whites and blacks alike. 
 
 43 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 The Supreme Court of the United States promptly de- 
 cided that this Mississippi law did not violate the Federal 
 Constitution. What the effect of its practical administra- 
 tion has been need not now be discussed. 
 
 Other States followed with similar laws, based prima- 
 rily on educational qualifications, but soon a proviso was 
 evolved to preserve the ballot to illiterate whites. An hon- 
 est administration of a suffrage law based on an educa- 
 tional qualification would necessarily disfranchise a great 
 many whites. Hence a proviso was devised to the effect 
 that the educational qualification should not apply to any 
 person, nor to the descendant of any person, who could 
 have voted at some past date, say, for example, January 
 I, 1867, when negroes as a class were not allowed to vote 
 This proviso was popularly known as the "Grandfather 
 clause, ' because under it, a man otherwise disqualified, 
 might, so to speak, inherit the right of suffrage from his 
 grandfather. 
 
 The manifest purpose of this clause was to nullify the 
 educational requirement of the State law as to the whites, 
 while leaving it in full force as to the negroes, and in this 
 way to get around the 15th amendment of the Federal 
 Constitution, which forbids discrimination on account of 
 race. 
 
 44 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 The Supreme Court of the United States has gone as 
 far as any one could have expected it to go in upholding 
 the reserved rights of the States on the subject of suffra^ 
 But that court has never directly nor indirectly sanctioned 
 the vahdity of any suffrage law containing the Grandfather 
 clause or any other clause based on the same principle. 
 
 Whenever the Supreme Court shall take judicial notice, 
 as it will do, of the historical fact that on the date selected 
 for the Grandfather clause to begin to operate, say January 
 I, 1867, the negroes as a class had no right to vote, or 
 when that undeniable or easily proven fact is made to 
 appear by evidence, this device of the Grandfather clause 
 must fall of its own crookedness. A preference to one 
 race is necessarily the legal equivalent of a discrimination 
 against the other race. 
 
 It will mark a new departure in American constitu- 
 tional law when the right to vote is made inheritable from 
 the non-transmissible attributes of an ancestor instead of 
 being based on the personal attributes of the voter. 
 
 It will mark a still further departure in judicial con- 
 struction when the Supreme Court finds in this new doc- 
 trine a legal justification for sanctioning the race discrim- 
 ination forbidden by the fifteenth amendment. 
 
 The Mississippi law, the only one ever squarely con- 
 
 45 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 sidered and directly construed by the Supreme Court, 170 
 U. S.- 213, does not contain the Grandfather clause. That 
 was a device of later invention. 
 
 The case of Giles v. Harris, 189 U. S. 475, involving 
 the Alabama law, was dismissed in the Supreme Court for 
 want of jurisdiction in the lower court— but Justices 
 Brewer, Brown and Harlan dissented in vigorous terms. 
 
 The latest case, of Jones v. Montague, 194 U. S. 147, 
 involving the Virginia law, was dismissed because the act 
 sought to be enjoined — the issuing of certificates of elec- 
 tion, etc., to members of Congress — had already been 
 done, and the congressmen had taken their seats before 
 the case was reached in the Supreme Court. 
 
 Indeed, it is no secret that those lawyers who under- 
 take to defend these disfranchisement enactments, place 
 their chief reliance in the technical difificulties of getting 
 the merits of the question before the Supreme Court. It 
 goes without saying, however, that lawyers can be found 
 to surmount those technical difificulties, and at the bar of 
 the Supreme Court confront the "Grandfather" clause of 
 the State Constitutions with the "anti-race-discrimination" 
 clause of the Federal Constitution. 
 
 The result scarcely admits of a doubt. 
 
 Disfranchisement Movement in Georgia. 
 
 What, then, shall we, as Georgians and Americans, 
 
 46 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 true to our own great State, and true to the greater nation 
 of which it is a part, say of the movement which is now 
 being so freely discussed, and which has seemingly gained 
 some headway, to so amend our State Constitution as to 
 disfranchise the negroes as a race? 
 
 We have read in the public press repeated statements 
 that prominent leaders are openly announcing their inten- 
 tion to "disfranchise the negro," and promising to "elim- 
 inate him from politics." Not only so, but they further 
 promise to accomplish that end through a so-called educa- 
 tional qualification or understanding clause, and at the 
 same time not to deprive a single white man of his ballot, 
 no matter how illiterate or ignorant he may be. 
 
