UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CATOLUmT
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ENDOWED BY THE
DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC
SOCIETIES
E 185.92
1877
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^ ^ a 00001 20775 9
THE NEGRO PRO
AN ESSAY ^
INDUSTRIAL, POLITICAL AND
MORAL ASPECTS
The Negeo Eace
THE SOUTHERN STATES.
-ENTEJ) UNDER THE LATE AMENDMENTS TO TWI FEDERAL
CONSTITUTION.
JBIT vJ. lE^. K.^IjIjS.
ATLANTA. GA. :
Tas. p. Harrison & Co., Pbintebs and Binders
1877.
THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
E 185.^2,
AN ESSAY
INDUSTRIAL, POLITICAL AND
MORAL ASPECTS
The Negko Eace
THE SOUTHERN STAT
AS PRESENTED UNDER THE LATE AMENDME
CONSTITUTION.
B-y J-. -U.. I?.^XjXj,
ATLANTA, GEORGIA:
JAJIE3 P. Habbisok & Co., Prikters and Bindeks.
1877.
/■
I
THE NEGRO PROBLEM AT THE SOUTH
In viewing the complex relations of human society, we
oftimes see events unfold themselves, which in their incep-
tion appear trivial and unimportant, yet in their progress
and ultimate development may assume proportions that
challenge attention and become objects of profound solici-
tude. The introduction of African slavery into the British
Colonies of North America, was, in its early history,
divested of all sentiment. The moral and political ques-
tions which subsequently gave rise to the fiercest agita-
tion, and which has shaken the American Government to
its very foundations, was at this time held in abeyance ;
and the slave traffic was simply regarded as any q^her
species of merchandise, to be regulated and controlled as
the interest or caprice of those engaged might dictate.
In all the preceding ages of the past, history informs
us that slavery had existed in some form or other, and it
only appealed to the moral sense of mankind, when it was
brought about by the arbitrary exercise of the rights of
conquest, accompanied with acts of oppression and cruelty,
in the servitude imposed upon its hapless victims. In
the early patriarchal ages, we find the institution of sla-
very firmly rooted, and grounded, in their domestic econ-
omy, and the prophets and law-givers of that pure and
primitive age, who were honored by the Most High, as
the keepers of His oracles, inveighed not against it as "a
league with death aiid a covenant with hell," bi|t regarded
it as a beneficent institution, that promoted the wijlbeing
of society. Greece and Rome in their day reared the
o^proudest structures of national glory, and the light of thoir
^civilization, beaming upon us through the mist of twenty
.^ centuries, reveals the fact, that slavery was an integral part
^of their civil polity. The feudal system known in history
^ 1
4 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
as the great political institution of the middle ages, and in
which was planted the germ of modern civilization, was
actuated and supported by a military spirit, which was
ostensibly aimed at the oppression of kings ; yet was no
less instrumental in striking down the liberties of the peo-
ple, and making them vassals to the rule of the lordly
baron. Great Britain, the nation that led for centuries
the van of civilization, and gave to later generations the
great charter of human liberties, set mankind the"example
of abducting the negro from his native haunts, and rearing
the system of African slavery in her distant provinces.
While it is not within the purview of our purpose to de
fend the institution of slavery, as it existed in the South-
ern States, either upon moral or political grounds, yet we
would not vindicate the truth of history, in passing over in
silence the real authors of an institution that has been the
theme of such bitter invective at the hands of their intol-
erant and hypocritical descendants. Massachusetts and
Connecticut were among the first colonies to introduce
African slavery upon their soil, and conducted the new en-
terprise with more interest and zeal than any of their sister
colonies. Massachusetts in particular had an addition-
al incentive to stimulate her to engage in the slave
traffic; for, besides the demand for the African as a laborer
to till her soil, she enjoyed a monopoly of the shipping in-
terest among the colonies, and did not stop at that early
day to consider "the horrors of the middle passage," but
at once fitted out her ship for the coast of Africa, and con-
tinued this species of merchandise as long as she could find
a market for the so-called "human chattels." Virginia,
and other more Southern colonies, entered an earnest re-
monstrance against the slave trade, and raised an issue with
thfe New England colonies against its continuance, which
was not met in a spirit of compromise by those men,
whose descendants, eighty years later, began a sectional
war to overturn an institution their fathers had been mainly
instrumental in setting up.
THE NEGRO PROBLEM,
The debates, upon the formation of the Federal Consti-
tution, show, •* as an indisputable fact, that the Northern
States had earnestly and zealously espoused the cause of
slavery, and manifested a determination to perpetuate the
African slave trade, so lucrative had it become, and so grat-
ifying to that spirit of mammon, which forms the distin-
guishing type of the Yankee race, and becomes "the rul-
ing passion " at all times, and under all circumstances.
The Southern delegates, in the Convention of all the States,
called in 1787, to form a Federal Constitution that was to
supplant the Articles of Confederation, and "form a more
perfect Union," demanded that a constitutional prohibition
be incorporated into her organic law they were called to
frame, against the further introduction of the African race
into the States of America, showing an earnest conviction
in the minds of the Southern people of the impoHcy of the
African slave trade, and an evident disposition to rid them-
selves of slavery as a domestic institution. This proposi-
tion, proceeding from the Southern delegates, met with
decided opposition from the North, and the conflicting
opinions were only reconciled and adjusted by incorporat-
ing a provision extending the slave trade until 1808, as we
find it inserted in the Federal Constitution at the present
time.
