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THE

Race Problem in the South.

♦♦♦♦

AN ADDRESS

Delivered Before the “Unity Club,”

New Bedford, Mass.,

April 27, 1900,

REV. JNO. W. STAGG, D. D.

♦♦♦♦

CHARLOTTE, N. C.
Presbyterian Publishing Company,
1900.

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

https://archive.org/details/raceprobleminsouOOstag

THE

Race Problem in the South.

REV. JNO. W. ST AGO, D. D.

Mr. President , Members of the Unity Club , My Fellow
Countrymen , Ladies and Gentlemen :

It is my purpose to speak dispassionately and for truth
sake only. We have for discussion a question of vast
importance to the nation, the understanding of which is of
great import to a large section of our country, and of even
greater consequence to the negro race. I speak as a friend
of the negro, provided you let friendship mean a willing¬
ness to do for him that which is for his very best interests,
and which would not be good if done for an equal number
of white men living anywhere in this union. The best
friend of the negro is he who recognizes that negroes and
whites are not equal, and it is beyond the power of man to
make them so. The reason is, a negro is a negro and a
white man a white man. This distinction will appear
absurd to you here in New England, while it will be satis¬
factory to any Southern man as intelligent and as kind as
any citizen of your great Commonwealth. The failure to
accept the dictum of your Southern white brethren has led
to, what I consider, the greatest wrong ever perpetrated
upon an inferior race, viz : the extension of the franchise
to those helpless in the grasp of such a power for evil.

I shall undertake to account for the attitude of the public
mind toward slavery that finally gave such a resultant. In
doing so, I shall necessarily refer to that which is already
familiar, but probably has never been considered by you in
relation of cause and effect. Beginning with the Missouri

Compromise in i 82 r, it is interesting to note that every
public question of any proportions was directly aff cted in
all discussion and finally settled in view of the apparently
disassociated problem of American Slavery. From 1821
to 1854 it will be observed by all students of public events
that there was no difference of opinion between the North
and the South. The question then, as it has always been
since, was handled with the view of its effect upon political
parties in determining their success or failure, and never
with a view of what was best for the country, the institu¬
tion of slavery, or the negro race. There was not an
utterance made on this subject nor an opinion held by a
Southern Statesman, that did not find its parallel in a
Northern Statesman.

It is significant that Mr. Emerson remarked about Mr.
Webster, not about a Southern Statesman, “Every drop of
blood in this man’s veins has eyes that look downward.”
However many or few names prior to this time may be
written down at the North as opposed to slavery, as it
existed in America, an equal number can be written down
at the South as opposed to slavery as an institution, with
the difference that the Southern man was more than apt to
be a slave owner, and the Northern man certainly not one.

A brief review may recall the political situation :—From
the adoption of the Missouri Compromise in February, 1821,
until January, 1836, slavery excited no serious discussion in
congress In May, 1833, Andrew Jackson wrote, “The
tariff was only the pretext, and disunion and a Southern
Confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the
negro or slavery question.” The great political parties
ignored the issue, but forces were at work beyond their
control. Lundy and Garrison began the agitation which
led to the formation of anti-slavery societies. In a conven¬
tion held at Baltim >re in 1826, eighty-one such societies
were represented, of which seventy-three were in slave¬
holding communities. In January, 1831, Garrison began
to publish “ 1 he Liberator” in Boston. In November the
New England Anti-Slavery Society was founded. In 1833

the New York Anti-Slavery Society was formed, and a
convention at Philadelphia established the American Anti-
Slavery Society- A single sentence from the declaration
of principles adopted by the American Society summed up
their position :—“We also maintain that there are at the
present time the highest obligations resting upon the
people of the free states to remove slavery by moral and
political action, as prescribed in the Constitution of the
United States/’ I his was a clean cut statement of the
issue, and it disclosed the fact that the public mind was by
no means prepared for its reception, and that men at the
North the equal in every particular to those advocating it,
were bitterly opposed to it. It was the effort of a few
private citizens with little influence and small means, grap¬
pling with a gigantic evil, supported by the political, social,
and business powers of the country. Many Southern men
were opposed to slavery, and acquiesced in a system which
it seemed impossible to change without disaster, political
and business, Edward Everett expressed the sentiments
of many r when he said “The great relation of servitude in
some form or other with greater or less departure from the
theoretic equality of men, is inseparable from our nature;
it is a condition of life as well as any other, to be justified
by morality, religion, and international law,” and that it
was right “to abstain from a discussion which, if not aban¬
doned, there is great reason to fear will prove the rock on
which the Union will split.” Garrison was dragged through
the streets of Boston, Lovejoy was killed in Illinois, and
anti-slavery agitation was met by mob violence in almost
every Northern State. Southern Postmasters took anti¬
slavery publications from the mails. The Postmaster-
General, Amos Kendall, admitted this was illegal, but said
“By no act or direction of mine, official or private, would I
be induced knowingly to aid in giving circulation to papers
of this description, directly or indirectly.” From this
period on, every public question of proportions was affected
by slavery in its settlement. The struggle over the right
of petition was caused by a petition praying Congress for

action against slavery. The twenty-fourth Congress orl
May 26, 1836, ruled that all petitions relating in anyway
to slavery, be laid on the table. Against this rule Mr.
Adams waged unrelenting war, until, in the second session
of the twenty-eighth Congress it was abandoned.

In 1845 the annexation of Texas was before the Congress
of the United States ; it was a critical time and the debates
were long and fierce ; the entire discussion turned on the
question of slavery. The consequences of the admission
of Texas were far-reaching. It divided the Whigs of Mas¬
sachusetts into two parties—sometime^ called the “Con¬
science Whigs” and the “Cotton Whigs.” In 1846, the
contest between Mr. Winthrop and Dr. S G Howe was
due to Winthrop’s vote on the Mexican War bill, which in
turn was determined by his views on slavery. September
29th, 1847, Daniel Webster was a candidate for the next
Presidential nomination. In a speech to the convention,
he took ground against the extension of slavery, but was
averse to affirmative anti-slavery action. His candidacy
was seriously affected by this question, and he failed of
nomination. Early in 1848 the Mexican War was ended by
a treaty which ceded to the United States New Mexico and
Upper California, in return for a payment of fifteen million
dollars.