 I might hesitate here and now, even at the last mo- 
 ment, to proceed further with the discussion of this branch 
 of my subject if the facts as to intentions and methods, as 
 I have just stated them, were at all in dispute. But as I 
 understand it, there is no disposition to deny them — 
 rather, an increasing boldness in asserting them. There- 
 fore we may quite properly, it seems to me, proceed to 
 draw some necessary deductions from those admitted facts 
 as they bear on the law and morals of the situation. 
 
 How, then, are these two purposes, to put out all the 
 negroes and put in all the whites, to be accomplished in 
 
 47 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 the face of the prohibition of the fifteenth amendment? 
 Clearly, it can not be done by open avowal in the body of 
 the law, because in that event, the law would convict itself 
 in any court in the land. How, then, is this avowed pur- 
 pose to be accomplished? Pardon me, my friends, but let 
 us face the truth ; the scheme must be to disfranchise the 
 negro by a fraudulent administration of the law. In no 
 other way is it possible to produce the promised results. 
 Legislative ingenuity must be backed up by administrative 
 fraud — else the avowed purpose cannot be accomplished. 
 
 It must be admitted that the machinery of the pro- 
 posed law could be easily perverted to fraudulent pur- 
 poses. Before a citizen can register to vote, he is to be 
 required to read and explain, or to be able to understand, 
 any paragraph of the State Constitution. Now, we lawyers 
 all know that there are some parts of our Constitution that 
 the Supreme Court judges themselves have never been 
 able fully to explain — even granting that they understand 
 them all. But who are to judge of this explanation or 
 understanding? The registrars, of course. Suppose the 
 most learned explanation could be given, who will vouch 
 that the registrars themselves will understand it, or will 
 accept it as satisfactory? 
 
 Of course, the officers of registration are to be white. 
 
 48 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 An easy paragraph for a white applicant; a difficult para- 
 graph for a negro applicant ; the acceptance of any sort of 
 an explanation from a white applicant; the rejection of 
 any sort of an explanation from a negro applicant — there 
 you have the hidden cards with which the game of cheat is 
 to be played. And it is on this miserable, bare-faced 
 scheme of fraud that our proud and noble people are 
 asked to rest their safety and their civilization. 
 
 How long do the advocates of this method of dis- 
 franchisement think they can expose their purpose to the 
 political eye and keep it concealed from the judicial eye? 
 How long can they proclaim it on the hustings and hush it 
 in the court house? 
 
 Referring to one of these laws, a learned commentator 
 on our Supreme Court decisions has said: "If in the 
 hght of their history and conditions and the avowed pur- 
 pose of the authors of the laws, their objects are clothed in 
 statutes so worded that the real designs are not expressed 
 in terms, the situation would seem to be one to require the 
 court to reason from cause to effect." 
 
 The court, in construing the fourteenth amendment 
 (ii8 U. S. 356) has said: "Though the law itself be fair 
 on its face and impartial in appearance, yet if it be applied 
 and administered by public authority with AN EVIL EYE 
 
 49 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 AND AN UNEQUAL HAND SO as practically to make unjust 
 and unequal discriminations between persons in similar 
 circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal 
 justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution." 
 
 Nor can escape be found in that Hne of decisions by 
 the Supreme Court to the effect that the prohibition of the 
 fifteenth amendment applies to State action and not to acts 
 of private citizens. The registrars who are to enforce this 
 disfranchisement law are officers and agents of the State. 
 The Supreme Court (lOO U. S. 339) have further said: 
 "Whoever by virtue of his public position under a State 
 government, deprives another of life, liberty or property 
 without due process of law, or denies or takes away the 
 equal protection of the law, violates the inhibition of the 
 fourteenth amendment, and as he acts in the name of, and 
 for, the State and is clothed with her power, HIS ACT IS 
 HER ACT." 
 
 This same principle of responsibility will be applied to 
 the registrars under this disfranchisement law. Their acts 
 will be the acts of the State, and will consequently come 
 within the prohibition of the fifteenth amendment, and will 
 also be within the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, where 
 alleged violations of the law will be tried. 
 
 But aside from these legal aspects of the matter, let us 
 
 50 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 ask ourselves if there is not a more serious practical diffi- 
 culty to be overcomCo These registrars, as officers, must 
 take the usual oath to perform their duties impartially 
 under the law. Let us put the plain, blunt question : How 
 many counties in Georgia can be relied on to furnish three 
 citizens for registrars who will agree in advance to violate 
 their solemn oaths? Will not honest men point at them 
 the finger of scorn ? 
 