When this franchise expired by limitation, and the
shrewd calculating Yankee saw that the slave could not be
profitably employed, where the labor of summer was con-
sumed in feeding the negro through the winter, he began to
cast about for the means of getting rid of him, soon entered
the role of philanthropist, and began immediately a cru-
sade against the rights of his neighbor, and a war against
the settled institutions of his country. It is a well authen-
ticated fact that the North got rid of slavery upon well ma-
tured convictions of interest, based solely upon economic
grounds — a settled conviction after satisfactory experiment
that it was unprofitable, and that free labor, made to subsist
itself when unemployed, would better meet the demands of
6 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
Northern industry. In short, the negro, as we say in com-
mon parlance, would eat off his head, bring the master to
poverty, and must be gotten rid of. Hence <-he North
adopted gradual emancipation — in the meantime sending a
large per cent, of her slaves to the South to find market
for a chattel that had proved burdensome and unprofitable
upon her bleak and barren soil. The Puritans of the North
have never exhibited a spark of genuine benevolence, nor
can lay any just claim to philanthropy in their dealings with
any race or people who controvened their interest, or in-
curred their displeasure.
These people, in the opening chapter of their colonial
history, began a course of exasperation against a neighbor-
ing tribe of Indians by a series of aggressions upon their
rights, and when culminated in a deadly feud, th^y gath-
ered their strength, fell upon the foe in an unguarded hour,
and signalized an easy victory by exterminating the war-
riors of the Pequod nation, and capturing and enslaving
their defenseless women and children. Judge Black, who
is good authority oa Puritan history, as well as constitu-
tional law, says in a late review of the practices of the early
Puritians, that " it became a settled rule of public and pri-
vate economy in Massachusetts to exchange the worthless
Indians they had enslaved for valuable negroes, cheating
their West India customers in every trade."
The Puritan fled from E-igland under the belief that he
was the victim of religious persecution by the established
church, and set up in the New World his own peculiar es-
tablishment, where he, in turn, became the author of a re-
ligious bigotry, and intolerance more bitter and relentless
than any he had suffered in the Old World. The Baptists,
Catholics and Quakers shared in the most frightful perse-
cu'ions at the hands of these bigots, and were driven from
home, abandoned property, and all the associations that en-
d -ared life to them, to find a safe retreat in the wilderness
f.om the fury of their assailants.
The arraignment of innocent aaJ lielpless women upon
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. /
charges of witch-craft, and the severity of punishment in-
flicted — oftentimes the hapless victim expiating the alleged
crime upon the gallows — stamps the Puritan character with
cowardice, superstition and cruelty that is unequaled in the.
last century by any people who lay claims to Christian civil-
ization. If the history of the anti-slavery movement at the _
North could be resolved into its basic elements, there would
be doubtless found only here and there a trace of real phil-
anthropy for the negro — felt by sentimental women, or
reformers, and dreamy imbeciles, such as Theodore Parker,
Wendel Phillips and John Brown.
The pro-slavery sentiment had taken no firm hold or deep
rdot in the Southern mind, until the agitation of the subject
by Northern fanatics had aroused a feeling of righteous
indignation in ^he bosom of Southern men, whose charac-
ters were assailed upon all occasions, and rights of property
in slaves resisted by mob violence, in defiance of the Con-
stitution and laws of the country. And the opinion is not
simply conjecture, that emancipation would have begun and
been consumated a half century ago at the South if North-
ern fanaticism had not invoked the demon of discord, and
caused it to shed its baleful glare upon the scene. Such
statesmen as Jefferson, Randolph, Clay, Pinckney and
others, saw at an early day that slavery, both as a political
and econt)mic question, furnished a problem of difficult
solution to the Southern people, and were ready to coun-
sel their people to rid themselves by gradual emancipation
of an institution, the maintenance of which was fraught with
so much trouble and danger in the distant future. But,
unfortunately for the South, two events arose at this junc-
ture, which mark an epoch in the history of Southern
slavery.
The invention of the cotton gin, with the new and prof-
itable field of enterprise it opened for the employment of
slave labor, followed in the next decade by the bitter and
uncompromising spirit with which slavery was attacked by
the North, gave the institution strength and permanency
8 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
that prolonged its existence for fifty years, and made its
extinction only possible by the stern arbitrament of war.
If slavery was wrong and an unmitigated evil — "the scene
of all villiany, " as abolitionists have pronounced it — then
other people than those of the South are responsible, and
impartial history will award to them whatever degree of
condemnation that attaches. The late slave States have
little or no agency in the first introduction of African slave-
ry into this country; this was achieved, as already shown,
by the commercial States of the North and by Great Britain.
Our fathers came in contact with slavery and in possession
of it at a time when there was no sentiment or prejudice
against it. It was taken under their patronage, controlled
in the interest of both master and slave, and transmitted as
a legacy to their children ; successive generations grew up
with it and inherited it, until it was incorporated with every
fibre of our social and political existence.
Whatever renown anti-slavery men may lay claim to for
the part they acted in the poHtical drama that ended in the
overthrow of slavery, they cannot escape the impartial ver-
dict of mankind, rendered against them, for not only im-
peding and preventing voluntary and peaceable emancipa-
tion by the South, but for the greater crime of subverting
the Constitution of their country, provoking sectional war,
and imperiHng the safety of our political institutions in the
future. Those questions and their proper answer, which
fix the measure of culpability upon the one side or the
other, rightfully belong to the domain of history. And
when a philosophical view of the laws of passion and of
thought, as they have moved upon our Southern people,
and incited them to action, shall be taken by the historian,
who may be prepared to judge them impartially, there may
be a measure of blame cast upon a class of Southern states-
men for the part they contributed in shaping the late mo-
mentous events of American history. There is, perhaps,
no people, in a review of their past history, who will fail to
see, in som.e important crisis in their natural life, that a failure
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 9
to comprehend the true nature of that crisis, caused a de-
parture from the path of true progress, and left them to
grapple with difficulties that time alone, with the exercise
of patience and fortitude, could overcome. Tlie convic-
tion is widening and deepening in the Southern mind, that
slavery, apart from the moral and political aspects of the
question, was a failure in an industrial and economic view —
under that system of labor the production of the great sta-
ple of the South was stimulated and developed to an extent
that left us an annual return, but a modicum of profit to the
Southern planter. It was made the instrument of felling
the virgin forest, and laying waste, and impoverishing one
of the finest countries, in climate, soil and diversity of pro-
ducts that the sun has ever shone upon. It is true that it
aided in the settlement and rapid development of the coun-
try, and created a temporary prosperity, but the intrinsic
value of slave property, which represented about two-thirds
of all values at the South, depended upon a wide era of new
country, constantly opening up before it for its necessary
expansion. Had it been confined to the limits it occupied
at the time of the manumission of the slave, its converti-
ble value would have been destroyed in a very few years,
the profits on its labor constantly diminishing, and the
Southern planter would have sustained that relation to it,
of which John C. Calhoun said : "If the slave did not run
away from the master, the master would from the slave."