The question, “should this new area be free or slave
soil,” had been raised early in the war. Th is was the most
important question before the country. Whigs and Demo¬
crats alike recognized that a decided position would alien¬
ate some of their followers. The Democratic Convention
nominated Lewis Cass on a platfoi m which did not deal
with the question, but denied the power of Congress to
interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the
States. The Whig convention was even more diplomatic.
It nominated Gen. Taylor, at once, a successful General
and a Southern slaveholder, and adjourned without adopt¬
ing any platform. This surrender of the Whig party was
the immediate cause of revolt, and the purpose so to do
was announced by Charles Allen and Henry Wilson in

convention itself. On August 9th, at Buffal o. a national
convention nominated Martin Van Buren and Chas. Francis
Adams ; thus a new party, known as the “Free Soil’’ party,
was formed, whose leading principle was opposition to the
extension of slavery, and to its longer continuance wher¬
ever the national government was responsible for it. This
stated the position soon to be taken by the Republican
Party, and it is not necessary to trace the causes further
leading to the ormation of this great political body. We
have now the issue squarely before us.

In 1845, in the autumn after the annexation of Texas, in
many respects the greatest man the country has ever pro¬
duced entered the arena; that man was Charles Sumner.
Mr. Sumner was sine cera , one of whom, it might be said,
behold a public man in whom there is no guile. He was
pure and honest, a scholar and a thinker, a servant of truth
and right, regardless of men and parties, as deadly in his
invective against the North as against the South, whenever
the one or the other struck at the principle of his conten¬
tion. He was childlike but never childish. He often spoke
and wrote in such way as to alienate his warmest friends
and sting to the quick his enemies, and was as surprised as
a child to think that anyone could possibly be offended at
anything he had said, so completely did this truly great
man rise above personalities in his attempt to conserve
right. No nobler man ever lived than Charles Sumner.
Nothing more to be regretted and more unjustifiable has
ever happened to any public man than Mr. Brooks’ coward¬
ly assault upon Mr. Sumner, and the defense of the act by
his own people of South Carolina and other Southern States,
is only to be explained from the heated condition of the
blood, incident to the incisive debate that had so long agi¬
tated the public mind. It is impossible to study this peiiod
of our national history, and be surprised at anything that
happened.

Mr. Sumner defined his position thus: “It cannot be
doubted that the Constitution may be amended so that it
shall cease to render any sanction to slavery. The power

to amend carries with it the previous right to inquire into
and discuss the matter to be amended, and the right ex¬
tends to all parts of the country over which the Constitu¬
tion is spread—the North as well as the South.”

This statement defines the limits in which Mr. Sumner’s
action against slavery was always confined. He is the only
man, so far as I know, who discussed slavery always in the
abstract up to this time, and never in the concrete; who
discussed it independent of all political and business inter¬
ests, who spoke for right and right alone. So powerfully
did the man impress himself upon the country, that a con¬
vention in Kentucky, composed of delegates from twenty-
four counties, pronounced slavery “injurious to the prosper¬
ity of the commonwealth, inconsistent with the fundamental
principles of free government, contrary to the natural rights
of mankind, and adverse to a pure state of morals,” and de¬
clared “that it ought not to be increased, and that it ought
not to be perpetuated in the commonwealth.” A Richmond
newspaper said, “two-thirds of the people of Virginia are
open and undisguised advocates of ridding the State of
slavery.” This latter we take to be untrue, but it at least
shows that Mr. Sumner’s influence was strongly felt.

ATTITUDE OF REPUBLICAN PARTY.

No party ever came to life through such birth-throes as
the Republican party. With the country on the verge of
internecine war and a great voice like Mr. Sumner’s lifted
in behalf of right, regardless of all consequences, it is not
to be wondered that the party in its early life was guilty of
faults for which it has not yet made atonement, and perhaps
never can. When we remember that the party had control
of the ship of state when the country had been engaged
for four years in internecine strife, and that Lee’s surrender
brought to a close the greatest war of the world, we expect
mistakes to be made, and in such disorder and confusion
misunderstanding is certain to be, and injustice is sure to
follow. In such times men do not understand each other
and measures are adopted, with pure motives, that are dis-

astrous in their carrying out. In such times men do not
understand God. It is looked upon as an inscrutable provi¬
dence by the South, as well as the North, that Mr. Lincoln
should have been taken away when he was, and in the
horrible manner of his death I must confess that the
inscrutable providence ol the times to me is, why Mr.
Sumner was permitted so long to direct the party he had
been instrumental in organizing. He was too abstract a
man for confused times and when action was demanded.
Such a man knows no concession, and without concession
wise measures are impossible. During reconstruction times
John Bright was discussing the extension of the franchise
in the British Parliament, and Mr. Sumner’s mind took no
note of the difficulties in the way of applying this principle.
He said, “the work of liberation will not be completed,
until the equal rights of every person once claimed as a
slave, are placed under the safe-guard of irreversible guar¬
anties.” Whatever may be said for or against President
Johnston, to my mind he showed greater insight into the
problem, when on the 29th of May he issued a proclama¬
tion of amnesty, and another providing for reconstruction
in North Carolina, “by a convention to be chosen only by
persons qualified to vote before secession,” thus excluding
all negroes from the electorate. Mr Johnston had split
rails with negroes, and as we say down South, “He sho’did
understand a nigger.” During the period of reconstruction
men were controlled by passion and not directed by reason.
That time to the South was Hell come upon the earth No
people, since the day that man was created upon the earth,
ever endured such outrages and indignities, and had they
not been starved out during four years of lighting, th ey
would have taken up arms after ’65, in an attempt to throw
off the yoke of the conquerer. In illustration of the insan¬
ity of the time, I call attention to the utterance of a man
who was regarded before his death a^ the greatest living
preacher. Phillips Biooks, on the Sunday Mr. Lincoln’s
body lay in state in the city of Phil idelphia, spoke as
follows: “Abraham Lincoln was the type-man of the coun-

try, but not of the whole country. This character which
we have been trying to describe, was the character of an
American under the discipline of freedom There was
another American character which had been developed
under the influence of slavery. There was no one Ameri¬
can character embracing the land, there were two charac¬
ters, with impulses of irrepressible and deadly conflict.
This citizen whom we have been honoring and praising
represented one The whole great scheme with which he
was ultimately brou gilt in conflict, and which has finally
killed him, represented the other. Besides this nature,
true and fresh and new, there was another nature, false and
effete and old. The one nature found itself in a new world,
and set itself to discover the new ways for the new duties
that were given it. The other nature, full of the false pride
of blood, set itself to reproduce in the new world the insti¬
tutions and the spirit of the old, to build anew the structure
of the feudalism which had been corrupt in its own day, and
which had been left far behind by the advancing conscience
and needs of the progressing race.” Only when reason is
dethroned by passion can good men speak words so derog¬
atory to a great section of the country, and which have
been refuted every time the stars and stripes have been
unfurled, and men have been called to their defence. The
tramp of soldiers has been heard from the Rio Grande and
the Gulf, and that tramp will be heard so long as the
Republic stands.

SLAVERY AND ITS EFFECTS ON RIGHTS. THE FRANCHISE

AND ITS EFFECTS ON RIGHTS.

