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185
R92
THE NEGRO
X
AS A
POLITICAL AND SOCIAL
FACTOR.
BY
G.
idar
FRANK G. RUFFIN.
"WE OFTEN SEE THAT HUMILITY NOT ONLY IS OF NO SERVICE, BUT IS AC-
TUALLY HURTFUL, ESPECIALLY WHEN EMPLOYED TOWARDS INSOLENT MEN, WHO
FROM JEALOUSY OR SOME OTHER MOTIVE HAVE CONCEIVED A HATRED AGAINST
YOU."--Machiavelli.
J. W. RANDOLEH & ENGLISH.
PUBLISHERS AND BOOKSELLERS,
RICHMOND, VA.
1888.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE NEGRO.
The Abbé Sieyes said politics was a science he had mastered
But his proficiency consisted mainly in constitutions which he
had written and put away in pigeon-holes for any emergency
hat might arise. The trouble was, however, that, as Carlyle
said, they were constitutions that would not work. He was
just statesman enough to help Napoleon in his revolution of
the 18th, Brumaire; but after that he had no further influence
on affairs-he was like a chip on the rapid current of a river.
His constitutions would not work.
A far greater man, John Locke, had tried to fit the colony
of Carolina with a ready-made constitution, as one fits a man
with a pair of shoes. But here again the constitution would
not work.
Following such brilliant precedents, the philanthropic*
statesmen, who conducted the war against the Confederate
States, in ignorance or disregard of "Heredity and Environ-
ment, the master influences of the organic world, which," as
Drummund says, "have made us what we are," and in con-
tempt of the constitution which they said they had fought to
save, emancipated the negroes, guaranteed their freedom and
*Was this a trick to perpetuate Republican Ascendency in the South?
Or was it philanthropy? In April, 1865, as soon as Appomattox was known
across the water, Mr. Charles Francis Adams, then Minister of the United
States at the Court of St. James, gave to a Virginian-a merchant who was
seeking to forecast the future in order to adjust his business to the probable
status-his opinion, long deliberately formed, that in the border States,
vhere the whites slightly predominated, they would get and maintain the
scendency; but that the states further South would be hopelessly African-
ed. Did not this show that concentration of envy, hatred, malice and all
charitableness for which there are but two (related) names, Misanthropy
1 Diabolism?

6
civil rights by two or three amendments to that broken con
tution, and, investing them with suffrage, said, "Go now, m
and brother, you are a citizen; vote and be free.”
Fools and blind! As if there was a vivida vis, a living force
in citizenship, to make men fit for freedom! As if the varnish
of suffrage could cure inherent defects of the Ethiopian's inner
nature any more than whitewash could change his inherent
skin! As if government was a thing like a clock, with a con-
stitution in place of a pendulum; and all statesmen had to do
was to wind it up by suffrage and sit down complacently and
see it go!
We know sociology better; especially we know the negro
better; and as the result of that knowledge, from the introduc-
tion of abolition petitions by John Quincy Adams in 1833,
through all the agitations of fanaticism, stimulated by section-
al jealousies and greed of plunder and power, we fought, step
by step, the very idea of emancipation. At last the election of
Mr. Lincoln, and the blow struck in the Fort Sumter business
by the nine Governors, assured us that abolition was meant;,
and we took up arms to prevent it; with what result-confirm-
ing our forecast and vindicating our resistance the world,
outside of the South, has not yet found out.
But long before the formation of the abolition party of the
North, we had abolitionists at home; but of quite another sort.
Prominent among them was Mr. Jefferson. As early as 1777
he prepared a scheme of gradual abolition and deportation of
negroes. And in 1782, in his "Notes on Virginia," he indulged
in a strain of invective against slavery hardly surpassed by a
modern abolitionist, concluding with the strong declaration
that the Almighty had no attribute that could take sides with.
us in such a contest. But, notwithstanding his horror of
slavery, he only contemplated emancipation as conditioned on
deportation. Discussing the question in the same work, he
said: "Deep-rooted prejudices entertained by the whites, ten
thousand recollections by the blacks of the injuries they have
sustained, new provocations, the real distinctions which nature
has made, and many other circumstances will divide us int
parties and produce convulsions that will probably never e


7
t in the extinction of one or the other race. To these ob-
ctions, which are political, may be added others, which are
ysical and moral." The first of these, he goes on to say, is
he difference of color, and then their inferiority of intellect.
hough some, he tells us, have been placed in circumstances
o develop it, they have failed to utter a thought above the
level of plain narrative; and none of them have been able to
trace or comprehend the investigation of a proposition of
Euclid. He contrasts their deficiencies in these respects with
the achievements of white slaves among the Romans; who, un-
der far harder and more cruel conditions, produced some of
the rarest authors and artists both under the Republic and the
mpire. Since then a wider observation than was then possi-
le, and a more advanced sociology have thrown much light
on the subject; and deportation, to the idea of which Mr. Jef-
ferson still adhered at the time of his death, in 1826, has been
hown to be impossible by the experience of Liberia. That
he project was favorably viewed at the time appears from the
fact that a man of as strong and practical a mind as John
Taylor, of Caroline, had said, in Arator, in 1818: "If Eng-
land and America would erect and foster a settlement of free
negroes in some fertile part of Africa it would soon subsist by
its own energies. Slavery would be gradually reëxported, and
philanthropy would be gratified by a slow reanimation of the
virtue, religion, and liberty of the negro, instead of being af-
flicted with the effects of her own rash attempts suddenly to
change human nature." It did not seem to occur to him, that
to think that the emancipated negro "would soon subsist by
his own energies" was itself rather a "rash" expectation; as
experience of the then nascent enterprise of Liberia has since.
mply shown.
Two years before, in 1816, that colony had been planned
under all the encouragements philanthropy knew how to offer,
nd under the auspices of such men as Mr. Madison, Mr. Mon-
foe and Mr. Clay; all of them its steady friends until they
*I am reliably informed that not a single patent has ever been issued
rom the Patent Office to a negro. The fact is characteristic; the negro has
mitaţiveness but not originality.

8
died. Planted in 1822, it had in 1882-a period of sixty yea
―reached a population of only about 18,000, including nearl
8,000 Africans recaptured from slave ships. Our slaves di
not seem willing to exchange their wretched state for freedom
The colony was fixed "in a fertile part of Africa," where sugar-
cane, cotton and indigo are said to grow with none or very lit-
tle cultivation, and where rice and coffee and palm oil are pro-
duced without difficulty. It has been peopled from the begin-
ning by the pick of our negro population; who after a mild
acclimation, are reasonably healthy. It has enjoyed with
scarcely an exception the advantages of peace; having had
but one serious conflict, which was in 1821, when with less
than fifty men, the Governor, Mr. Ashmun, a white man, re
pulsed two attacks of the natives, each attacking party con
taining upwards of 800 men. In 1847, it was presented with
a ready-made constitution, modelled after the best in the
United States, prepared for them by philanthropic lawyers.