It was instrumental in the training up of our young people
to habits of inaction, and encouraged a false pride that
caused them to look upon labor as something debasing and
ignoble. It checked the spirit of enterprise and intelligent
co-operation, that builds up diversified industries, aug-
ments the capital, and gives permanency to the wealth of
nations. It combined in the directions of its operations as
a natural sequence, both labor and capital, which, accord-
ing to well settled laws of poHtical economy^, should be
distinct, and each left to guard its own interest in fair and
honorable competition. It was the means of accumulat-
10 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
ing three thousand milHons of property — the toil and thrift
ofacertury — of an unusual and unsubstantial value.that was
swept away by the stroke of a pen — leaving the South only
the soil it had robbed of its virgin freshness — a sad and con-
stant reminder of the impolicy of the past. And one other
sequence of slavery, more momentous to us in its present
and future bearing upon the peace and welfare of the Souths
than all others combined, is the planting upon the same
soil, under the forms of a free government, with equal
rights and privileges, two separate and distinct races, more
widely differing in all the human characteristics than any
races of men, would seem to place before the Southern
people a problem for solution as difficult as any people in
the past have h d to solve.
Two distinct races in such juxtaposition, with no possi-
bility of ever blending — barred by color and insuperable
caste, with pride and prejudice that revolts at an union so
unnatural, and repugnant — must, in the very nature of
things, place one of the two in a subordinate and inferior
position, or result in a struggle for race supremacy, the
resul' of which cannot be doubtful. To institute a com-
parison between the races at the South, where analogies
are so obviously wanting, and the parallels do not run far
enough for the purpose of illustration, would lead to
travesty upon a subject that we desire to treat in a more
serious view.
Brief sketches of th^ more marked characteristics of the
two races, as presented by history and present condition
and attainments, would better serve the purpose in view.
The Anglo-Saxon, from which the Southern whites have
mainly sprung and belong, presents, in those qualities that
give men and nations power, prestige and influence, the
highest type of the human race. Its civilization his been
the constant and uninterrupted growth of fifteen centuries,
in which every problem that presents itself to the human
mind, has been studied and analyzed with a patience, en-
ergy and accuracy that human reason, stimulated by the
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 11
best aspirations of man, could bring to the task. It re-
cords its triumphs in every department of science, in every
branch of art, and in every field of enterprise, that secures
wealth or conrributes to the elevation, comfort and well-
being of mankind. Honor, valor.ambition, and all the high-
er qualities that find their chosen lodgement in the breast of
men, "formed to rule," are possessed in a pre-eminent
degree by this race, and has given it the mastery upon
every field of conflict, where an enemy was encountered,
or a cause to be won. This race, secure "upon its sea-
girt isle," has not suffered a foreign enemy to touch her
soil in the last five centuries, while she has dealt her blows
in the great conflicts of Europe, and always left her foe a
suppliant at her feet. Can it be asserted, that the same
race upon Southern soil, with its traditional pride, with
its chivalrous bearing, its spirit of persistence and powers
of endurance, would yield the mastery of its own soil to
the slave of yesterday ?
There is no proposition more clearly established by his-
tory, than that the negro is incapable of any development
or advancement in the arts of civilization, when left to him-
self, away from the contact and patronage of the white
man.
In Africa, where his lot was cast after the great tribal
divisions of the human race, we find him to-day enveloped
in the same stolid ignorance and heathen bondage, that
he was forty centuries ao-o, with no powers of mind above
the animal instincts of his nature — subsisting without labor
upon the spontaneous products of the soil — worshipping
idols, at which human sacrifices are offered up, with rites
and orgies that wouid shock the sensibilities of any other
savage, save that of his own race. In their wars, which
are of almost constant occurance, they show no tact or
.strategy, either in aggressive or defensive warfare — are in-
capable of making combinations, or seeking those advan-
tages resulting from treaty and alliances with other tribes
or peoples, which all nations and races have done, who
12 THE NEGRO PBOBLEM.
have arisen from primal or tribal weakness to occupy a
name and place in history. They have not utilized the
labor of the horse or other animal — have made no progress
in the mechanical arts, not even upon their rude imple-
ments of warfare. And travellers tell us that no monuments
or other relics, indicating at any period that art, in any of
its branches, had been brought into requisition by the
natives of Africa. This is not true in any other lineage or
type of the human race.
In the most interior sections of the great continent of
Asia, and the farthest removed from the contact of civiliz-
ing influences, are to be found crumbled arches and pros-
trate columns, indicating archictectural skill and some
degree of advance in civilization at remote periods in his-
tory. The aborigines of North and South America have
left unmistakable evidence, which remains to the present
time, that the spirit of invention had been exercised by
them, and left behind memorials of a rude but advancing
civilization.
It might be said that commerce and military expeditions,
that have often planted the germ of civilization in other
barbarous countries, had no incentive or occasion to con-
fer this boon upon Africa. The great nations of antiquity,
Egypt, Carthage, Persia and Greece, were situated upon,
or but httle removed from, the continent of Africa, and
Herodotus speaks of trading expeditions by the Greeks
along the coast of Africa ; while Egypt, under her warlike
kings, penetrated the contiguous parts of Africa, and left
the impress of its power upon a race too barren in mental
resources to catch the inspiration of progress. The negro
race has in no instance given evidence of its ability to
cope with a civilized race, in a contest for supremacy,
when anything like equal numbers were upon the odier
side. When once enslaved, he has submitted to the rule
of the master, until the restraints of slavery were hfted by
the power that imposed it, or some other that championed
his cause, and gave him his freedom. There is not a single
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 13
instance in the history of this race, where they ever con-
ceived a plan, or attempted its execution, for their libera-
tion from bondage, that had an element of success about
it. They were in a state of slavery for one hundred and
fifty years in Hayti and Jamaica, where the white race, in
the last fifty years of this period, were in proportion to
the blacks of one to ten, with a small number of troops
maintained by their respective governments (France and
England), yet there was no serious revolt against the rule
of the master, as long as the institution of slavery existed.