November the 4th, 1845, ,n Boston, Mr. Sumner said :
“The Government and Independence of the United States
are founded on the adamantine truth of Equal Rights
and the Brotherhood of all men, declared on the 4th of
July, 1776, a truth receiving new and constant recognition
in the progress of time, and which is the great lesson from
our country to the world.” We of the South concur in
every word of this attempt to define our position, as a

nation, before the world ; and yet the greater portion of
the meaning in Mr. Sumner’s mind is not in ours, showing
at least, that the question of rights is debatable, and the
meaning of the language of the Constitution is by no means
self evident.

We hold that slavery involves right in the constitutional
sense, and that the franchise does not involve right, but
involves the question of expediency. Up to 1835 in North
Carolina free negroes exercised the right of the franchise.
Gov. Graham was elected, the first time he entered public
life, by one vote, and that vote was cas^ by a free negro.
The agitation of the public mind in 1835 was such that it
was expedient to debar the free Negro from the privilege of
voting, thus early was this the doctrine of sections of the
South.

SLAVERY.

I have no word too strong to express my condemnation
of slavery as an institution Its existence in the South was
due to a sequence in cause over which the country appar¬
ently had no control after once the iniquity of slave trading
had been touched by the nation. You at the North are. if
anything, more to blame for its existence in America than
we at the South. Of this condition of slavery I have no
word of condemnation. It v/as the best form of it that ever
existed since Adam was created. But the defence of
slavery, as an institution, such as was given to it by many
leading statesmen and pulpiteers of the South, may be set
aside as absurd It is useless to deny that slavery was
defended as a divine right. Good men taught it. I was
taught it by a man as pure as ever occupied a chair in an
institution for the education of youth. When I remembered
what the people of the South passed through during the
war and during the period of reconstruction at your hands,

I understood how prejudice and hatred blinded to the truth.
It would have been strange if the teaching had been other¬
wise. Nevertheless slavery in any form, anywhere on the
face of the earth, is damnable. It is a wrong against God
and man. I have never seen an argument in its justifica-

tion that would not at the same time justify those things
that by common consent are damnable. The Rible gives
a history of slavery and polygamy, and the one as well as
the other, can be justified with the arguments usually
advanced for slavery. When the mind and body of a
human being is controlled by a master, the question of
right is involved, and no penalty is too great to pay for
the settlement of where right begins and ends. The civil
war was horrible, it saturated the land with blood, but if it
helped in settling this question it was cheap.

THE GREATEST BLUNDER OF THE NATION.

It could hardly be expected that a political party, in
power at such a time as that immediately preceding and
following the war, should not make blunders ; but to my
mind the most egregious wrong ever perpetrated in the his¬
tory of the Republic, was when the Constitution was so
amended as to give equality of suffrage to the negro with
the white race of this Union. The folly of this part of our
history is being written now. It was a gross wrong to the
white race ; it was a greater wrong to the negro race.

A scrutiny of the condition of affairs will make clear the
wrong to the Southern white. I wish to set this forth by
analogy. I prefer to take my incidents trom the New Tes¬
tament, that f may give to the argument the force of being
Christian. One of the noted men whom the Apostle Paul
persuaded to embrace Christianity, was Philemon. This
man was a slave-holder, and possessed a slave named
Onesimus. Philemon seems to have recognized, even for
slaves, a right of personal freedom in the highest sphere,
and he did not force his slaves to become converts to Chris¬
tianity, but, as was the manner of many slave-holders in
the South, gave his slaves the opportunity of having the
arguments for the new faith presented. Among the hear¬
ers of the great apostle was Onesimus. He heard Paul’s
exhortation, in which he called upon his auditors to stand
fast in that liberty wherewith Christ had made them free.
The theory of Christian liberty was as yet too subtle for

him, but the fact was patent and inspiring. Here was a
religion which asserted in the most unqualified terms the
equality of all men before God ; which declared in the
most uncompromising accents that with him there was no
respect of persons ; which maintained that in his sight all
distinction was abolished between Jew and Gentile, Greek
and barbarian, freeman and ' lave. The two ideas of bond¬
age and freedom took possession of him, heart and brain,
and Philemon became to him as unbearable as if he had
been the object of despotic tyranny. One day Paul was
surprised, near the conclusion of his first Roman period, by
a visit from Onesimus, with the information that he was a
run-a-way slave, and that he had left his master because of
the preaching of the great Apostle. This incident is of
greater significance than many suppose. Paul had now to
give the Christian answer, for the world, to Onesimus, on
slavery, and at the same time give direction to the conduct
of a man who was wronged by an institution without divine
sanction, and un-Christian. Whether Paul understood,
or did not understand, the tremendous issues dependent
upon his answers to Onesimus, the direction he gave the
matter is worthy of all imitation He unhesitatingly
taught Onesimus that slavery was wrong and that his right
was to be free from Philemon, but that there were other
considerations which should determine the exercise of that
right. He taught Onesimus that the new doctrine was not
designed to reduce men to one level, but to establish a new
social grade. He knew well that, if society were made a
plain to-day, it would be studded again with mountains
to-morrow. He knew well that, however equal men might
be in rights, they were, and always would be very une¬
qual in merits.

The condition confronted was this: “Christianity had a
right to proclaim the freedom of man as man. Nothing
was simpler than to make such a proclamation. Paul had
only to connive at the flight of Onesimus and to indorse
the act by his own imprimatur ; it would have been a
signal to the whole slave population of the world that the

watch word of the new religion was emancipation from
servile bonds. What would have been the effect of such a
signal ? Doubtless it would have instantaneously added to
the numerical strength of Christianity ; the kingdom of
heaven would immediately have been taken by violence,
and so would the kingdoms of earth. It is impossible to
conceive a more perfect picture of anarchy than would
have been created bv a sudden and successful insurrection

of the slave population. The numerical proportion of the
bound to the unbound in the Roman Empire is a matter of
dispute ; probably the bond outnumbered the free. Figure
anything approaching to such a proportion, and then to the
quantity add the quality. Consider that the slave popula¬
tion represented at its worst that state which we designate
by the name of Paganism—a name which embraces as its
leading characteristic the predominance of the sensuous
over the spiritual. It was Paganism without its restraints
and without its refinements. What would have been the
effect of the emancipation of these millions—the emanci¬
pation of an un-Christianized, unhumanized horde impelled
by the fanaticism of a new watch-word, accomplished in a
moment of time, and achieved by a stroke of violence ?
Could it have had anv other result than one—the transfer-
mation of order into anarchy, the uprooting of that line of
civilization on which Christianity itself had begun to move ?