At the same time its independence was acknowledged, with
substantial evidences of good will, by the nations of Europe,
some of which had sought our colonial destruction. It has
had free trade with all the world. It has received in cash do-
nations nearly three millions of dollars, besides a debt of
$500,000 contracted in 1871, which it has paid not a cent of,
either principal or interest; it has had an abundant supply of
all the appliances of material and religious advancement; it
has been all its life sustained by the unstinting hand of san-
guine philanthropy. It has within its limits a native popula-
tion of upwards of 1,000,000, with whom it might conduct a
profitable trade. Yet its entire domestic exports to the United
States amounted in 1887, sixty-eight years after its settlement,
to $90,485, and its imports to $86,531.
To me this is no startling disclosure. As long ago as Sep-
tember, 1859, my attention was called to an article in De Bow's
Commercial Review for that month, in which the late Edmund
Ruffin showed by the official census report of Liberia (then 24
years old) for 1843, that with a population, including recap-
tured Africans of 2,390, and an ownership of farms aggrega
ting 2,529 acres, of which 940 were cultivated in 115 farms
·
9
that the whole value of the property owned by the colonist
farmers was only $12,775; being a less sum than the net annual
sales at that day from many farms in Virginia, of soil inferior
to Liberia's and working fifty hands.* For the two previous
years the exports had been $123,694, average, $61,847, consist-
ing os camwood, palm oil, ivory and tortoise shell, and the
imports were $157,820, average, $78,910, including coffee, sugar,
corn-meal, lumber and tobacco.
The history of Liberia all the way through is consistent
with the above facts; but of course it cannot be given here.
But the conclusion of the whole matter has been summed up
in a paper which appeared in the Kansas City Times of April
22, 1888, entitled “Life in Liberia." This account is published
by Chas. H. I. Taylor, late Minister to Liberia; to which place
he was appointed by President Cleveland; and from which he
returned in disgust last fall. He is commended as a worthy
and reliable man by the signatures of a very large number of
leading Democrats, with such names as Sam'l J. Randall's
among them. The length of the paper (5 columns of the
Times) prevents my giving anything but a few extracts, which,
however, show the nature of its testimony. And here they
are: "When I left this country for Liberia, in the quality and
rank of United States Minister and Consul General, I flattered
myself that I would find the colored individuals who left here,
and their children working over there earnestly to declare the
fact that the negro is capable of self-government. Here is
what I found: More than every other voter an office-holder
-1,333 out of 2,375-a debt hanging over the country of
nearly $2,000,000, without anything to show for what this debt
was incurred. The President's official family consists of a
Secretary of State, Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of War,
Postmaster-General, Chief Collector of Revenue and Commis-
sioner of Immigration. The building in which the Govern-
ment officers transact their business is all thrown into one, in-
cluding the President's Mansion, and would not be in size as
*Mr. Ruffin assured me that he had sold more than that amount of wheat
and corn alone from his own farm of 720 acres of arable land, in the
county of Hanover, worked in a rotation of fields by twenty-seven hands
without an overseer, and kept in a state of progressive improvement.
10
large as a common police station. They have no money or
currency in circulation of any kind. They have no boats of
any character, not even a canoe; the two gun-boats England
gave them being rotten on the beach. They have no guns or
swords in working condition, nor even a cannon to fire a sa-
lute; though they purchased at one time $47,000 worth of guns
from the United States. The First Regiment is composed of
417 men between the ages of 16 and 50 years, 388 of these men
are military officers and 29 are privates. The Johnson Guards
have 19 men in the Company-17 officers and 2 privates.
There are only four postoffices in the country, one for each
of the four counties. The Government has no harbor, wharf,
or breakwater for steamers to and at.
"The next morning" (after his arrival) "I looked for manu-
factories, mills, shops, artisan establishments of some kind af-
fording employment to the masses-not one of any descrip-
tion could be found. I enquired for the hotel; they told me
there was none. No tailor shop, no blacksmith to make a
nail, no tinner to make a cup, no jeweler to set your watch, no
optician to mend your spectacles, nothing to amuse you, noth-
ing to engage your time, nothing to keep you in earnest. Look
from morn till night you will never see a horse, a mule, a
donkey, or a broken-in oxen (sic). They have them not.
There is not a bugg, a wagon, a cart, a slide, a wheelbarrow,
in the four counties. The natives carry everything on their
heads. The cows give no milk, and are about the size of New-
foundland dogs.
"I saw the leading lawyer of Monrovia, a Mr. Payne, chase
Judge Dennis, Judge of the Probate Court, about half a mile
with a club, for refusing to release a client. One day this same
lawyer, in the court-room, cursed the Judge and officers of the
court for everything mean and low, and closed his tirade by
drawing a revolver and telling his client to go while he would
keep back the crowd and the officers of justice. I was present
at a murder trial in Liberia. A native was charged with hav-
ing killed his wife. The defendant denied having killed her,
but stated that in his opinion she was not dead, but gone away
back into the country to visit her people. The evidence that

11
convicted him was given by a juryman while the jury was
out to find a verdict. The juryman stated that he had heard
the native (who could speak English) tell his wife that if she
was ever untrue he would kill her; and that the native had
found him, the juryman, in a compromising position with the
woman. As she cannot be found, he must have killed her.
This man was executed. A man in Liberia charged with
murder can be cleared for a very few dollars. He can leave
Monrovia, Grand Bassah, Edina or Harper and go ten miles.
and be perfectly safe. The Government will never spend ten
dollars to apprehend an escaped felon. There is no instance
on record where an African native has ever been acquitted of
charges alleged. (There is more prejudice in Liberia against
negroes than there is in America.
“There are one hundred nude* persons to every one wearing
clothes. They have no statute against indecent exposure,
Every great man in Liberia has his harem. Divorces are
easily obtained. Pay the court $10, and he frees you from the
bond of wedlock. On account of licentious and incestuous
practices, you will find on your arrival in Liberia fully 40 per
cent. of the civilized population covered from head to foot
with running sores and ulcers. They refuse to attempt to
heal them, stating that they would die should they do so.
"Every man is a born politician, being governed by the
Liberian adage, 'One negro capable of holding office, all ne-
groes capable of holding office.'
"The government maintains no public schools of any kind.
The missionary schools teach the native children exclusively.
Charitable people in this country and in England have ex-
pended in Liberia for education and improvement near $7,-
000,000. If everything in Liberia was sold except the indi-
viduals, not more than $1,000,000 could be realized. The
Colonization Society claims to have aided 22,000 civilized ne-
* The report of commerce and navigation for 1887 shows an import from
the United States of 80,552 yards of colored cotton cloth, worth $4,857, and
33,335 uncolored, worth $2.055, both averaging about 16c. per yard; wearing
apparel (cotton and woolen) to the value of $762; 1,476 pairs of boots and
shoes, worth $1,720. This is rather a scant supply for 12,000 people. The
report shows an import of writing paper and envelopes, $79; agricultural
implements, $120-aggregating $9,593; and an import of tobacco of $18,662.