During the great social and political upheaval that
brought in the French revolution, the Jacobin faction, in
their mad carnival of " equality and fraternity," proclaimed
the freedom of the blacks in Hayti, and allowed the people
of that province to establish an independent government,
giving the negro race political rights under it. The negroes
here, seeing their vast preponderance in numbers, and the
power it gave them, asserted and maintained their su-
premacy, and wreaked a brutal and terrible vengeance, in
the butchery of many thousand whites — the remainder
fleeing from the island and seeking safety in foreign lands.
This war of races was followed by an uprising of the blacks
against the mulattoes, which resulted in an extermination
of the latter, leaving the negro master of himself, an "her-
itage of woe," and a blot and curse upon the most valua-
ble island in the broad Atlantic. England repeated the
experiment of France, by liberating her slaves in the
province of Jamaica, and conferred upon the mixed popu-
lation the right of local self-government, under a protecto-
rate of the British Crown. As soon as an equality of
rights and privileges were proclaimed and enforced, the
prejudice and antagonism of race was engendered, result-
ing in outbreaks and chroni^*' disorder, until the whites,
goaded to desparation, rose in arms, and with the aid of
the British soldiery, visited a swift and terrible punish-
ment upon the blacks, demonstrating to the world the
impracticability of the two races existing under the same
14 THE NEGRO PRGBLEM.
government, with e'qual rights and privileges, with the
negro disputing the claims of the white man to supremacy.
A more rapid decline and general prostration of all in-
dustrial resources, has not been seen anywhere in raodern
times, than that which followed emancipation in the Brit-
ish and French provinces. In Jamai'ca a plan -.f gradual
emancipation was adopted by the English government, but
after two or three years the negro became so demoralized
that the planters became disgusted with the institution,
and totally abandoned it. The blacks then commenced a
career of vagrancy, wandering about in idleness, and living
upon the spontaneous products of the island — the upculti-
vated fields growing up into a jungle — the dismantled and
silent machinery, the crumbled wall and deserted mansion
— all making up a picture melancholy and appalling, and
naturally awakening the inquiry to those who have been
compelled to repeat the experiment of Exeter Hall, will
the same fate rest upon the South ?
Mr. Bigelow, formerly editor of the New York EvLming
Post, and during the late war United States Minister to
Spain, visited the West Indies in the winter of 1855, and re-
mained several months, watching with deep concern, as an
anti slavery man, the developments taking place among the
colored population. In speaking of the ruinous decline of
the material interest of the Island of Jamaica, and the enor-
mous quantity of land thrown out of cultivation, he says :
" Thi's decline has been going on from year to year, daily
becoming more alarming, until at length tjie island has
reached what would seem to be the last profound of dis-
tress and misery, when t?housands of people do not know,
when they rise in the morning, whence or in what manner
they are to procure bread for the day."
San DomingQ, before emancipation had taken place, was
dotted over with Siplendid estates, that yielded their pro-
prietors a princely income, the value of her products to
rtie extent of her territory, and numbjCr of operatives em-
ployed, exceeded that of any other country of the globe.
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 15
Emancipation there was productive of results fully as dis-
astrous to its prosperity as it had been to that of Jamaica.
There was an almost total abandonment of the export of
sugar, its great staple product, in less than twenty years
after freedom was declared. In 1790, three years before
the liberation of the slave, this island exported 163,318,810
pounds of sugar, but in 1801, its exports were reduced to
18,554,112 pounds, and in 1810 to 2,020 pounds, since
which time its export of sugar has entirely ceased. In
1790 this island exported more cotton than the United
States. Twenty years later, it ceased to export cotton as
an article of commerce, which was in great demand at
highly remunerative prices, while c'offee, growing sponta-
neously, requiring no cultivation or other attention than
that of gathering it, yet had fallen off as an export in 1810
more than 100 per cent, upon the amount exported at the
time of emancipation.
From this statistical view, we find that the negro race
in the West Indies, in a state of freedom, did not meet the
first conditions of eivilized life, by a failure to provide for
the prime necessaries to sustain physical existence, to say
nothing of their refusal to make those higher divisions of
labor necessary to any advance in civilization. The negro
there *^ d t>een in a state of slavery more than onehundieJ
and fifty years, and by it elevated in the scale of civilized
being far above the level of the savage, and brought into
constant intercourse with the white race, as master and
overseer, had been trained to labor, and taught the methods
of producing food supplies, as well as the valuable staples
that enter into the commerce of the world, and return a
money value; yet we see them, with many advantages and
facilities for a higher development, refusing to employ such
agencies for its attainment, but halting and retrograding
to their primitive conditions of savage life.
The proposition, we think, that the negro, left to him-
self tp work out the problems of civilized life, '^yithout the
superior intelligence of the white man to aid and direct
16 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
him, is so clearly settled by the logic of actual results in
the English provinces and in Hayti, as never to present
itself again as a question for serious controversy.
MENTAL QUALITIES AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEGRO
RACE.
The fact that there are four and a half milHons of this
race among us, constituting nearly one-half of the popula-
tion of the Southern States, and in some localities a large
numerical majority, renders it of the highest importance
that his nature and peculiarities of constitution should be
studied and understood ; not only by those Vi^ho make and
administer laws for the common weal of both races, but by
all classes who are brought in daily contact with him in a
business or semi-social relation.