I have taken the picture ready made. With slight varia¬
tion it descr bes the condition of the South. What the
Republican party did, the Apostle Paul could conceive of
no condition of servitude as justifying. By one act it lifted
four millions of slaves to equal rights with their white supe¬
riors, and four millions in whom the sensuous predominates
over all other qualities of heart or head. The only safe¬
guard for the Southern white, was the kindness which the
negro had received at his hands during all the history of
Southern slavery ; and if the malicious lie of general
cruelty, on the part of Southern slave-holders, can find
refutation nowhere else, let it find it here. When a great
political party turned loose four million slaves with author-

ity and backed by power, to perform their will, they
had to be led by corrupt white men, and driven by corrupt
politicians to do even as badly as they did. be it said here
that the kindness of the negro race during the war, when
every gun was at the front, and women and children unpro¬
tected on the farm, is without parallel in the history of man.

THE EFFECT ON THE NEGRO RACE.

Nothing ever done by the most malignant enemy of the
negro has been as detrimental as the amendment of the
Constitution, by which the right of a vote was given him.
It was like putting a stick in his hands, and then compel¬
ling him to break his own back with it. The enormous
power of the franchise in the hands of so many newly made
citizens, was at once taken advantage of by unscrupulous
white men, both North and South, and from that day to
this the Negro vote has been a commodity on the political
market, to be bought and sold for every manner and kind
of corruption. For a long while, at least, it destroyed all
hope in the South of accomplishing anything in the way of
good for that section. It is not necessary that I should
undertake to tell the manner of the doing. Thomas Nel¬
son Page, in “Red Rock,” has given the picture of an
intelligent Northern man amid the scenes as they were
enacted, and while the story is fiction, it is fiction founded
on fact, and the conclusion of this intelligent Northern
character as to the wrong of giving the power of suffrage to
the negro race, is more than confirmed, under one of the
modern wonders of the world—the speed of communication
with all parts of the earth—when so many right thinking
and just men, of the north, have seen with their own eyes,
and heard with their own ears, things they once would not
believe on the highest testimony. The period immediately
following the war was fraught with influences that as com¬
pletely changed the negro as if he had been put to school.
The carpet-bag regime was indeed a school of training for
outrage, and the negro succumbed to this influence. From
a long term of servitude he had learned to admire author-

ity, pomp, and wealth. The war destroyed pomp and
wealth. His former master was attired in rags, and his
former mistress had laid aside her diamonds. The Federal
government had destroyed the white man’s authority by
giving equal rights of suffrage to the negro. When he was
told that he was as good as the white man, he could, at
least, see that there was not the difference that once existed.
Under this tutelage he was changed ; his kindness changed
to hate, his respect to contempt, his reverence to insult, his
temperance to intemperance, his self control to rape. In a
word, the Negro was brutalized. The result was that the
whites organized into bands of various characters and
names, and many negroes were killed. The result of this
has been that to the present time the papers of the country
have kept up crimination and recrimination. And I believe
a paper called the Independent , published in New York,
still keeps it up in the ^ame old way, refusing to believe
that things have changed at all.

I wish to show how thoroughly this school of out-laws
trained the negroes. There is in Alabama a negro named
Booker Washington at the head of an industrial school for
the training of negroes. On February the 12th, 1899, he
was invited by the Union League Club of Philadelphia, in
commemoration of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, to deliver
an address, in which he said: “My first acquaintance with
our hero and benefactor is this: night after night, before
the dawn of day, on an old slave plantation in Virginia, I
recall the form of my sainted mother, bending over a batch
of rags that enveloped my body, on a dirt floor, breathing
a fervent prayer to Heaven that “Massa Lincoln might suc¬
ceed ” If this was intended to give a picture of slave life in
Virginia, it is very misleading. But what I apprehend
Booker Washington wished to do was to express the opini¬
on he thought his Northern friends had in their minds, and
that they rather expected he would say something deroga¬
tory of slavery. Booker Washington is a great negro but
not a great man, and he and all other negroes I have seen
show this weakness when circumstances give the opportu-

nitv of currying favor with their friends by obtaining sym¬
pathy through fiction.

The reason why the intelligant people of the North failed
to understand the situation better, was due in no small part
to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” This book has had a sale larger
than all other books, with, perhaps, the two exceptions of
“Pilgrim’s Progress” and the Bible. In view of this, its
great influence is understood. 1 he plot of the book was
conceived at Ripley, Ohio, in the house of a Presbyterian
minister named Rankin. Mr. Rankin’s house occupied the
summit of the highest hill in that section on the banks of
the Ohio River. It was the point known as the “Under¬
ground Railroad,” where runaway slaves crossed on their
way North and to Canada. Whatever cruelty attached to
the slave system, she saw in its most exaggerated form.

Slave-dealers and those hunting slaves for the reward of
their return were here. I suspect they were horribly treated.
Mr. Rankin was recognized as an apostle to freedom, and
I believe has erected to him in the little cemetery at Rip¬
ley, a monument with an inscription that states as much.
Under these conditions, and a fertile imagination fired by
prejudice, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was a natural product;
but when sent to the world as a correct exposition of the
condition of slaveiy as it existed in the South, it was an
enormous misrepresentation.

THE AMENDMENT.

After the endurance of outrage and insolence, from the
negro race, for thirty-five years, the white people of the
South have undertaken to deal with the question. Many
people living at remote distances from the South are anxious
to understand what is proposed, under the amendments to
the State Constitutions; such, for instance, as is proposed to
\ be voted on, in August next, in the State of North Carolina.

I will say that the wise men in the South will have the
negro’s good at heart, as well as their own, in whatever
measure may be finally decided upon. I am convinced that
some action must be speedily taken—for the good of the

negro race. The best action would be tor the nation to
take from the Constitution of the United States the 15th
15th amendment, stating it was put there in time of
passion and under the pressure of misguided enthusiasm.
By this one act all friction between the white and negro
races would in time be removed. It would convince the
negro that his outrages would not be tolerated by the gov¬
ernment, and restore somewhat of the feeling of the
ante-bellum negro who knew there was no escape from his
wrong doing. This race cannot be controlled anywhere on
the earth without some such fear of the consequences of its
acts. If this cannot be accomplished, then the States must
do the best they can.

THE REMEDY PROPOSED.

Before another generation of negroes is allowed to arise,
worse, as we must see than the present, the people of the
South must act. First they must remove the negro from
politics—not, perhaps, forever—but certainly until the
proper time. When such distant and alien advisers as the
Philadelphia Inquirer can see what the following statement
indicates, it is blindness that prevents the man on ihe
ground from seeing. That journal, in a recent editorial
(February 6th, 1900), says: “We have made many mistakes
during the course of the century in the United States.
What is called the ‘Southern question’ revolves almost ex¬
clusively around the ballot box. The freedom of the ballot
box is altogether too free.” To deprive the ignorant negro
of the political liberty, which he now uses for license, will,
by the immediate change it will bring in his relation to the
white man, soon indemnify him for the seeming loss. It
will, let us hope, soon bring again the old relations in feel¬
ing that existed between the races at the close of the war.
It the change is long delayed, however, it will come too
late; the young whites of the South, more familiar with the
“new issue” than the old, have as we have seen but little
of that sympathetic feeling for the race that their fathers
had. The negro is to them a political menace only; they

have no cause to love him and in spite of their traditions
they are beginning- to hate him. It were better for botli
races that this should be changed, at the first possible
moment.