12
groes to go to Liberia since the first went there in 1822. To-
day, in the whole of Liberia, in a population, native and civ-
ilized, of fully 1,000,000, only about 12,000 can be said to be
civilized."
I suppose that no colony ever had so many aids and advan-
tages, and that none has proved so complete a failure-as
might have been expected.
The history of the North American colonies furnishes abun-
dant proof of a people of a different race subsisting by their
own energies and under far more unfavorable circumstances.
We can all recall the hardships and hindrances innumerable
suffered by the colony of Virginia, which was settled in 1607.'
"The crosses, trecheries and dissensions" of the first two
years, including the treatment of Smith, who was once con-
demned to be hung; the "starving time" in 1610; the mas-
sacre in 1622, when "one-twelfth of the population was slain;"
the massacre of 1644; incessant Indian hostilities; the sickli-
ness of the new plantations, where "four-fifths of the new set-
tlers died;" the intrusion of "great numbers of felons and
other desperate villains;" constant embarrassments from the
interference of the mother country, which claimed the monop-
oly and regulation of her trade; the divisions consequent on
the civil war in Great Britain; the fluctuation of several hun-
dred per cent. in the value of tobacco, which was their main
currency as well as export; the frauds committed on the
planters by the English merchants, which so impoverished
them that in order to clothe their families they had to raise
flax and wool; the diversion of settlers to the colony of Mary-
land on the north, with which they had serious territorial
conflicts, and of Carolina on the south; the disorders of all
sorts, which sixty-nine years afterwards culminated in Bacon's
rebellion in 1676;-these were obstacles that Liberia never
met. Yet in 1671, or fifty-four years from its first settlement,
the population of Virginia was 40,000, of which 2,000 were
captured African negroes; and in spite of the export duty and
all the other drawbacks on the cultivation of tobacco, their
main staple, there were exported 15,000 hogsheads, each of
350 pounds, weight, and worth, at the price of that year, about
13
1½ cents per pound, $78,750, which in purchasing capacity was
equal to not less than $150,000 of the money of to-day, besides
a considerable trade in several other things, especially staves
and lumber.
Similarly, in 1620, the sect of Puritans formed the colony of
Massachusetts. With an inhospitable climate and a sterile
soil; beset with Indians from the start; in ceaseless conflict
with the home government; menaced at one time by both the
French and the Dutch; disfranchising, in 1631, three-fourths
of her voters because they were not members of her church;
banishing Roger Williams and Lucy Hutchinson and Sir
Harry Vane, and forbidding immigration to other heretics;
hanging Quakers, blasphemers and witches, they yet got
through the critical period of colonial infancy so successfully
that in 1671, according to Bancroft, "villages extended, pros-
perity was universal, begging was unknown, theft was rare."
In 1675-fifty-five years from their first settlement-their pop-
ulation was 29,000 souls; and their growth was not seriously
checked by King Philip's war, which commenced in that year
and ran through the next, and cost $1,000,000.
And so, with more or less of hindrance, eleven other colonies
matured; and all grew up to be the Thirteen Independent
States which united in the confederation of 1778 and won
their sovereignty in the Revolutionary War.
Nor are we without much later examples of the energy of
our white race in reclaiming a country from a hostile and
savage population. Botany Bay, ten thousand miles from the
Mother Country, settled in 1788, as a penal colony, with 850
convicts and 200 guards, had grown up to 1850—the period of
the gold discovery, when of course another factor came into
the calculation-into a population of 50,000, being two and a
half times the growth of Liberia in the same space of time.
And New Zealand, first systematically colonized in 1836, has
fought and wrought its way to greater proportionate wealth
and population than Australia.
Surely these facts demonstrate that the Americo-African
race has not learned from us, its only teachers, how to conduct
a society. It could not have learned; for, as is proved by the
14
above facts, which might be indefinitely multiplied, the negro
is by nature a vine; incapable, therefore, of transmutation into
a tree; a parasite, which must rise by climbing on something
outside of and higher than itself, or-must trail upon the
ground; just as we see it every day and all around us, in one
condition or the other.
What has this race learned in morals? As with us, so with
the negro, the basis of our morals is the Christian religion.
How has that affected him practically? As of the six and a
half millions of negroes in the United States only about 100,000
are within the pale of the Catholic Church, that denomination
is not included in what will be said on this head; though, as
the discipline and methods of that Church are, I think, the
best for the negroes, I cannot but regard it as a misfortune
that it includes so few of them. But I take the testimony of
members of the only two churches in which, as far as I know,
the subject has been candidly and courageously treated.
In the Eighth Congress of the Episcopal Church of the
United States, held in Richmond, in October, 1882, among the
pre-arranged subjects of discussion was "The Relation of the
Church to the Colored Race." Of the papers presented on this
subject, to all of which I listened attentively, as I have since
attentively read the report of them, the most noteworthy were
those of Rev. Henry Dunlop, of Savannah, Ga., and the Rev.
J. L. Tucker, D. D., of Jackson, Miss., both of whom had been
selected and notified beforehand of their appointment to dis-
cuss this topic, and both of whom gave deliberate utterance to
their experience, derived from missionary work among the
"No
negroes, and of the latter of whom Bishop Dudley said,
man in the South has done as much honest work for the negro
as he has." Of course this article can give but brief extracts
of what each of them said, but they shall be fair samples of
the whole.
Mr. Dunlop said: "It has been hoped by many that the li-
centiousness naturally consequent upon the removal of the
restraints that were abolished with slavery would be counter-
acted by the exercise of the right of citizenship, by amenability
to the laws of the State, by the necessity of labor for a support,
15
by public-school education, together with such Christian in-
fluences and means of grace as they were able to sustain,
aided, as they have been, by the missionary enterprises that
all the Christian denominations of the country present. The
facts daily becoming more evident do not sustain this hope."
"In a camp," he continues, "of one hundred and four con-
victs, for whom I held services frequently when they were at
work in the vicinity of my mission, thirty-three were able to
read, and four were and had been preachers. Beyond the city.
imits not more than five per cent. are able to read, and not
'more than two per cent. are preachers. Physically and mor-
ally the whole body of men stood far above the average plan-
tation negro." (Rept., p. 102.) He had said just before, at
page 98: "The colored race are supposed to be christianized,
and it has been stated that in proportion to their number
they present a higher percentage of communicants than the
white population, either North or South.'
""
After Mr. Dunlop came the Rev. Dr. Tucker, whose paper
I could wish accessible to every intelligent man in the United
States. Dissenting from his apparent inference that the en-
slavement of the African intensified certain of his virtues, with
but very little improvement in his character from white asso-
ciation, I present his testimony as the most complete in its
details of any that has been given by a divine of any denomi-
nation, as the following extracts will incline the reader to
believe:
"It is an instinct with them to conceal all that concerns
themselves from the white race. It is a motto I have heard
them use hundreds of times, to stand by their own color.