 The great John C. Calhoun sought to nullify a Federal 
 statute law on the tariff by State action because he be- 
 Heved it to be in violation of the Federal Constitution, 
 which he loved and honored. 
 
 But these latter day nullifiers are seeking to nullify the 
 Federal Constitution by a State law — no, not by a State 
 law itself, but by the fraudulent administration of a State 
 law. No power on earth could have made Mr. Calhoun 
 stoop to such chicanery — he was fashioned in a nobler 
 mould. What a contrast between the great nullifier and 
 these little nullifiers ! 
 
 The abuses to which the broad discretionary powers of 
 the registrars under these disfranchisement laws might be 
 carried in times of fierce partisan politics are absolutely 
 unlimited. We need not flatter ourselves that white men 
 will never be the victims of such abuses. When moral 
 
 51 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 character is once defiled and fraud seeks its own selfish 
 ends, it will not stop at the color line. 
 
 One Danger in Educational Qualification. 
 
 There can be no legal objection, whenever the public 
 necessity requires it, to establishing a reasonable educa- 
 tional qualification for voters, provided that qualification is 
 fairly and honestly applied. But if this educational quaH- 
 fication is to be used as a fraudulent subterfuge to disfran- 
 chise the negro, then there is another very serious conse- 
 quence which will necessarily follow. 
 
 If by appeals to race prejudice and fear these negro 
 disfranchisers establish the educational test in fulfilment of 
 their promise to " eliminate the negro from politics," then 
 of necessity, these same leaders and their followers must 
 recognize that from their point of view it is not the 
 IGNORANT, but the EDUCATED negroes who will be the 
 most dangerous poHtical enemies of the whites. 
 
 The question will at once arise, why should the white 
 people create dangerous political enemies by allowing the 
 negroes to be educated? Why not "eliminate them from 
 politics" by keeping them in ignorance? There is no 
 escape from the logic of this argument if the premise be 
 correct. Thus we would find ourselves committed to the 
 degrading policy of enforcing ignorance on a weaker race, 
 
 52 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 with its attendant results of peonage and semi-slavery, 
 from which all good men would pray for deliverance. 
 Division of School Funds on Race Lines. 
 
 Even now there are signs of a movement in Georgia to 
 give the negro schools only that pittance of money arising 
 from the negro's taxes. A law to that effect has already 
 been declared invalid by the State court in North Carolina 
 (94 N. C. 709) ; also by the State court in Kentucky (83 
 Ky. 49) ; and also by the Federal court in three decisions 
 from Kentucky (16 Fed. R. p. 297; 23 Fed. R. 634, and 
 72 Fed R. 689.) 
 
 In our own State a bill to the same effect was passed 
 in 1888 for a local school system, and Governor John B. 
 Gordon, while Hon. Clifford Anderson was attorney gen- 
 eral, vetoed it on the ground that it was against sound 
 poHcy and a violation of the Constitution of the State and 
 the United States. 
 
 There is nothing in the decision of our State Supreme 
 Court in the Eatonton case (80 Ga. 755) nor in the Rich- 
 mond County High School case (103 Ga. 641) to sustain 
 the proposition that the common school funds of the State, 
 or of any subdivision of the State, can be divided between 
 the races in proportion to the property or taxes of each. 
 On the contrary, in the latter case, our State court said : 
 
 53 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 " So far as the record discloses, both races have the same 
 faciUties of attending them" (the free common schools). 
 And the United States Supreme Court, in reviewing this 
 Georgia case (175 U. S. 528) say it is an admitted prin- 
 ciple of law that the "benefits and burdens of public tax- 
 ation must be shared by citizens without discrimination 
 against any class on account of their race." 
 
 Along this same line spoke Governor Charles J. Jen- 
 kins, known to Georgians as the "Noblest Roman of Them 
 All," when he took the chair as president of the Constitu- 
 tional convention of 1877. He said: 
 
 "I utter no caution against class legislation or discrim- 
 ination against our citizens of African descent. I feel a 
 perfect assurance that there is no member of this body 
 who would propose such action, and if there were, he 
 would soon find himself without a following." 
 