The negro, we find, in his mental organization, exhibits
but little or no originality. His faculty for invention and
contrivance, where a principle is to be studied and applied,
is rarely drawn upon or improved, and whatever proficien-
cy he may attain in any branch of art or science, is due
rather to the process of memory and his skill at imitation,
than any proper understanding of the rules of art or princi-
ples of science. His intellect, if susceptible of classifica-
tion, is on the mechanical order. He reasons, when that
faculty is called into requisition, by analogy — in comparing
the subject under consideration with something else that
has come under his observation, and forms his conclusions
without a resort to the more intricate process of induction.
Memory, and the faculty of imitation, forming the order of
his mind with insufficient power of abstract thought to ex-
amine principles, compare different methods, and originate
new plans, he seems designed by Providence for a subor-
dinate position under the direction of a superior intelli-
gence.
We have never heard of a colored person, even at the
North, in contact with the ingenious Yankee, applying for
a patent right to any implement, or other useful article of
his own invention. This defect in the mental constitution
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 17
of tlie negro is not confined to mechanical operations
merely, but operates against him in every field of enter-
prise that he might enter upon. In San Domingo, where
they have pursued an independent career for eighty- five
years, we find them introducing no element of progress,
either in social or political life. There was a considerable
capital left them hi the cultivated and highly improved
landed estates with the wealth of the cities and towns in-
cluded, yet they have never projected a railroad or tel-
egraph, and many of the public highways and costly
bridges, so necessary to meet the wants of the country
under the rule of the white man, are now abandoned as
of no utility to the present owners of the soil.
The negro, like all inferior races, is deficient in will
power — a defect that is palpably seen in him under any
degree of mental training, or in any condition of life he
may be placed.
This faculty, controlled by correct principle and sound
judgment, is indispensable in the execution of every lauda-
ble purpose, and without it nothing valuable, either in in-
dividual or collective enterprise, can be accomplished. The
negro, in his ignorant and unreasoning state, with perfect
freedom from all restraint upon his volition, we find to be
the mere creature of chance ; his calling and habitation fixed
and controlled by casual circumstance, without resolute
will, and persistent effort to change for the better, by sur-
mounting the difficulties that may environ him. We have
noticed many of them, since their late emancipation, set
out with fair prospects of gaining a competency, and with
all the advice and encouragement that was necessary to
keep them in the line of success, would, despite it, yield to
some vanity or weakness, and find themselves, in a short
time, at the foot of the hill, with no profitable lesson gained
by the experience. This is not so much attributable to their
ignorance and inexperience in the practical duties of life,
as it is to the fickle and unstable element that is inherent in
2
18 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
their nature. Those that are educated, and have the best
opportunities for amehorating their condition in life, rarely
exhibit the study and inflexible purpose to achieve the best
results their capabilities would authorize. The negroes at
the North are generally educated under the free school sys-
tem that obtains there, and quite a number are graduated
in Northern colleges, which is supposed to prepare the re
cipients of such mental training for any vocation in life.
We have yet to hear of the first negro, even at the North,
where they certainly have the best opportunities for devel-
opments, who is really entitled to distinction, or has a
record that will compare favorably with that of a third rate
white man, in the same department of life. Fred Douglass
and Langston both possess clear abilities, but have received
their distinction rather by comparison with their own race,
and in this respect are, par eminence, entitled to some no-
toriety, but neither have evinced moral or intellectual quali-
ties to give them force and elevation of character sufficient to
assign them a place in history. While their race in the
United States have been passing through a transitive period
for the last fifteen years, and certainly needed the advice
and guidance of a master mind in sympathy with their pe-
cuhar state, yet the two mentioned, or any other that have
assumed the role of leader, have not exhibited any capacity
for leadership, but have proven blind and false guides,
whose councils, if followed, will likely sink the negro to
lower depths of degradation and misery than he has yet
reached. Both of the worthies, mentioned above, made
their advent before the public, some thirty years ago,
in hostile opposition to the Colonization Society — a project
which was, doubtless, conceived in a spirit of real philan-
thropy, and was thought by some of our wisest statesmen
(North and South) to be a beneficent and judicious move-
ment in the interest of the freed blacks.
These would-be leaders in their political course, we see,
are at times the subject of party intrigue, and are ready to
do the behest of any party or faction that may play upon
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 19
their credulity; at other times they are wrought upon by
race feeling, and advise their people to cut loose from all
political association with the whites, and rely upon their
advice and assistance in no emergency. At the National
Colored Convention, held at Washington City, on the 4th
of July, 1874, Fie J Douglass was the chief spokesman, and
was put forward ■> tlie special purpose of declaring the
sentiment of his people in regard to their relation to the
country. In this speech, in alluding to the attitude of the
colored race at the South, and the liability to collisions on
the race question, he advised his colored friends at the
South "to go armed at all times, and execute a bloody
vengeance upon the Southern whites as the best method of
settling any grievance that might arise in the future."
In the quality of courage ofthat order which springs from a
sense of honor and duty, and impels men to action in the
maintenance of principles, or defense of life and liberty, he is
manifestly wanting. There i^ in his nature a spirit of venture,
that subjects him to risk of person, without prudent calcu-
lation of the danger incurred, or the value of the object to
be gained by the risk. In personal combat it little matters
what may be the casus belli, he must be sa'isfied of his
superi6r muscle, and that the chance^ in the fight are in
h.s favor, before encounteriiiii; an antagonist. He may, at
times, exhibit a brute courage, su; . as the mad bull is
incited to by the red flag, or the spear of the matadore,
that rushes him into acts o* vide'ice an 1 desperation,
without any regari to the consequeiices lo himself or the
object upon which his ra-'e may be expenled. The code,
we believe, is never resorted to to settle any "points of
honor" that may arise to disturb the amicable relations
between gentlemen of color. Tnis treatment of the code
of honor may not be any reflection that will likely bring
it into disrepute in the future, but shows that the darkey,
though "sudden and quick in quarrel," has found out
other ways of seeking satisfaction, more in accordance with
his ideas or;'C"<« . • •• fety.