They will make excuses for each other, deny for each other,
steal for each other, lie for each other, not only in great things
but in all manner of small things, lie gratuitously and uselessly
from the first mere instinctive answer to a question; and
mingled with all this lying and stealing will be all manner of
pious protestations, calls upon God to witness declarations.
that they believe in and love and serve and obey the Lord,
which will always be sincere; and this is the amazing part of
t. It is the sincerity in hypocrisy which misleads so many of
16
those who do not know the race experimentally into supposing
them to be poor and ignorant indeed, but humble-minded,
honest-hearted Christians. In the midst of prayer they will
steal from each other, as I have seen them do myself. On the
way home from prayer-meeting they will rob any hen-roost
that is conveniently in the way; and this (the amazing part
of it) without any sense of sin,* without any perception even
of an incongruity. I have known a negro preacher guilty of
incest, another who was an habitual thief, a third with two
wives (being married to neither), a fourth who was a constant
and most audacious liar, and yet who were earnest and suc-
cessful preachers. I can give names, dates and witnesses for
these or twenty more similar cases, and the Southern men here
can give any required number more. Yet these four men of
whom I speak were not conscious of hypocrisy. Their known
awful lives did not discredit them or their teaching in the sight
of their own race. They did not realize that they were living in
desperate sin against God, while pretending to worship him—
really worshipping him with their lips. All over the South
they are living openly in these and similar sins, and do not
know and cannot be made to perceive that they are sins.
"There was one part of the religion of the whites which the
colored people accepted with avidity, namely, the person and
errand of Jesus Christ. * * They believed in it with all
their hearts and souls, for in it was a divine piety-a divine
promise of succor; but they did not therefore alter their lives.
Their dulled intelligence could grasp the ideas of piety and
hope, but not of the sense of duty.
"With freedom came a vast leap into evil. The constraint
of slavery was withdrawn, and there was nothing to take its
place. Freedom to them meant liberty to carry out to the full
bent their desires and passions. Hundreds and thousands of
marriages were dissolved at once without formality, and new
ones formed, also without formality. There were terrors and
alarms everywhere; live stock disappeared like magic through
* The doctrine of sanctification by faith, or, as they phrase it, "once in
grace always in grace," is a favorite tenet with negroes. Having "got
grace," they maintain that thereafter they cannot commit sin.
PREFACE.
What friends the South has in the "free States," are in the
Democratic party. The Republican party does not love the
South-"shaking hands across the bloody chasm" to the con-
trary notwithstanding. It hates our white people, it despises our
negroes; though it would use both.
After the conquest of the South it was compelled to accord us
certain political rights, because it dared not disregard the form of
government under which it lived. But it attempted to warp their
exercise to its own advantage by legislative arrangements to con-
trol the negro vote. In consequence of this the Federal Govern-
ment is "a political comprehension" (of jarring antagonisms)
"and not a moral Federation." So far, the solidarity of the
South, which the policy of the Republican party created, has
foiled its plans, to the great disgust of the party. To meet this
the more out-spoken of its leaders have undertaken, through cer-
tain periodicals, among other ways, to stimulate their masses at
home and the negroes among us to more strenuous efforts in their
behalf. If this course shall give them supremacy in the Federal
Government, then they expect to set their power, and thence-
forth to rule all sections through the negro vote.
Having observed all this for some time, I lately undertook to
show the people of the North what was the true nature of the
material these agitators were seeking to mould to their ends, in
order that they might infer for themselves how disastrous would
be the consequences of Republicầu success. The most suitable
edium of communication, it appeared to me, would be that
4
which had been employed by our enemies; as in that way the
antidote would follow the bane. So I offered it first to The Forum
and then, to The Century. They both declined it. Convinced by
this, as by prior similar experience, that the men who own the
organs of public opinion at the North, and make their money by
pandering to the popular prejudices of their section and to the
policy of the Republican party, would not allow their people to
learn the truth, and so be persuaded to a course of right and
wisdom, it occurred to me that the only thing left to a man of
my convictions, and holding in his hands such proofs of their cor-
rectness as I held, would be to call public attention to the danger, in
some other, even if more circumscribed, mode of publication, in
order that notice and co-operation might ward it off; so that at
least, my own people might be warned.
Hence the appearance of this pamphlet, which I commend to
the attention and indulgence of the reader.
Richmond, Va., August, 1888.
17
the whole South, killed by the negroes for their sustenance;
and underneath the surface was a vast mass of fresh sin, un-
namable, indescribable. Simultaneously with this vast out-
burst of evil, negro churches sprang up everywhere, built
largely by Northern money, in which there were preaching,
praying, singing, all manner of excitement, hysterics, trances,
but in which there was no religion-at least none of that kind
which has its issue in a holy, humble and obedient walking
before God. They could not understand that religion had
any relation to conduct.
Just after the war, the first work that I began among them,
before I was a clergyman, was to open a school, three nights
in the week and Sunday afternoons, which was attended by
all the people on the place-some fifty or sixty, old and young
—and by numbers from neighboring plantations. They came
to read and to hear the Bible read and explained. With this
school all went well until one Sunday afternoon I read and
explained somewhat carefully the Ten Commandments. This
broke up the school. The negro men were sullen and would
not talk, but the women were outspoken and indignant. "Fo'
de Lord, dat air wer an impersition. Dat mought be white
folks' Bible, but 'twant no hones' Bible. Moses never spoke
no sich trash. 'Twant no sort o' religion for black folks.' For
months afterwards these Ten Commandments were cited as
awful warnings to the colored people to stick to their own
teachers and their own religion, and let the white folks alone.
The seventeen years since then have brought great changes to
the negro race-great improvements in many things; but no
change that I can perceive or hear of in morals. There are
in all the cities and larger towns numbers of families who are
thoroughly respectable in every way—a credit to their race or
any race. I know personally several such families in my own
town. But such exceptional instances there have always been.
Perhaps there are a greater number of such families now than
there were twenty years ago; but I doubt it. On the other
hand, in the country districts, the removal of the restraints of
slavery, such as they were, has resulted in an open abandon-
ment of even the semblance of morality and the loss of almost
18
the idea of marriage. This fact can be abundantly established
either by written testimony or by personal inspection." (Re-
port, pp. 106-7-8.)
So much for Episcopal testimony.*
In the first Baptist Congress, held at Lynchburg, in March,
1883, Prof. John Hart, well known throughout the State as a
Master of Arts of the University, and an acceptable teacher of
some thirty years' experience, in discussing this same subject
spoke with more reserve, indeed, and less detail, but in lan-
guage from which it is fair to assume a general agreement in
the above opinions of Dr. Tucker; not going as far, perhaps,
for a reason which I shall presently state, but concluding to
the same purport. He says: "The day of realized freedom
was with them the day of demand for independent ecclesiasti-
cal organization and action. Many considerations led us at
the time cheerfully to yield to this demand. For twenty years
they have had their own churches; they have their own preach-
ers; they have their own services, and there is grave reason to
fear that they have their own gospel." "And the marked fact.
is the unquestioning confidence that negroes are inclined to
repose in their accepted leaders, and the child-like docility
with which they follow those leaders. This is a good thing
with good leaders, but a ruinous thing with unworthy leaders..