 These are the words of a high-minded statesman — not 
 of a time-serving politician. There are many differences 
 between these two types of public men. One difference is 
 that a pohtician seeks to find out what public opinion is 
 and hastens to follow it, while a statesman seeks to find 
 out what public opinion ought to be and helps to mould it. 
 Our late Chancellor Hill, whose untimely death is so 
 deeply deplored by us all, belonged to that higher class of 
 
 54 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 moulders of public opinion. By example, as well as by 
 precept, he led the way to the nobler ends of life. 
 Should Georgia Follow Other States? 
 
 Surely nothing but the direst necessity of self-preserva- 
 tion could induce any people to resort to suth suffrage 
 expedients as are now being proposed to the people of 
 Georgia. Nothing less than an impending overthrow of 
 white civilization by negro domination could excuse such 
 extreme measures. But if our discussion has shown any- 
 thing, it has shown that Georgia is not now in danger of 
 negro domination. 
 
 One argument that is being pressed upon our people is 
 that Georgia should follow the example of other Southern 
 States that have passed similar disfranchisement laws. But 
 let us ask, why should Georgia follow them? Is there 
 anything in their examples on this subject worthy of our 
 imitation? If their necessities compelled such questionable 
 action, let us sympathize with them in their extremity. 
 But let us not imitate them when no such necessity besets 
 us. Did not Georgia first redeem herself after reconstruc- 
 tion? Has she not kept abreast of her sister States in 
 material, intellectual and moral progress? Is she not still 
 the Empire State of the South? What State can show a 
 a cleaner oflEicial record for thirty years? Rather let 
 
 55 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 Georgia continue to lead in wise and conservative states- 
 manship. On all fundamental questions our white people 
 are sufficiently united in thought and purpose to come 
 together in a solid phalanx if the negroes should ever 
 return to the ballot box in sufficient numbers on one side 
 of an issue to jeopardize the public safety. 
 
 As a legal means of maintaining white supremacy, no 
 plan yet devised approaches in effectiveness our party 
 primary system, in combination with the cumulative poll 
 tax provision of the Constitution. 
 
 Whatever may be the final political status of the negro, 
 we are now undeniably in a transition stage of evolution. 
 It is scarcely conceivable that the conditions created by 
 the disfranchisement laws of some Southern States can be 
 permanent. The battle for supremacy between those laws 
 and the Federal Constitution remains to be fought out. 
 If the Federal Constitution proves victorious, as it is very 
 apt to do, then the entire electoral system of these States 
 may have to be changed. 
 
 ' On the other hand, Georgia, through her superior 
 statesmanship, has put herself in a position of safety, ready 
 to take advantage of whatever hopeful developments the 
 future may unfold. She has violated no Federal law. 
 
 56 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 She has maintained white supremacy with the least possi- 
 ble friction, and can continue to so maintain it. 
 
 Not only is this campaign against the negro unneces- 
 sary and unjust, but it is most inopportune at this juncture. 
 When every County in the State is calling loudly for more 
 labor to serve the household and till the fields and develop 
 our resources, why should we seek to enact more oppres- 
 sive laws against the labor we now have? 
 
 We do not know what shifting phases this vexing race 
 problem may assume, but we may rest in the conviction 
 that its ultimate solution must be reached by proceeding 
 along the lines of honesty and justice. Let us not in 
 cowardice or in want of faith, needlessly sacrifice our 
 higher ideals of private and public life. Race differences 
 may necessitate social distinctions. But race differences 
 can not repeal the moral law. 
 
 The Moral Law — Its Origin and Sanction. 
 
 What is this thing we call the moral law ? Is it a mere 
 weak sentiment, suitable only for children and preachers 
 and Sunday school teachers? Or is it the fiat of Nature 
 and Nature's God, commanding obedience from all men 
 under the sanction of inevitable penalties? We will waive 
 all questions as to weight of authority, and reason out the 
 matter for ourselves. 
 
 57 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTHo 
 
 Whence come our morals or ethical conceptions? 
 Briefly let us summarize : 
 
 First: The theological school rests the foundation of 
 morals on divine commandment or revelation, which quick- 
 ens the conscience. 
 
 God spake through Moses, the Prophets and the Christ. 
 
 Second : The psychological school traces the source 
 of morals to an instinct or sense that is innate in the mind 
 itself — the conscience. 
 
 The philosopher and metaphysician, Immanuel Kant, 
 reasoned back to his celebrated postulate of a ** categorical 
 imperative" caU to duty. 
 
 Third i The utilitarian school evolves morals from 
 human experience, sanctioning as "good" or "right'* that 
 conduct which has proven beneficial, and condemning as 
 "bad" or "wrong" that conduct which has proven injuri- 
 ous, thus Creating and developing the conscience by suc- 
 cessive stages of experimental knowledge. 
 