Some one will say, “what about the negro’s right to
vote.” The answer is that the question of right is not in¬
volved. It isn’t anybody’s right to vote. I accept Herbert
Spencer’s doctrine ol rights. Voting, in this country, is a
question of expedie icy for whites as well as blacks. It
may not be expedient for you here in Massachusetts to
vote; then you should not vote. Once upon a time you
thought it was not expedient for a large number of the best
citizens of this country not to vote, and you said so, and
they did not vote. These were also South of the Mason’s
and Dixon’s line. We say, on the ground of expediency,
that the negro, in North Carolina, ought not to vote.

My fellow men, here in cold New England, it is expedi¬
ent that he should not. It will be the beginning of great
things for the negro, and without which redemption to
good citizenship is impossible. Whatever else the Spanish-
American war failed to accomplish, it did accomplish this:
it destroyed all misgiving in our own minds, and convinced
the world that this country is one We are a union, and
whenever we are attacked, whether here on this New Eng¬
land coast, or the Mexican border, we are a union against
the world. Abraham Lincoln is reported to have intimated
to the South, “Write the word Union, and you may ask for
what you will, and it shall be granted.” We write the word
“Union,” as we have written it in blood, and our request is
that you let us deal with the race problem in the South.
We oi the South understand the negro. We love him. He
is the best friend on earth when uncorrupted. By this
amendment we are only r trying to do what the wisest and
best men in the South besought you to do in 1861 The
Virginia Secession Convention of that y r ear, in Section 7, of
Article XIII, of its proceedings prayed, “The elective
franchise and the right to hold office, whether Federal or
Territorial, shall not be exercised by persons who are of

the African race.” The condition of affairs in Wilmington,
N. C , last year, was due to a failure in apprehending this
restriction proposed to be put upon the negro race, and it
may serve as illustration of the cause of riots elsewhere,
and be prophetic of worse things in store for the negro,
unless measures are adopted to hedge him about and pro¬
tect him. This Anglo-Saxon race is long suffering, but it
is the fiercest race on earth, and when the day of retribu¬
tion comes, harrowing tales will be told. Disfranchisement
is the remedy, for things will not continue always as they
now are. I take this occasion to state that I have little
patience with the harangues of politicians recently made in
North Carolina and elsewhere in the South. They are un¬
just to the negro, and are not in accord with the thought
of the best and wisest white men of that section. The
question has merits, which, when presented in a dispassion¬
ate and dignified manner, will command a hearing, even
from the negroes themselves, many of whom have said,
“The measure is just; we do not need the franchise; we
need that help that will fit us for its exercise.” I have no
sympathy for the man who needlessly abuses the negro.
Every wrong the negro has perpetrated in the South is due
to the short-sightedness of his supposed white friend. His
record during slavery proves this. A correctly taught
negro will take charge of the virtue and the wealth of your
family, and neither will be molested. Ten thousand South¬
ern white men will testify to the truth of this statement.
The Spanish-American war incidentally emphasizes the
wisdom of the Virginia resolution in 1861 in petitioning that
no member of the African race be allowed to hold office.
The incident of a negro officer in the volunteer army of the
late war, reminding a private white soldier of “the duty of
inferiors to salute their superiors,” to which the white soldier
replied, “All coons look alike to me,” while humorous, is
significant. 1 he significance is deepened when we remem¬
ber that the reply was not made by a Southern man. It
means that a negro cannot be put in authority over a white
man anywhere in these United States, and the negro’s life

be safe. In the regular army, whatever good word may be
said for the negro is due to the fact that in the regular
array the negro is practically in slavery, and when managed
properly, his equal for service is not easily found. But in
the volunteer army, the Northern white volunteer saw the
negro in all his insolence, and the most insolent being on
earth is a negro in the paraphernalia of office, without the
instincts of a gentleman or the qualifications of an officer.
These Northern white volunteers have done more than all
the newspapers published since the war in giving a correct
estimate of the negro as a race, and they have taken this
information to every State of the Union. The horrible
crimes committed in the South in the way of killing innocent
government officers, is due to feeling kindled by negro in¬
solence at first, and has been fed until the drapery of office
will render obnoxious the best negro in the land to many
of the lower class of whites. I frankly admit that this is
unjust; at the same time, I wish to declare that this condi¬
tion is due to lack of judgment on the part of the govern¬
ment, in trying to force an inferior race to the place of rule
over a superior race, when it is unfitted by inheritance and
training, and lacking in merit for such position When we
remember the tremendous effort to arouse this country
against slavery, and recollect that slavery went down in
one of the bloodiest wars of the world, it is not strange that
the North should have erroneous views of the negro race,
and exaggerated ideas of his sufferings and wrongs, nor is
it even surprising that the North glorified and deified the
negro: but the time for visions is past, and the time of
soberness is at hand. With purity of heart, sincerity of pur¬
pose, and soundness of mind, the South says the wrong to
the white and the wrong to the negro will never be righted
until the negro is relieved of the burden of responsibilities
for which, as a race, he is unqualified. I could name sever¬
al hundred negroes, in every way as well qualified for office
and citizenship as the late Fred. Douglas, who, if they should
ask my opinion of the attitude they should assume in this hour
of the negro race’s life, I should unhesitatingly say, “Re-

nounce your own right of emancipation for the sake of your
race, which is unripe for emancipation.”

THE CONDITION NOW.

Under present conditions 1 wish to discuss, first, lynch¬
ing. I ask you to consider carefully these words from Hon.
L. E Bleckley, Chief Justice of Georgia: “A fundamental
truth which certainly exists, and which ought to be recog¬
nized by all men everywhere, is that, according to right
reason and just views of civilization, government and morals,
provocation has nothing whatever to do with the right or
wrong of lynching negroes. No kind or degree of provo¬
cation will justify or even mitigate it. Lynching is barbar
ic, anarchic and wrong per se.”

I ask you to consider the following from the late Bishop
Atticus G Havgood, of the Southern Methodist Church:

“In a country unorganized and without government, in¬
dividuals must punish violations of natural law; theirs is no

other recourse. But this is not civilization; it is at best

barbarism. In organized society, lynching is a crime
against society. It is not a question of what the victim de¬
serves; it is a question as to what society can afford. In
organized society there is no higher civil or social duty
than obedience to law; the lyncher is, of all men, the vio-
later of law. Lynching is a crime against God and man.
Lynchi ng breaks the law, defies it, despises it. puts it to
open shame. Punishment by government, according to
law, represents the judgment )f God; punishment by lynch¬
ing is vengeance. Legal punishment educates men into
respect for law; lynching educates them into contempt for
law. Lynching does more to put down law than any crim¬
inal it takes in hand; lynching kills a man; the lyncher kills
the law that protects life; lynching is anarchy.”