And these leaders seem usually quite aware of their impor-
tance. Hence one does not often meet a more imposing thing
than the well-dressed strut of the average colored preacher.
* * * If it were reasonably certain that these leaders would
be men of fair intelligence, instructed in the facts and doc-
trines and discipline of Christianity, and withal men of pure,
chaste, temperate, and honest lives, who would.be content to
teach religion without politics or sociology, I should have
* Twenty years of the separate life of these churches of the black man
have made plain the inevitable tendency. They have colleges and news-
papers, missionary societies and mammoth meeting houses; they have bap-
tized multitudes. and they maintain an unbroken revival; and yet confess-
edly the end of the commandment, the morality, the godlikeness which all
religion is given to attain, is further away than at the beginning. Their
religion is a superstition, their sacraments are fetiches, their worship is a
wild frenzy, and their morality a shame.—Bishop Dudley in Century Mago,
zine for June, 1885.
19
hopes of their future that I cannot yet entertain. For whence
are such men to come? Not, I fear, from many of the schools
now educating negro preachers. And should such men come,
would they be cordially accepted by the great body of their
own? Some facts make me doubt it. Cases have occurred in
which colored preachers, tolerably educated, apparently intel-
ligent Christians, and men who proposed to conduct their
services and manage church affairs somewhat as do our best
white churches, have been ignominiously driven from their
work because the people preferred to yield themselves to the
guidance of some ranting dreamer of dreams who would pan-
der to their prejudices and participate in or pardon their
grossest sensuality. And other cases have occurred in which
men from whom better things were hoped, rather than lose
place and power, have sunk to the level of those whom it was
their mission to raise.
"I am not sanguine of the industrial, moral, or religious
future of the negro. He has not heretofore and elsewhere
shown any power of independent progress. It is doubtful
whether he has shown it here during these years of freedom.
And if it were plainly evident that he has really improved, it
would still be a question whether that improvement ought
not to be largely ascribed to the species of guardianship under
which he has all the time been. If so, the hope lies not in the
negro himself.
We stand face to face with a tre-
mendous problem. Whether the negro will ever adjust him-
self to the conditions described, as the only conditions that
offer hope for him, is doubtful." (Baptist Congress, pp. 45–6.)
* * *
The Rev. A. Broaddus, D. D., followed in a speech I judge
very imperfectly reported, in which he gave his "deliberate
and fixed opinions" on "the educational feature" of the negro
problem. He said: "Untold treasure and labor have been
thrown away in the vain attempt to give book learning to the
negro. Nothing has been accomplished, and, in the very
nature of the case, nothing can ever be accomplished in this
direction. He ought to be trained for the place in which God
has endowed him. He cannot be a judge, a professor in a col-
lege, a legislator; he can be a laborer, a teamster, a stevedore.
20
And in saying this I neither reproach the negro, nor find fault
God never intended all men to be alike.".
with his Creator.
(Report, p. 47.)
I dismiss these extracts, which might be greatly extended,
by citing one more, from a speech on the religious condition
of the negro, made by their invitation before the South Caro-
lina Baptist State Convention at their session in November,
1882, by the Rev. Dr. Becker, a Northern Baptist Missionary,
President of the Benedict Institute at Columbia. "Since the
war," he said, "they-the negroes-have drawn out from you,
and gone from bad to worse; and to-day their condition, as to
religion, is immeasurably worse than it was in the slavery
times. * * * Instead of 90,000 colored Baptists in South
Carolina, I should say 90,000 Pagan Baptists." The speaker
was endorsed by the editor of the Religious Herald, who re-
ported his remarks for that paper in its issue of 24th Novem-
ber, as also, I find, in the succeeding numbers of the 11th and
14th December.
These strong statements, here at least in Virginia, did not
pass without protest. In the Episcopal Church Congress a
brief counter statement was made by the Rev. Mr. Shackleford,
a young clergyman, who said he had been "for the past year
or more with the negroes in Brunswick county, where there
were 10,000 blacks against five or six thousand whites." He
said that "among his colored communicants, for gratitude, for
the sense of justice, for the appreciation of the matrimonial
relation, for a proper appreciation of the laws of God and man,
according to their opportunities, they stand equal to any white
men in the land. (Episcopal Congress, p. 116.) What he
meant by the convenient saving clause "their opportunities,'
he did not say. But the Brunswick negroes, as good no doubt.
as most others in the State, are not considered exceptionally
good, so far as I know; and I happen to have heard that some
of the lay Episcopalians of that most respectable county have
not quite so high an opinion of their colored brethren as was
held by Mr. Shackelford.
The Rev. W. W. Williams, of Baltimore, opposing to Dr.
Tucker's experience of seventeen years since the war, his ex-
21
perience, when a very young minister, in a large Virginia
slave-holding parish before the war, and admitting that he
found difficulties in the relation, said: "You will never Chris-
tianize the colored people in the South until you have colored
bishops, priests and deacons and everything that constitutes
the organization of a church" (p. 114.) Which simply meant
that unless you "let the blind lead the blind they will both
fall into the ditch."
Much more sweeping was the contradiction of Prof. Hart
and Dr. Broaddus by the Rev. Dr. Hatcher, of Richmond city.
He said: "Ours is indeed a white man's government, not on
account of inferiority or unfitness of the colored man, but be-
cause the white men want the offices for themselves, and hav-
ing more votes than the negroes, voted themselves into them."
"There have doubtless been incompetent and corrupt colored
office-holders just as among white men; but there have been
many who have administered important and responsible offices
with marked ability and usefulness." "As regards the indus-
trial feature of the problem, there was some demoralization of
labor consequent on the violent change in our social and in-
dustrial relations to each. * * * But the truth is there
are some industrious negroes and some very lazy ones, much
the same as among the whites." In the matter of education
he differed with both Dr. Broaddus and Prof. Hart. "There
are good colored schools and good colored teachers in Virginia.
They put in efficient and successful work in those schools-
work that will not suffer by comparison with any schools in
the land. I challenge Prof. Hart to a competitive examina-
tion with the colleagues of Dr. Corey in his school in Rich-
mond." In religion he said: "Whatever affectations or other
bad manners may be absurd in them, they are copied from
the white preachers; and there is no extravagance of bearing.
among them which cannot be paralleled in the original," (pp
47, 8). All which extravagancies I leave to the discerning:
public with this sole remark; they prove rather too much.
In Liberia it has been found that they cannot get along
*A northern teacher of a school in Richmond founded and supported by
The American Baptist Home Missionary Society.
22
without white religious guidance, and if, in its life of sixty-odd
years, it has produced one native minister of repute, I do not
know the fact; no more do I believe it.