20 THE NEGRO PROBLEM,
The negro's exhibition of prowess upon the field of
battle, in defense of country and hberty, is no less a sub-
ject for travesty, than that of his personal bravery. In the
late war, levied by England against the Ashantec nation,
for a redress of grievances, occasioned by King Coffee, a
single regiment ot British soldiers overran and conquered
the dominions of the African King, defended by an army
of tv/enty thousand men, armed with modern implernents,
in defense of their own country.
The negro in the Federal army during the Confederate
war, with full knowledge that he was enlisted in the cause
of his own liberation, and that the future status of his race
and kindred at the South depended upon the result of the
struggle, could not be induced to fight without a Federal
bayonet tn the rear, ready to impale him, shall he attempt
a retrograde movement. In the recent outbreaks at the
South, in which the two races have been brought into a
conflict with arms, the negro, though often outnumbering
ten to one, have always shown the most abject cowardice,
where their insolent attacks were met by the unyielding
courage of the white man.
To organize and carry on anything like an insurrection,
requiring for its success secrecy, tact and organization, is
out of the question, and should create no apprehension in
the minds of our people at any time.
Such movements, though doubtless often conceived by
the negro during the one hundred and twenty- five years of
slavery in our country, have never approximated, either in
the plan of operations or actual attempt, anything like a
.serious revolt against the rule of the master. During the
last two years of our late war, two-thirds of the white
male adults were in the army, leaving their homes and
families at the mercy of their slaves, so far as any hostile
feeling or power to harm them was concerned. The true
situation of things at home was well known to the negroes
generally, as the servants who attended their masters in
the army were frequently s^nt home on errands^ and could
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 21
give information as to the distance of our soldiers from
any given point, and the unprorected condition of the
people at home, against any attack or uprising of tuc
negro population.
The conduct of the slaves during the war, in this particu-
lar, commended itself to the favor, if not the gratitud ■■ of
our people, and its remembrance shouljj temper any feeling
of exasperation against the negro for the turbulent and
lawless spirit that he has at times manifested, under the
teachings of "the party of moral ideas," through its fit
representative — the carpetbagger. If left to himself, free
from all extraneous influence, the negro would no*- be
tempted by any social or political aspirations to rise above
his proper level, but would fall into, and be contented with,
his natural and subordinate relation to the white race. A
servile disposition, whether in his primitive barbarism, or
under the influences of civilized life, seems to be an inhe-
rent and firmly fixed trait in the negro character. He
cannot, in a true sense, enjoy anything like rational liber-
ty. When not in state of slavery, under the task-master,
who subdues his will and controls his physical man, he is
led by the stronger impulses of his nature in pursuit of
something that will exercise dominion over him. It mat-
ters but little with him what may be the form or character
of the servitude he renders, so long as he has something
that will accept the homage that instinct, the real propell-
ing force in his nature, pron">pts him to bestow.
A prominent trait in the character of the average negro,
is his vanity, which he is fond of displaying on suitable
occasions, with an assumed dignity and an air of compb.is-
ance and self-importance, that seem to rend:?r him supremely
satisfied with himself. His fondness for fine clothing, trinkets
and gaudy ornaments, is often gratified by a privation not
only of comforrs, but the real nece-siries of life. His
obsequious disposition and pliant nature, makes him sus-
ceptible of outward polish, and with an example of true
politeness before him, he soon acquires mannors that are
22 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
easy, graceful and artistic, which render him highly ser-
viceable on occasions where the lackey is needed. Correct
taste and a sense of propriety rarely enters into his " make
up," and he feels more pride ir " cutting a dash," than
leaving a favorable impression by simplicity of manners
and an exhibition of good sense.
There is, perhaps, no better opportunity for udging cor-
rectly of the traits that make up the human character than
that which the domestic relation affords. The regard that
is paid to the marriage relation — the esteem and affection
that husband and wife exercise towards each other — the
love of offspring, and the degree of solicitude felt and man-
ifested in the maintenance and welfare in Hfe, forms one of
the main foundations of human society, and is never want-
ing among those people that make up well-ordered and
prosperous communities. It cannot be claimed for the ne-
gro that he cherishes any high regard for the institution of
marriage, though they nearly all marry at an early age, and
some are "given to marry" several times before reaching
their majority. While it may be fair to presume that they
exercise as much reason in this particular as they do in
other matters, it is evidently true that the motives and in-
centives that actuate the other race, in many respects, be-
fore and after marriage, are generally wanting in the case of
the negro. Their stolid nature is rarely, if ever, kindled
with that feeling of romance, which rises above the animal
instincts, and forms a pure and perfect ideal of the oppo-
site sex in bringing them together in the act of courtship,
or more serious re'ation of marriage. The gratification of
a sense of novelty in the new relation, seems, for the most
part, the motives that prompt them to marry. Marriage
among them has had but little effect in promoting virtue
and carrying out the design of tlu divine institution.
Many of them live in open adultery during the whole mar-
ried state, and they oftentimes cut loose "from bed and
board " from slight provocation, or upon mere caprice —
leaving- their offspring to the chances and odds of a preca-
rious existence.
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 23
In the management of their children, there is a general
neglect of the wholesome discipline that is necessary to
bring them up to habits of obedience, and train them to
proper line of conduct in life. The correction of tne child
is generally dependent upon the temper of the parent.
When moderate counsels v/ould suffice for neglect of duty,
or waywardness of the child, if noticed at all, it is most
frequently with threats and abuse, or if the rod is used, it
is generally under a rage of passion, that leaves the hapless
subject hardened, and desperate undei the severity of its
infliction.
It we go beyond the domestic circle into the more com-
plex duties that devolve upon the citizen, we find the ne-
gro, even in his best estate, educated, and with opoortuni-
ties for observation, and with extended experience, unfit
for the duties and responsibilities of civil life. While it
could not be expected of the ordinary negro to cherish
any degree of patriotism, on account of his inability to com-
prehend the theory and operation of government — the oro-
tection ii; affords to life, liberty and property, it is never-
theless true that he is incapable of cultivating and receiv-
ing that measure of attachment and love of country that
the average white man does. His local attachment is not
fixed by any love of the soil — the streams, the hills and
plains that form the germ of patriotism in other races, even
the lower types, as the Indian and Esquimaux, but depend
rather upon accidental circumstances — those that favor his
love of ease and sensual enjoyment. Hence he often changes
his place of abode when doing well, without any rational
motive, or remains in a situation that is unfavorable to his
interest, on account of some trivial advantage, or fancied
good, that forms, for the time, his local attachments.