There is no mistaking the meaning of these words, they
describe the thought of all good men in the South, in regard
to lynching. But we are trying to ar rive at a conclusion
by the way of lacts. What are the facts? Legal punish¬
ment has been tried, yet the crime of rape increased. Shoot-

ing and hanging, without law, has been tried, yet the crime
in creased. Finally, mutilation and fire have been tried,
and still the crime increases. Dr. E. E. Boss, editor of the
Christian Advocate published at Nashville, Tenn , in 1S93,
in an editorial article said, “ I hi ee hundred white women
have been raped by negroes within the preceding three
months.”

Bishop Haygood further said, “I have been asked to ex¬
plain the burning of negroes, not the killing of them I
give frankly my opinion; the people who burned them were
for the time insane.” Mr. Walter Page pooh-poohs this
idea, and undertakes to account for it by the “Southern
Bully.” I concur in Bishop Haygood’s opinion, and l wish
to describe three cases of lynching of which I was eye¬
witness.

I happened to be traveling in Texas the year the negro
was burned of whom Bishop Haygood was asked to give his
opinion on the manner of his death. It was in Paris, Texas.
The mob assembled after the manner of all mobs; it looked
like a crowd of curiosity seekers, while it was being ascer¬
tained it the right man had been apprehended. When this
had been settled, resolution and determination took posses¬
sion of the last man of them; the pile was prepared and the
negro laid thereon; nothing but death could have stopped
them; they were insane. The crime was this:

A big, burly negro had taken an innocent child, of a few
years of age, and after trying to accomplish his purpose,
had literally torn her limbs apart. In arguing the cause as
insanity, Bishop Haygood says, “Had the dismembered
form of his victim been the dishonored body of my baby, I
might have gone into an insanity that might have ended
never.”

The next case was at Nashville, Tenn. Two young ladies
living with a widowed mother, in a small hamlet not far
from Nashville, had been outraged and gagged by a negro
brute, afflicted at the time with a nameless disease. He
was apprehended and lodged in jail in the city of Nashville.
Farmers mounted on every kind and description of animals,

came into the city in great numbers, broke into the jail in
broad daylight, took the negro to the foot-bridge spanning
the Cumberland River, and hanged him thereon; then
stood for half an hour and riddled his body with bullets. I
was crossing the riv r in a canoe at the time, and my atten¬
tion was attracted by the shooting; from where I was, so
much lead being wasted on a man already dead, looked very
insane.

In Bowling Green, Ky., some time between ’94 and ’96, a
beautiful young lady of that section had been outraged by
a negro. He was caught. The people controlled them¬
selves long enough for a trial by law to begin, when, to
my utter amazement, two hundred and fifty men, with Win¬
chester rifles, marched to the courthouse at high noon, and
took the prisoner from before the face of the Judge and
hanged him by the neck until he was dead. If you can
give any explanation for such conduct, other than insanity,
I submit the case.

My fellow-citizens, the exasperations have been cumula¬
tive, as in continued doses of digitalis, and the effect has
been insanity. As much as I condemn lynching—and I
say it is the most damnable practice any civilized man can
join in—and realizing as I do the awful consequences of
not speaking soberly, in the fear of God and man, on this
fearful subject, yet I must say it, and I say it deliberately—
the cure for lynching is the stopping of rape. Unless
assaults by negroes on white women and little girls come
to an end, there will most probably be still further displays
of vengeance that will shock the world. The law should
take its course. Provocation cannot set aside law with
impunity, but the difficulty contended with is the determi¬
nation of the Southern white man that women shall not be
dragged into court to testify in such cases.

REMEDY.

W hen this government decides to stop trading in negro
votes and takes from him the right of suffrage, on the
ground that a citizen that curses his race with such crimes

as his, is unworthy of its exercise, a step will be taken
towards putting an end to rape, and the elevation of the
negro, more advanced and promising than all the essays and
papers and speeches ever delivered on the social and polit¬
ical status of the negro race since rape began I say it,
here and now, the negro must be controlled, for his own
good, as well as for the safety of society. Bishop Hay-
good said he remembered to have heard of only one case of
rape in all his life, while the negro was a slave, and he was
burned. His disfranchisement by the Southern States will
not affect his interests, social, business, moral, religious, or
educational.

SOCIAL.

Sociology may one day be worthy of the dignified name
of Science, and may be able to point out the way, by which,
the clash between the classes can be avoided, but it will
never devise a way of fulfilling the ideas of many intelli¬
gent Northern whites regarding the social position of the
negro. There is a barrier, in the race itself, that prevents
anything like an approach to social equality in the South.
Not riding in the same railroad coach, stopping at the same
hotel, going to the same school, worshipping in the same
church, sociology may point out, but will never be able to
remedy. When these things are so, why dream of a social
position for the negro that would indicate the high plane of
companionship ? The mere fact that a Northern man will
ask the question, “Why ?” makes a Southern man despair
of undertaking to tell him. To a Southerner it is like an
intuitive truth, to be accepted through its own power of
assertion ; to a Northerner it is like 1 he Gospel, to the Jew
a stumbling block and to the Greek foolishness, and like¬
wise, not unlike the Gospel, when once accepted ; bv living
among the negro race, it creates such a zeal that the
Southern friend has to keep the Northern friend from kill¬
ing his once idolized pet. When a man like Joseph Cook,
can even hint at amalgamation one is tempted to give up
the task of presenting the social side of life as it must be
observed by the negroes of the South,

I wish to produce the impression that the suggestion has
never yet been made, nor the plan devised, by which whites
and negroes can live together in the same section of the
South, save as negroes and whites, in the sense that the
Southern white man understands these distinctions ; which
is identically that of oil and water, and as there is no law
of chemistry that can force these fluids to be one, so there
is no law o f God or man that can force the white man of the
South to sit down at the same table with the negro and say
we are one. What God has joined together let not man
put asunder ; the converse of this likewise must be obeyed.
What God has put asunder let no man or government join
together, for in the union is the death of the inferior.

If 1 have made myself clear, I wish now to state what
will appear strange to any one unfamiliar with Southern
life. While a Southern man will not associate with as an
equal, nor permit his family to admit to his home as a
guest, the most refined, best educated, wealthiest, most
honored negro on earth, he will advise with, give all the
privacy of his home life to, sit down by the side of in a
railroad coach, let his children sleep in the same room with
and let his wife take with her into the finest parlor car, or
into the best hotel, any decent negro woman, provided she
is, in every case, considered simply as a negress in the
employ of her superior; or to change the picture, he will
trade with, sell to, buy from, employ for work, or work for,
any decent negro man, provided it is understood that he
is a negro with no claims of equality with his white superior.