The
Taking all of the above testimony together, subjecting it to
the light furnished by each man's experience and observation
during his whole life, derived from daily contact with the
negro, and referring it not merely to the judgment of profess-
ing Christians, but of men of the world who have no bias of
church connection, I submit that they give a true account of
the influence of Christian principles on the negro race.
general statements are of course liable to the qualifications of
widely-differing circumstances, especially of more or less inti-
mate association with the white man; but mutatis mutandis
they are true of the race. If true, then it appears that Chris-
tianity, as exhibited to the negro race by the white, and still
more by the colored minister, is a disadvantage to that race;
that, with exceptions of course, larger or smaller, but still ex-
ceptions, negroes are worse in character after they "profess
conversion" than they were before. It is dreadful to think
that Christianity, which has not only redeemed but civilized
all the nations of the earth that can claim to be civilized in
any high sense, should be an injury to the negro; that that
'Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world”
should be an ignis fatuus to him. But there stands the testi-
mony of Christian men; and all know it to be true. This is
not an occasion for speculation; yet in view of this awful fact,
one cannot help recalling the words of Hugh Millar when,
speaking of races of men "that have lapsed from the original
Caucasian type," he affirms, "They are fallen, degraded, many
of them as races, hopelessly lost. For all experience shows
that when a tribe of men falls beneath a certain level it can-
not come into competition with civilized man pressing out-
wards from his old centres to possess the earth without be-
coming extinct before him. Sunk beneath a certain level,
as in the forests of America, in Van Dieman's land, in New
South Wales, and among the Bushmen of the Cape, the expe-
rience of more than a hundred years demonstrates that its
destiny is extinction, not restoration. Individuals may be re-
24
attracted the attention of Tacitus, whilst yet they were Pagan.
In the fifth century they conquered Britain. Six hundred
years afterwards, Alfred planted civilization among them, and
made the Ten Commandments the law of their land. One hun-
dred years more brought William the Conqueror. But in
thirty years they had regained, in the charter of the first
Henry, an acknowledgement of the liberties his father had
wrested from them. In sixteen years more they had obtained
Magna Charter. In eighteen more Parliament struck its peren-
nial tap root into their soil. Then, after three hundred years of
bloody and doubtful struggle, came the Petition of Right; soon
after the Great Rebellion and the execution of a unsurping
king; then the habeas corpus; then the Bill of Rights, which es-
tablished the sovereignty of the people through Parliament;
then our Virginia Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Inde-
pendence in 1776. This is the political pedigree of the white
men of Virginia; this tells of their race education. To show
how, in those thousand years, they or their ancestors have
struggled through blood and toil, century by century, up to
the elevation they now occupy were superfluous. It will occur
to each reflecting mind how complex a thing must be the civ-
ilization to which we have attained: how it has always de-
pended on heredity and environment, the ceaseless inter-action
of forces, individual and social, from within as well as from
without ourselves; how morals and manners, how institutions,
social, political, religious and educational, must all have com-
bined to make us what we are to-day; how the brain force,
which had been increasing through thirty generations, at last
culminated in Washington and Jefferson and their compeers,
and later, in Lee and Jackson and the soldiers they led in a
hundred battles. So far Virginia has bred true to type.
But we have not yet reached the end, and know not what
the future may have in store for us. For this strange event
has cast a dark shadow on our path and presents a peril that
has not beset any other nation. We have a dual society, both
factors accorded equal political and civil rights. The one factor
is white, the other is black; and the aspiration of the black or
inferior race is social and domestic equality, thinly disguised
23
covered by the efforts of some zealous missionary, but it is the
fate of the race after a few generations, to disappear." What
may be done for such unhappy races by the uncovenanted
mercies of God, it is not for man to say. Nor is such a
gloomy belief any warrant for the cessation of missionary ef-
forts, discouraging as they have been up to this time. Though
it is, perhaps too much to expect that the reverend clergy shall
reform their efforts by the light of the above testimony as
given by themselves. What little they have done so far rather
suggests the case of Don Quixote; who, trying the strength of
his paste-board visor, cut through it with two strokes of his
sword; and not altogether approving of its being broken to
pieces with so much ease, made it over again, fencing it with
small iron bars within, in such a manner that he rested satis-
fied of its strength; and without caring to make a fresh exper-
iment, he approved and looked upon it as a most excellent
helmet.
Be that as it may, there is enough in the condition of the
race here to show that something must be done to save our-
selves from the social and political perils in which we are plac-
ed by our relation to it. Our situation compels us to admit
in argument, and impels us to recognize in practice, as true
what Dean Stanley has told us; that Dr. Livingston, "in one
of his latest utterances, expressed with enthuastic gratitude
his conviction that 'statesmen' are the best of missionaries; there-
-in uttering a truth which all churches and all societies, not
least in our day, may well ponder and plead." And this
truth should have a practical bearing for us, for trruly we
need "statesmen" now, "in our day," not only as domestic
missionaries for the negro, with whom the ordinary clerical
sort has so entirely failed, but also to preserve the liberties of
the white race now threatened by the sudden, unconstitutional
and violent bestowal of citizenship upon our late slaves and
their descendants. Never before has there been such incon-
gruity in the factors of government, nor such a problem for
the solution of statesmen. For we are freeborn, the descen-
dants of that old German stock whose individuality, and re-
publican freedom, and rude virtues, and domestic attachments,
25
for the present under the terms "unification" and "assimilation."
Not descendants of Republican barbarians or pagans, as we are,
but of savages; from the beginning of history a race of slaves
and despots, lechers, polygamists, cannibals, worshippers of
snakes and devils, poisoners, thieves, having no record of one
step of independent progress; with nothing in common with
us but bare humanity, the "one blood" of which all men are
made; with such enlightenment only as they could acquire by
contact with civilization at its lowest point—slavery, and in
that relation, for an average of less than one hundred and
fifty years, this race, rejected by some sociologists from the
catalogue of peoples* has been imposed upon us as fellow-cit-
izens with no preparation in themselves for the duties of such
a position, and none in prospect for their children but the su-
perficial and mechanical training of the common school;†
"The black, white, red and yellow races of mankind are so named from
the colors of their skins, but have each many other peculiarities of form
and feature. The black race may again be divided into the negroes of
Africa and those of Australia, for these are of quite separate types. These
last, the two black races, are the least interesting people to be found over
the face of the globe, for there is nothing to show that from the very ear-
liest ages to which we can re-ascend, they were not living just the same
savage lives they are living now. Therefore, as they seem to have gone
through no changes, and have never, until quite recent days, come into con-
tact with historical people, they do not fall within the limit of our inquiry."
The Dawn of History, edited by C. F. Kaesy, M. A. of the British Museum.
(Compare with the quotation from Hugh Millar.)
In the matter of education the negroes have been treated with
even more liberality by the philanthropists and the States than in the
Liberia business. Not having had opportunity to study the statistics on
the subject, which extend over a period of more than twenty years, I must
content myself with presenting the following statement from the (latest)
Report of the United States Commissioner of Education for the year 1885-
86. It is obvious that in gratuities and in taxation to neither of which
the negroes have contributed anything, the expenditure must amount al-
ready to a good many millions, with prospect of a long continuance.