 Herbert Spencer thus evolved his system of utilitarian 
 ethics till it almost flowered out in the beauty of the 
 "Golden Rule/' 
 
 Professor Huxley, discussing the scientific doctrine of 
 causation, says: "The safety of morality lies in a real 
 and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends 
 
 58 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 social disorganization upon the track of immorality as 
 surely as it sends physical disease after physical tres- 
 passers." 
 
 It is not necessary for us to determine how much of 
 truth there is in each of these schools of thought. Enough 
 for us to know that all three reach substantially the same 
 conclusion as to right rules of conduct for men. By differ- 
 ent routes they arrive at the same goal. In reasoning they 
 are three ; in acting they are one. Here is a subject on 
 which religion and science are in full accord, namely, that 
 the moral law is the wisest rule of human conduct. 
 
 So much for the individual man. 
 
 The Moral Law Applies to States as Well as 
 to Individuals. 
 
 Now, does the same moral law apply to States and 
 Nations as well as to individuals? Or are there two codes 
 oi morality, one for individuals and another for aggrega- 
 tions of individuals? Can we practice fraud as a collective 
 body of citizens and still preserve our personal integrity as 
 individual citizens? 
 
 We might quote Mr. Jefferson as an authority for the 
 doctrine that " moral duties are as obligatory on nations as 
 on individuals." But again let us waive authorit)^ and 
 reason out our own conclusions. We will test the question 
 
 59 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 by the standards of the three schools of thought first 
 named. 
 
 If we assume that the theological school is correct, it is 
 manifest that there can not be a code of public morals 
 different in principle from the code of private morals. 
 God must deal with individuals and nations alike, because 
 the former are the responsible units of the latter. 
 
 If we assume that the psychological school is correct, 
 it is equally manifest that the conscience, being an innate 
 mental quality, cannot reverse its action by changing from 
 private to public capacity, from individual to collective 
 functions. 
 
 If we assume that the utilitarian school is correct, it 
 ought to be equally as clear that the rule of conduct which 
 experience has proven to be beneficial- as between individ- 
 uals, is also beneficial as between States under like con- 
 ditions. 
 
 It is true that aggregations of individuals, by reason of 
 divided responsibility, do not usually act up to the code of 
 morals recognized by single individuals. That historical 
 fact shows the imperfection of our past civiHzation, and 
 calls upon us for better work in the future. No one 
 accepts the condition as permanent or satisfactory. The 
 great task of civilization, the dearest hope of philosophers 
 
 60 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 and noble-minded statesmen, is to constantly improve that 
 condition and bring nations more under the sway of the 
 moral law. Though perfection be unattainable, every step 
 is progress. 
 
 In proportion as international intercourse becomes 
 more free will a code of international ethics, based on a 
 code of personal ethics, be developed, to the immeasurable 
 advantage of all concerned. Such is the doctrine under- 
 lying The Hague tribunal, which has already done so 
 much for the peace of the world. 
 
 One of the noblest tributes ever paid to Gladstone was 
 that he had applied the moral law to British politics. 
 
 It was Aristides, surnamed the Just — a brave soldier, 
 a successful general, a man of sound practical judgment, 
 not a mere dreamer — who, when named by the Athenians 
 to consider a secret plan, suggested by Themistocles, to 
 gain naval supremacy for Athens by burning the ships of 
 her allies, reported against the unscrupulous scheme and 
 said : " What Themistocles proposes might be to your 
 present advantage, but O Athenians, it is not just." 
 
 Speaking of the ideal, universal, moral code, one of 
 the least sentimental of modern scientific writers says : 
 "Although its realization may lie in the unseen future, 
 civilization must hold fast to it, if it would be any more 
 
 6i 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 than a blind natural process ; and it is certainly the noblest 
 function of social science to point out the wearisome way 
 along which mankind, dripping with blood, yet pants for 
 the distant goal." 
 
 Another deep thinker, summing up the facts of history 
 and the reasonings of philosophers, says : " That the 
 moral law is the unchanging law of social progress in 
 human society is the lesson which appears to be written 
 over all things." 
 
 Solution of Race Problem : Give Negro Justice. 
 
 The foundation of the moral law is justice. Let us 
 solve the negro problem by giving the negro justice and 
 applying to him the recognized principles of the moral 
 law. 
 