Not long since a negro, here in the North, wrote for one
of the magazines an article, in which he created a condi¬
tion of affairs which he said, by inference, existed in the
South, and located the scene at Fayetteville, North Caro¬
lina. lie undertook to show that prejudice was so great
against the negro, that a young negro girl who loved her
foimet mistress, was denied the privilege of looking upon
her dead face, was kept from the church at the time of her
funeral, and prohibited from entering the cemetery at the
time of her burial, and so gave a bunch of flowers to a little

dog who placed them on the newly-made mound. Doubt¬
less some tender-hearted Northern white has wept over
this story, not stopping to think how such a cruel race
could ever have so won the affection of this negress. The
editor of the Presbyterian Standard, published at Charlotte,
N. C., replied to this piece of idiocy, by saying: “The first
funeral preached on my assuming a pastorate at Fayette¬
ville, was that of an honored negro woman, and it was
preached in the church of the white people; the main body
of the church was reserved for the negroes, while the
whites occupied the sides and galleries. The undertaker of
the town was a respected negro and officiated at the funeral
of every white citizen, and entered the cemetery on all
funeral occasions. This negro was respected as- much as
any white man living in the town.”

I have given this incident to illustrate my meaning. If
this negro undertaker had assumed the air of an equal, or,
in any way, showed that he regarded his office as breaking
down the social barriers, the people of Fayetteville would
have let the bodies of their loved ones rot in the sun and
have left their bleached bones as a testimony to the impos¬
sibility af any such thing as social equality between the
white and negro races.

To make the paradox more apparent, the negro may be
placed in the finest drug store in the South, with every
assistant a negro, and provided they are competent, the
finest families will have prescriptions filled by them, and
the most refined and elegantly dressed ladies will be served
by them at soda founts, and ice cream tables, provided
they conduct the business as negroes, but if the store is to
be run on the ground of equality of race, if plague was rag¬
ing and drugs could be procured nowhere else, the white
people of the South would die, rather than receive at a
negro’s hand the remedy for death, if social equality was
thereby to be conceded. You say that is fool-hearted; be
it so, it is nevertheless true. There is no enterprise or busi¬
ness in the South, for which a negro is competent, that is
not open to him, as a negro. There is nothing in the South

for the negro but death, if he demands it, or his Northern
white friends demand it for him, otherwise than as the
Southern white man understands “as a negro” to mean.

To put the case plainer still—a leading Southern preach¬
er told me he was put to utter confusion, when a boy, while
on a visit to relatives in New Jersey. He was Southern
born. A negro, whom he called Tom, was servant to the
family he was visiting. Proposing to go fishing one day,
Tom, negro like, offered to dig the bait and row the boat
for the privilege of accompanying his white companion.
Nothing suited a Southern white boy better than this, and
an agreement was quickly reached. When they returned
from fishing, where they had both sat on the same log, ate
out of the same lunch basket, smoked the same pipe, to his
utter amazement his relatives upbraided him for going fish¬
ing with a servant. When the boy recalled, that against
his training and will, he had been compelled to attend
church and sit together in the same Sunday-school class
with tliis negro, the censure for going fishing with him pro¬
duced such a mental impression that to this day, though
advancing in life, he has never recovered from it. The fact
is, the conditions were so completely reversed that his boy¬
ish mind could not take it in. We in the South will do
anything to help negroes as negroes, but if they arrogate
to themselves equality of race, that moment life is jeopar¬
dized. Th ere is a boundary beyond which he cannot pass.

EDUCATION.

I have often been asked by intelligent Northern white
men : “Does education benefit the negro.” To which I
give two answers. 7 'he first is alter the manner of reply
made by preachers, when asked if education helps a bad
man ; to which they reply, especially if they happen to be
arguing for a church school, that without religion it ena¬
bles him to be a more effective bad man. Education
undoubtedly strengthens the mental faculties of negroes as
well as of whites. But you will observe that the question
is one of benefit; in its answer we must be^ guided by his

circumstances. The only thing gotten from the present
system of negro schools, that sticks to the pupil through¬
out life, is an intense hatred for the white race, and false
ideals of life. This is due to having negro teachers. Con¬
sidering that the present generation of younger whites
have little of that love and affection for the negro which
marked the older generations, education is not beneficial,
under these conditions, if both races are to dwell together.

The other answer is : If the younger negroes will take
their places in a school distinctively for negroes, save only
that they shall be directed by white talent, and the negro
will lay aside all ideas of education being able to pull down
the barriers between him and his white teacher, then edu¬
cation will broaden and elevate the negro to a fitness for
citizenship and suffrage. The Southern white who does
not admit this latter, is blinded by prejudice, and the North¬
ern white who undertakes to contradict the former, either
does not, or will not, understand the situation. The negro’s
lack of virtue, of honesty, of filial affection, of cleanliness,
and likewise his tendency to revert to savagery, his lack of
self-control, when fired by passion that leads to such death¬
invoking deeds as rape, have been, and will still be, affected
by education when wisely directed. No money is wasted
when spent by the State or the Nation for the better edu¬
cation of the negro race.

ECCLESIASTICAL STATUS.

It would seem that here, if nowhere else, with the decla¬
ration “that of one blood God has made all peoples that
dwell upon the face of the earth,’’ and that “with Him there
is no respect of persons,” the Southern white man would
sit down by the side of his brother in black as an equal in
every respect; but it is a fact that he will not—and the fact
is what we wish explained-—the Southern white distin¬
guishes between the rights of a soul and the rights of a
citizen. He knows that in God’s sight a negro’s soul is as
good as his, that none of the benefits of grace which accrue
to him may not likewise accrue to the negro; but he knows
on the other hand, it is not a violation of any New lesta-

ment principle for him to recognize, in his worship, those
distinctions of race, which God lias made, and the observ¬
ance of which is for the interest of good order, good gov¬
ernment, the good of the negro and the safety of the body
politic. If suffrage had not created such a relationship
between the races, as it has, involving the social status of
the white race, the old custom of parts of churches, for
whites, being set aside for negroes, where, under the same
preaching, they might worship God and join in communion
at a common table, spread for a sin-cursed earth, might
still prevail; but there will never be a church, in the South,
of any denomination, that will allow negroes in its courts
or within its walls as equals so long as the race question is
involved. I give you the fact—ecclesiastics may argue it in
what manner and in what way they please. But in the
vernacular of Sam Jones, “When you meet a fact in the
middle of the road, you might as well hitch your horse, get

down and take out vour lunch ”

My friends, we might as well face the condition : It is
not in the power of refinement, education, wealth, honor or
title to break down the barrier between the negro and
white races in the South. The measure that undertakes so
to do is incapable of being carried out by the strongest
government on earth.