To make, in any sense, citizens out of such people, such
as can be relied on, to promote the national interest of the
State, to foster and defend its institutions, and to exhibit,
at all times, the true spirit of patriotism, is utterly imprac-
24 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
ticable, and as chimerical as any exploded humbug of the
past.
CRIMINAL ASPECTS OF THE NEGRO.
The opinion that the negro race, on account of his de-
praved nature and vicious habits, would become a burden
upon the country after his emancipation, and impose upon
the Legislature and courts, difficult and embarrassing
duties, had its origin in no mere misgivings, or spirit
of opposition to the late amendments to the Federal Con-
stitution, but in a thorough knowledge of the negro char-
acter, and the results that would follow. The North is
peculiarly sensitive upon any question affecting the "man
and brother" at the South, and there has been too much
deference paid to Northern sentiment about the negro in
Southern State legislation and in dealing generally with the
case the negro presents. Northern men, for the most
part, are entirely ignorant of the habits, peculiariiies
of constit\'tion, and mental and moral stamina of the negro,
and cannot tai<e any reasonable or common-sense view of
any measure affecting the two races at the South. Twenty-
five years of stormy agitation there, characterized by an
utter abandonment of all reason and candid argument, and
a resort to calumny, detraction and falsehood, as the
most effective weapons to assail the institution of slavery,
caused them to regard the negro at the South only in a
philanthropic sense, and would have us ignore the u.se of
wholesome restraints and severe discipline, that the negro
must undergo before he is prepared for a sphere in civil-
ized life.
The negro problem, in all its phases, must be promptly
and fearlessly met, as the exigencies arise, upon principles
of right and justice towards the negro, and in a way that
will protect the peace and interests of society, without any
regard for outside opinion. The suppression of crime,
the preser\$ation of social order, and a promotion of the
material interests of the State, are subjects falling within
the province of the State Governments exclusively, they
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 20
are responsible for a proper regulation of the^e subjects,
and for a failure to do so, are amenable- to the condemna-
tion of those directly interested, and to the censure and
reproach of the outside world.
It is a fact too obvious for controversy, that crime
amongst the Southern negro is increasing every year at ;m
alarming rate, and if not checked by some measures of
reform, will, apart from the direct evil resulting, so increase
the cost of admii;istering justice by the courts, as to make
it an intolerable burden upon the tax-payers of the State.
If we should direct an enquiry into the cause of this in-
crease of crime, we would doubtless find them inherent in
the nature of the negro, independent of any outward influ-
ences or peculiar circumstances that may surround him.
In a state of slavery, his physical wants were better pro-
vided for by the master than he is capable of by self-man-
agement. His time and energies were constantly em-
ployed in useful labor, and lor all classes of minor
offenses, was amenable to the domestic forum, that admin-
istered certain and adequate punishment for the offence
committed. Hence we find him, in that state, rarely
guilty of an infraction of public law, quietly fulfilling his
mission in the field of industry, and visiting upon himself
nothing of that odium and degradation that now attaches to
the free negro, as the author of mischief and disorder.
li we revert to the history of the negro in a state of
freedom at the North, where he has been the object upon
which efforts at reform have been liberally expended, es-
pecially to improve his morals and make him law-abiding,
we shall find but little amelioration in his moral status
there, and still furnishing an inviting field for missionary
labors, in that land of "steady habits and moral ideas."
We have no statistics of a recent date, but refer to the
reports of the American Colonization Society, made in
1850, from thiity to forty years after emancipation had
taken place in the several States referred to. The report,
after speaking of the degraded condition of the free blacks,
26 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
the frequency and increase of crime among them, proceeds
to sustain its assertions by facts gathered from the peni-
tent'aries, to show how great a proportion of the convicts
are colored : " Tn Massachusetts, where the colored people
constituted one seventy-fourth part of the population, they
supplied one-sixth part of the convicts in her penitentiary ;
that in New York, where the free blacks constituted one
thirty-fifth of the population, they furnished more than one-
fourth part of the convicts ; that in Pennsylvania and Con-
necticut, where the free blacks constituted one thirty fourth
part of the population, they supplied more than one-third
of the convicts." "It is unnecessary " continues the re-
port, "to pursue these illustrations. It is sufficiently ap-
parent, that one great cause of the increase of crime is
neglecting to raise the character of the colored popula-
tion." If forty years of freedom, under the most favorable
conditions possible, at the North, has evinced no moral
improvement, and has not served " to raise the character
of the colored population." if it is worth anything as a
sociological fact, it clearly shows the imbecility, the de-
pravity and inferiority that is stamped upon every linea-
ment of the African race.
We need not go beyond our own vicinage to be con-
vinced that the negro is a constitutional lawbreaker, prone
to evil deeds, and will reap a harvest of crime if the fear
of tangible, corporal punishment does not deter him. The
average number of convicts in the Georgia penitentiary for
twenty years before it was opened to the negro, was about
one hundred. We fmd that there has been an annual in-
crease of convicts at the rate of about 50 percent., swelling
the number to about eight hundred at the present time — a
fearful record of crime — a fact pregnant with thought and
apprehension of the future. Ten years of freedom, with
personal liberty guaranteed, with the privileges as well as
the responsibilities that attach — with lessons that observa-
tion and experience teaches in the daily examples of how
the erring are dealt with, and how the good and exempla-
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 27
ry are rewarded, should certainly, it seems, point him to
the path of duty, and urge him to pursue it.