Schools of Instruction of the Colored Race 1855-86. Conducted by Religious
Denominations and other Bodies:
Number
Pupils.
Normal schools
34
6,207
Institutions for secondary instruction......
46
9,970
Universities and colleges...
20
5,119
Schools of theology
25
1,297
Schools of law.......
918
Schools of medicine, &c.
....
208
Schools for deaf, dumb and blind......
9
130
Total.....
141
23,029
Public schools in the late slave states.
....18,794
1,048,659
1 071,688
26
that the only substitute for the race education which we have
acquired in a long tuitionary experience. If, starting in the
forests of Germany, our race has got to be what it is at the end
of two thousand years, how long will it take the negro, even
with the added advantages of this period, to get from his abys-
mal* starting point to a level with us? If the answer comes,
there is no more a royal road to civilization than to mathe-
matics, then we have the further question: at, then, have
his suddenly acquired high political rights done. r the negro?
Since civilization is the harmonious social expressi of many
combined traits of excellence developed to a hig degree,
"What can high political rights do for a people whose religion,
morality, intelligence and industry move on a far lower level?"
า
Total amount disbursed for the support and aid of schools by Peabody
fund from 1868 to 1886, inclusive, $1,576,649.
The date it will be observed is within two or three years of the discus-
sions in the two Church Congresses, whose facts and conclusions I have
used. And it is apparent that they could not in that period have moved
up from the low level which these discussions proved they then occupied.
It may be remarked, en passant, that the numerous colleges, academies and
tributary schools which Mr. Cable says, (The Negro Question, p. 11) have
been established all over the South by individuals and societies in the
Northern States for "education without hindrance as to race have no ex-
istence. I cannot hear of one such institution. What is said of their reli-
gion is true of their intellectual and industrial condition.
*The reader will, of course, understand that it is impossible to give in
this paper the barest outline of the facts from the history of the West Indies
which corroborate the above. Those who have any curiosity on that head
can have it abundantly gratified in numerous works, especially in the latest
(1884) a book entitled Hayti, or the Black Republic, by SIR SPENCER ST. JOHN,
who represented the Government of Great Britain in Hayti for twelve
years, commencing in January, 1863. Its most revolting but most instruc-
tive chapter, is that on "Vaudoux Worship and Cannibalism," pp. 182-228.
Telling us in that chapter that “ Hayti is of all the Republics of America
the most backward and the most pernicious in every point of view." which
is but a repetition of what he had said in the preface, that "in spite of all
the civilizing elements around them, there is a distinct tendency in the ne-
groes to sink into the state of an African tribe," he concludes it as follows:
"If it be remembered that the republic at Hayti is not a God-forsaken
region in Central Africa, but an island surrounded by civilized communi-
ties; that it possesses a government modelled on that of France, with Pres-
ident, Senate and House of Representatives; with Secretaries of State, pre-
fects, judges and all the paraphernalia of courts justice and of police; with
a press more or less free; and, let me add, an archbishop, bishops and
clergy, nearly all Frenchman-it appears incredible that sorcery, poison-
ings for a fee by recognized poisoners and cannabalism, should continue to
pervade the island. The truth is, that except during one year of Geffrard's
Presidency, no government has ever cared resolutely to grapple with the
evil. If they have not encouraged it they have ignored it, in order not to lose
the favour of the masses.” Then the evil has penetrated and resides in the
masses.
27
Since such an endowment must make its recipient lop-sided
and incapable of equilibrium, how can it aid in establishing
or maintaining equilibrium for the government of which it
is a component part? Does it not rather detract from a stead-
iness otherwise possible? A house founded partly on a rock
and partly on sand must crack, if not fall, upon the settling
of its walls.
((
Given," say
Herbert Spencer,
say Herbert Spencer, "an average defect of na-
ture among the elements of society, and no skillful manipu-
lation of the will prevent that defect from producing|its equiv-
alent of d results," a truth demonstrated by our experi-
ence wi¸ the negroes, whose aspiration—the logical outcome
of their political promotion—to push the pretentions to social
equality derived from sufferage and philanthropy, into the
church, the school, the hotel, the theatre, the lecture-room and
thence into the family, has caused even more disturbance than
their incorporation into politics.
Our experience in this new relation began in 1867, twenty-
one years ago, when, overriding the ante bellum constitutions
and laws of States which the Federal authority yet declared had
never yet been out of the Union, and scorning the decision of
the Supreme Court of the United States, which yet the Federal
authority held settled the law by its decrees and precedents,
Congress decreed that white men should be disfranchised, and
negroes should become citizens with the right to vote. All the
dreary interim is well remembered, from the period when the
Ku-Klux was the best protector of society against the carpet-
bagger and the scalawag and the negro through the time, when,
after a struggle, the effort to enslave the white man to the negro
took definite shape in the Civil-Rights bill of 1875; through
the memorable epoch when Hayes was declared elected in 1877
by the indisputably fraudulent count of the votes of three
Southern States which had been given against him, through
1877, when the Northern idea of reconstruction yielded to the
steady resistance of the South, down to 1883, when some meas-
ure of reason returned to the Supreme Court of the United
Śtates and it drew the fangs from the Civil-Rights bill. (See
U. S. Rep. 109, p. 3.) Then many of our citizens of the South
28
supposed that this was the end. Since then not a few have
graced the triumphal processions of the Federals, as at Get-
tysburg, and others fraternize with them whenever they meet,
hear themselves characterized as rebels without resentment,
and keep their tongues and their tempers when John Brown ist
spoken of as a saint and a martyr. But just in this day of re-
joicing and congratulation at this auspicious termination of
our troubles, the immedicabile vulnus has broken out afresh;
and this proves it:
The Republican politicians of the North and West, like
Senator Ingalls of Kansas, in The Forum for September last,
assure the public that, by "the logic of events and judging
by events, it must be admitted that thus far the experiment of
negro suffrage in the South under the Constitutional amend-
ments has been an absolute and unqualified failure. None of
the anticipations of its promoters have been realized. This
declaration does not imply that the negro is not competent to
vote, nor that he should not vote; but the South, having ob-
tained thirty-eight additional members of the lower House of
Congress and an equal increment in the Electoral College by
the operation of the fourteenth amendment, has practically
nullified the fifteenth amendment, and neither educates the
negro nor permits him to vote. Political power in that part
of the republic is as exclusively in the hands of the whites as
it was in 1860; and the indications are that it will so continue.
for an indefinite period in the future. The national authority
has been exhausted, and nothing remains but the final appeal
to the national conscience."
Later, in the December and February numbers of The Fo-
rum, Mr. Murat Halstead, a prominent political editor, informs
the world that "it is by the nullification of these amendments
[the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth to the Constitution of
the United States] that the Democratic party has come into
possession of the executive department of the general govern-
ment and the House of Representatives," i. e., "by preventing
colored citizens from voting when the expression of their pref-
ences endangered the political supremacy of the Democratic
partisan despotism."