I wish to say, the proposed methods of dealing with the
franchise in the South will in no way be detrimental to
the negro; his very best interest will be conserved thereby;
and we who know the conditions, tell you, in the fear of
God and man, that we believe a few years of trial will
convince the negro of the good of the measure, and con¬
vince the world of the righteousness of the act.

The city of the South in which I live, contains about
30,000 people. It is the capital of Mecklenburg county,
and the total population of the county is about 65,000. Of
this population, about two-fifths are colored. The city is
one of considerable activity, and in its population it counts
many Northern men, who are respected and influential in
the community.

In the suburbs of this city is located Biddle University, a
large and flourishing Presbyterian College and Seminary
for the colored race, in which colored men largely are
teachers. This Institution is supported by the General
Assembly of the Northern Presbyterian Church. There
the colored folk are contented, happy and prosperous.

In the government of this ci13^, the colored men take no
part. We have not now, nor have we had for many years,
any policeman or other officers connected with the city
government except of the white race.

In the government of the county no colored man takes
any part whatever. He does not sit on the jury, and mem¬
bers of his race, when charged with criminal offenses, are
tried by a jury of the white race; and, if the property rights
of any colored man are in jeopardy, men of the white race
exclusively determine what his rights are.

In this city and count)", where the government, by tacit
consent, has assumed this phase, colored men being ex¬
cluded from any participation therein, the rights of the
colored man have, as I have been informed, always been,
and are now, most safely guarded. His rights of property;
his rights of person; the safety of his family, the sanctity
of his home are as well protected in that county and in that
city, as the rights, property and home of any white citizen.
The colored man is there the absolute equal of the white
man before the law. He is not his equal socially. He is
not allowed the hope to be his equal socially. He has
learned that neither the Southern man nor the Northern
man, who has come to dwell amongst us, desires or will
permit his domination in an>" governmental affairs, but he
knows well that his rights are safe in every particular, and
he is never discontented and never disturbed except when
bad men, for their own selfish purposes, work upon his
prejudices and ignorance, and either buy his vote for money,
or else excite his passions and his fears by falsehood, in the
hope that, with the assistance of the ignorant colored vote,
men who could not otherwise hope to gain office may

succeed, by such means, in accomplishing their wicked
purposes.

If any man in this audience desires to know how white
men and colored men live together in peace and amity
under these circumstances, I invite him to come to the
community where I live, and I will introduce him to men
who, but a few years ago, were ignorant of the Southern
ways and Southern ideas upon this subject, but who have
learned, by close contact with our people, that we are not
only merciful and kind to the black man, but that we are,
what is better for him and for us, absolutely just towards
him and his.

The white men of the South say to the colored race, in
all kindness, “You shall not govern us,” and, in the same
breath, they say to that race, “Our government of you shall
be kindly and just.”

In the Hawaiian policy, already adopted by the govern¬
ment, there has been a refusal to extend the franchise on
account of race. The color line, in this instance, has been
the governing principle, and a line has been drawn at blacks,
browns and yellows. This measure is eminently wise and
will save the government great trouble in future.

The silence of the Republican party on the Porto Rico
and the Philippine question, as forecast in the platform in¬
dicated by Mr. Hanna, is very significant. Its significance
will save both the party and the government a criticism of
inconsistency.

The expansion plank in the Massachusetts platform is
worthy of study by those who like to observe a high politi¬
cal somersault. It has taken the Republican party 35 years
to make the turn, but here it is, down on both feet with its
face where the back of its head was.

“ By the Treaty of Paris, a number of islands formerly held by Spain
have come under the dominion of the United States, and by the terms of
the treaty the duty of providing for their government and of determin¬
ing the civil rights and political status of their inhabitants has devolved
upon the Congress of the United States. As a result of these acquisi¬
tions, races of people have come under the protection of the American
flag who have been so long degraded by tyranny as to have very inade-

qnate conceptions of the true spirit of liberty and of the responsibilities
of self-government, and who have been so impoverished and weakened
by the exploitations of their oppressors as to be unable to defend them¬
selves, unaided, from the greed of foreign conquest.

“ No greater trust than the uplifting and educating of these defence¬
less people has ever been imposed upon the United States. The Repub¬
lican party believes it to be the high and solemn duty of the nation to
accept and execute this trust, with all the responsibilities it involves, by
retaining the islands, and by providing for their adequate government
upon the principles of liberty and humanity. It believes that to abandon
them to local anarchy or to th j lust of the invader would be cowardly
and dishonorable, and a betrayal of its trust, impossible to be contem¬
plated by a great, free and enlightened nation.”

The measure proposed would be admirably suited to meet
the requirements of all wants in the Union. The South, in
the effort now beine made in the attempt to amend the sev¬
eral constitutions of the States, looks to no better attain¬
ment for that section than this paragraph from the above
forecast of the Republican platform.

It is a curious fact that in the government’s effort to alle¬
viate human suffering, in the only war in the history of the
world which was fought solely for the relief of the op¬
pressed, it has hit upon a difficulty, the solution of which
brings to the front the mistakes made by the Republican
party 35 years ago. Whether we will or not, the race
question in this country has assumed such proportions that
it will not down. It would be very embarrassing to the
Chief Executive and to the Federal Government to have
the Constitution of these United States guaranteeing cer¬
tain rights to, and keeping certain privileges from, those ot
her citizens dwelling in the isles of the sea and yet under
the protection of the American flag, and at the
sume time having in her very bosom all rights guaranteed
to, and no privileges excluded from, the race, in many par¬
ticulars, more vicious and as incompetent for the exercise
of the franchise as the brown and yellow-skins of the Haw¬
aiian group.

In concluding the discussion on this great subject, we are
confronted by a fact; and that fact is the citizens of one
part of this Union ask you to deal as fairly and as sincerely

by them, as the whole Union is dealt with, when you con¬
sider the inabilities of the citizens in newly acquired terri¬
tory.

The old question when Mexico and Upper California were
admitted to the Union, is now before us. That question was:
“Shall the new territory be free or slave soil? The ques¬
tion now is changed only to this extent: “Shall all of the
new citizents have the right of franchise, or only those com¬
petent to use it?” The government has answered, on the
ground of expediency, that the franchise shall not be ex¬
tended to those incompetent for its intelligent exercise.
We ask for nothing more. Either way, if the government
is to be consistent, the 15th Amendment of the Federal
Constitution must be stricken from that document. If this
shall be done friction is at an end, and the negro race may
eventually give to this country a sturdy, intelligent citizen.

Charlotte, N. C.

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