 This does not require social equality. It does not re- 
 quire that we should surrender into his inexperienced and 
 incompetent hands the reins of political government. But 
 it does require that we recognize his fundamental rights as 
 a man, and that we judge each individual according to his 
 own qualifications, and not according to the lower average 
 characteristics of his race. Political rights can not justly 
 be withheld from those American citizens of an inferior or 
 backward race who raise themselves up to the standard of 
 
 62 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 citizenship which the superior race applies to its own 
 members. 
 
 It is true that the right of suffrage is not one of those 
 inahenable rights of man, like life, liberty and the pursuit 
 of happiness, as enumerated in the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, but the right of exemption from discrimination 
 in the exercise of suffrage on account of race, is one of the 
 guaranteed constitutional rights of all American citizens. 
 
 We of the South are an integral part of this great 
 country. We should stand ready to make every sacrifice 
 demanded by honor and permitted by wisdom to remove 
 the last vestige of an excuse for the perpetuation of that 
 spirit of sectionalism which excludes us from the full par- 
 ticipation in governmental honors to which our brain and 
 character entitles us. 
 
 Let us respect the National laws to the limit of endur- 
 ance, and if that limit should be passed, let us resort to 
 some means of redress more typical of Southern manhood 
 than fraudulent subterfuge. The future material prosper- 
 ity of the South is already assured. Let us resolve that 
 there shall remain ingrained in the moral fibre of our New 
 South the high character of our Old South — which can 
 best be described in the memorable words of Edmund 
 
 63 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 Burke as "that sensibility of principle, that chastity of 
 honor which felt a stain like a wound." 
 
 We cannot afford to sacrifice our ideas of justice, of 
 law and of religion for the purpose of preventing the negro 
 from elevating himself. If we wish to preserve the wide 
 gap between our race and his in the onward progress of 
 civilization, let us do it by lifting ourselves up, not by 
 holding him down. 
 
 If, as some predict, the negro in the distant future must 
 fail and fall by the wayside in the strenuous march of the 
 nations, let him fall by his own inferiority, and not by our 
 tyranny. Give him a fair chance to work out what is in 
 him. 
 
 Carl McKinley, that brilliant and noble-hearted author 
 of "An Appeal to Pharoah," who advocated so earnestly 
 and so eloquently the impracticable policy of deportation, 
 declared himself on this subject as follows: 
 
 "We should have learned by this time moreover, that 
 we cannot treat the negro with injustice, however disguised, 
 without sharing the consequences with him. * * * jt 
 would be a foul wrong to beat him back in his upward 
 struggle, and consign him to a lower plane and establish 
 him on it." 
 
 If the negro as a race is to be disfranchised regardless 
 
 64 
 
 ?» 
 
 10.4 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 of the personal qualifications of meritorious individual 
 members of that race, consider for a moment some of the 
 changes we must make in many of the fundamental doc- 
 trines lying at the base of our government. The revised 
 version of our political Bible would have to read some- 
 thing like this: "No taxation without representation — 
 except as to negroes;" "equal rights to all — except as 
 to negroes;" "all men are created equal — except as 
 to negroes." 
 
 No Recantation of Jefferson's Doctrine. 
 Some modern critics seriously suggest that we should 
 amend that paragraph of the Declaration of Independence 
 which asserts the equal rights of men, so as to adjust it 
 more accurately to historical and scientific facts. But that 
 epoch-making document needs no alteration upon the sub- 
 ject of human rights when interpreted as it was intended 
 to be interpreted by the man who drafted it. Mark you, 
 Mr. Jefferson did not write "x'lll men are born free," as 
 the quotation is sometimes given. That looser language is 
 found in the Constitution of Massachusetts, not in the 
 Declaration of Independence. Such an assertion would 
 have been disproved by the historical fact of slavery then 
 existing. What Mr. Jefferson wrote was : "All men are 
 created equal." That is to say, not equal in exterior cir- 
 
 65 
 
SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 
 
 cumstances, nor in physical or mental attributes, but equal 
 in the sight of God and just human law, in their inalienable 
 rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Amer- 
 icans want no recantation of that declaration. It is the 
 political corollary of the Christian doctrine of the justice 
 and the Fatherhood of God. Let it stand as it was penned 
 by Jefferson, an ennobling, even though unattainable, ideal, 
 demanded by the spiritual nature of man — one of those 
 ideals that have done more to lift up humanity and to 
 build up civilization than all the gold from all the mines of 
 all the world. 
 
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