29
In The Forum for July, Senator George F. Edmunds, of
Vermont, touches the same subject, complaining that "it was
and has been the evident and unconcealed design of the Dem-
ocratic party to leave all questions of liberty and equal politi-
cal and civil rights to the States themselves, and in the States
themselves to hold the possession of political power in the
hands of the white race of the Democratic party;" and that
"first by the reign of the Ku-Klux and shot-gun policy, then
by terrorizing the colored voters, and by false counting of
votes and false returns, political power in all its branches has
been secured in the hands of the white aristocracy; so that not
only are great bodies of citizens as really disfranchised as if
they were in prison, but there has been a great augmentation
of the strength of that party in the national House of Repre-
sentatives."
*
*
In another very distempered article in The Forum for July,
Senator W. E. Chandler tells us that "the negroes will never
permanently abandon the ballot, and whenever they reach the
polls they will insist upon their right to vote the Republican
ticket if they wish. *
In addition to this pressure, the
manhood, the dignity, the self-respect and the honor of all cit-
izens of the North require that they should compel our South-
ern masters to desist from their attempt perpetually to rule
through crimes against the black man and against the Consti-
tution, that country which they wickedly but vainly tried to
destroy in order to fasten more firmly the chains of slavery
and to extend its accursed pov er and influence into the terri-
tories of the Union."
Still more suggestive of cc aflict is what Mr. Ingalls calls
"the final appeal to the national conscience." Among the ap-
pellants is The American Missionary Association. This body
"has its missions in the United States, in the South among the
negroes, and among the white people, especially of the moun-
tain regions." * * "Its object is to give true" [that is, Black
Republican] "Christian schools, colleges and churches to these
races at our own doors."
One mode in which they have
undertaken to do this is to circulate (and I presume in large
numbers) a pamphlet of 32 pages, entitled, The Negro Question,
* *
DorM
30
by George W. Cable, a magazine writer of some repute and
ability, born in Louisiana of Northern parents, and led, it
would appear by his pedigree, to adopt Black Republican pref-
erences, tastes and principles. The article first appeared in
that most extreme organ of the Republican party, the New
York Tribune, to whose courtesy the Association expresses itself
"indebted" for "this thoughtful presentation of the negro
question,”—a term of commendation also applied to it by
Hon. W. D. Kelly, of Pennsylvania, in one of his late speeches
in Congress. The whole purpose of that article, as of others
that he has written-I refer more particularly to two in the
Century Magazine, one, "The Freedman's Case in Equity,"
January, 1885, the other, "The Silent South," September, 1885-
-is to force the white people of the South, by appealing to their
conscience and to their fears, to admit the negro to all the
social privileges that he claims to have been conferred by the
spirit if not the letter of the last three constitutional amend-
ments, and that, he says, would have resulted from the Civil-
Rights bill if that had not been "destroyed" by the Supreme
Court of the United States, i. e., the right to mixed churches,
mixed hotels, mixed places of amusements, mixed schools,
and, of course, if they choose, mixed marriages. Assuming to
decide that negroes are citizens by nature, though Indians
and Chinese are not permitted to become such, Mr. Cable
says: “The one thing we cannot afford to tolerate at large is a
class of people less than citizens; every interest in the land
demands that the freedman be free to become, in all things, as
far as his own personal gifts will lift and sustain him, the same
sort of American citizen he would be if, with the same intel-
lectual and moral calibre, he were white." He says of our
system of restricting the negroes' "social rights": "A scheme
so gross, irrational, unjust and inefficient as our present caste
distinctions nothing could make seem small except the fact
that they have already been ground under it for centuries."
He tells us that "the best sentiment in the South-the senti-
ment of her best intelligence--is against" this caste. He says
the whole question grows out of the problem of what is to be
done with the great lower mass of society; that the leading
Mou
31
thought of the North is the elevation of the mass, of the South
its subjugation;" that "these fundamental principles are irre-
concilable; "" that no people that hold either of these ideas as
cardinal in their political creed will ever allow the other to be
forced upon them from without so long as blood and lives will
buy deliverance;" and that "the most conspicuous feature of
one civilization must have become the public school-house,
and of the other the slave-yard;" "that a government founded
on the Northern idea had no power to abide unless it could
put down any internal mutiny against the choice of the ma-
jority, which was, as it were, the nation's first commandment."
"How," he asks, "can the overwhelming millions of the North,
after the frightful costs they spent in the war of '61-'65, tole-
rate this emasculation of the American freedman which that
idea is supposed to have secured to all alike?" "The conces-
sion of the absolute equality of unequal States in the Federal
Union-one of the greatest willing concessions ever made by
stronger political bodies to weaker ones in the history of the
government”—had "counterbalanced the government's foun-
dation principle." And "manifestly this great concession
of equality among the unequal States becomes inordinate,
unjust and dangerous when millions of people in our geogra-
phical section, native to the soil, of native parentage,
are arbitrarily denied that political equality within the States
which obtain elsewhere throughout the Union " * "The
great issue which had jeopardized the Union was not settled."
"Neither the nation's honor nor its safety could allow the res-
toration of revolted States to their autonomy with their popu-
lations divided by lines of status abhorrent to the whole na-
tional structure." "More than twenty years since reconstruc-
tion began and more than ten since its era closed, the South
still proposes to settle upon a sine qua non which, whether ef
fected or not, can but perpetuate a disturbance of inter-State
equality fatal to the nation's peace, and which, if neglected as
a matter of public equity, blossoms into a question of national
interest, and, despised in that guise, presently yields the red
fruits of revolution."
*
*
*
Hear his remedy for this "rank oppression of the freed-
32
man": "There are things that mere time can do, but only
vigorous agitation can be trusted to change the fundamental
convictions on which a people has built society." If these
wrong-doers "become impatient, there is but one thing to do
it is to pour in upon them our reiteration of the truth without
malice and without stint.”
This is as fair a statement as I can make of the purposes of
the Republican party and the philanthropists of the North to-
wards the South. It is simply a purpose, by appealing to the
negro, to “agitate" for what they call a "public equality.” We
know perfectly whither that leads. It is a further purpose to
appeal to "the poor whites of the Southern mountain regions,.
sand-hills and pauper counties" to unite with the negroes in
this agitation; though one cannot see why they should.
I do not propose to argue against that mischief in these
pages to show that it begins with an effacement of State lines:
and a change in our form of government, and ends in hybrid-
ity or "the red fruits of revolution." My task has been to
prove to the people of the South, and to such of the North as
choose to examine the evidence, what sort of man the negro
is, and what sort of man he is not, and never can be; and
therein to warn those Republican politicians and those meddle-
some philanthropists that when they commence a policy which
will inflame the negro to attempt the destruction of our society,
they will be regarded as hostile citizens, and as much worse
than foreign enemies as a civil is worse than a foreign war;
and therein also to demonstrate to the white people of Vir-
ginia the absolute necessity of union at home and the solidar-
ity of the South in order to maintain an ascendancy which is ·
worth more to our civilization than all the party issues in the
world.

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Makers
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