As the negro is free, and in the possession of equal guar-
antees by the Federal and State Constitutions, no criminal
code, even if desirable, could be framed that would dis-
criminate in the infliction of penalties between the two
races. And it may be seriously asked, if our present penal
code is not severe enough, without adding to its rigors, or
demanding a more rigid enforcement of its mandates than
is already done in our State courts ? And where there can
be no discrimination in the framing and enforcing penal laws
— one law for the white man and another for the negro —
can the white man, at this advanced stage of civilization,
place himself under a code of criminal law that might be
applicable and suited to an inferior race, without a feeling
of debasement, and invite adverse criticism upon the civil
institutions under which he lives? In view of the vast
amount of smaller crimes, coming under the head of mis-
demeanors in law, the vexation and loss of time, and ex-
pense of a prosecution in the courts, and the frequency
with which they are dropped, and the guilty parties go
unpunished, there is, in consequence, a growing disposi-
tion among the planting interest, who suffer most by i-he
class of offenses named, to legalize the whipping post and
bring it into practice. While this method of punishment
for misdemeanors might be wholesome and remedial in
effect in the case of the negro, and relieve the country of
the expense of jail fees and cost of prosecutions in the
courts, its liability to abuse, and danger of engendering a
bad feeling betwen the races, would be reasoiis suffici nt
to prevent its coming into practice. It would not be long,
if such a law was in force, before a white man would be
brought to the "post," and this would likely stir up " bad
blood," resulting in acts of revenge in some way, that
would at once demonstrate the impracticability of such
modes of legal punishment.
No punishment for the commission of crime, that merely
28 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
confines the negro in prison, and deprives him of his hbcr-
ty will be remedial in effsct upon the offender himself, or
u on the race at large as a preventative against crime. The
peniteniiary system proper, confining the convict to work-
houses, where the service performed is entirely of the me-
chanical order, would be rather inviting to the ordinary ne-
gro, and have in it no element of either a punative or re-
formatory character.
The laws of Georgia, providing for farming out her con-
victs, and establishing chain-gangs, where the convict is
held to the performance of the severest physical labor, is
the best possible disposition that can be made of them, and
offers a ready solution to the once vexed question of work-
ing convict labor. The vast mineral resources of North
Georgia, in her inexhaustible mines of iron and coal, yet
undeveloped, and requiring, in their infancy, cheap and ac-
tive labor, find in the convict force, rapidly increasing every
year, just the class needed, and this field of industry itself
will, doubtless, relieve the State authorities of all anxit-ty in
the future as to the disposal of State convicts. The discre-
tion allowed by law to the Executive in the assignment of
convict labor to appropriate fields, according to the nature
of the offense and character of the criminal, is a wise pro-
vision in meting out justice in individual cases, and, by
properly guarding it, can be made to keep down race feel
ing amon^ the convicts, and in the public mind that doubt-
less would arise from an indiscriminate allotment.
There has been some strictures by the Northern press
upon the Georgia plan of working convicts in the chain-
gang — originating in that pragmatic spirit inherited from
" the Pilgrim fathers " that still prompts a considerable ele-
ment at the North to pry into and interfere with the con-
cerns of other people, especially when the prejudices of
their own people can be wrought upon, and political capi-
tal made by it. Some of our Georgia newspapers, who
watch with *' bated breath " every ripple upon the currents
of Northern sentiment, have caught up the refrain about
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 23
the relics of barbarism in Georgia, and have advocated the
abandonment of the chain gang as one of them. The vast
rate of increase of crime in our State, the necessity of on-
fining the penitentiary system to a limited number, and its
evident failure, as a corrective and preventative of crime
among the negro population, makes the continuance of the
chain-gang an imperative necessity in the future.
While our State courts have been vigilant and active in
enforcing penal law, and have, doubtless, inflicted adequate
punishment upon all classes of offenders arraigned before
them, yet there is an evident defect in our judiciary system
as at present constituted, in not providing a more summary
and expeditious process for the trial of the class of penal
offenders coming under the grade of felony. It is this class
of penal cases that lengthen the dockets, and prolong
the sessions of our Superior Courts, consuming the time of
our people in jury duty, and swelling the expense in the ad-
ministration of public justice, until it has become a grievous
burden to taxpayers. This class of cases are made up for
the most part of the crimes of petit larceny, breach of the
peace, malicious mischief, and trespass upon lands, and
come under the simplest forms of law, involving no com-
plex or abstruse principles, and their proper investigation
and decision resting upon a few simple facts, requires no le-
gal learning or judicial skill in the court exercising jurisdic-
tion.
In the present condition of the country, with a large ig-
norant and degraded population, under but Httle moral re-
straints, and law-abiding only to the extent that they dread
the penalty the law inflicts, it becomes highly necessary for
the protection of society that better police regulations
should be adopted. Criminal jurisdiction should be con-
ferred upon our Justice Courts for all penal offences be-
low the grade of felony, which would make them in fact po-
lice courts, so that every militia district in a community
could carry out its own police regulations, and not carry
those minor offenses into the Superior Courts, where the
30 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
prosecution ol such cases are necessarily expensive — in the
cost of court, jail fees, and in the consumption of valuable
time of business men on jury duty.
It has been urged as an objection to giving ciiminal ju-
risdiction to Justice Courts, that it would not do to confer
upon men unlearned and unskilled in law judicial power to
decide upon the delicate and difficult question of personal
rights, involved in the trial of even minor criminal cases.
This objection has been partially and perhaps sufficiently
answered in the statement that such cases come under a
simple statute — the simplest form of law — defining in very
plain language the act declared to be penal by the Legisla-
ture, and prescribing the penalty for its commission. The
judicial officer has simply to examine the evidence submit-
ted, and determine whether it is of sufficient weight to
establish the guilt of the party arraigned.
If criminal jurisdiction were conferred upon Justice Courts,
it would raise somewhat the dignity and importance of the
office, and men of higher capacity would be selected to fill it.
In every community there are men of good natural ability,
intelligence and sound discriminating judgment, giving
them sufficient capacity to investigate a case and render a
correct decision, where no very difficult law points are
involved. Thomas Jefferson once remarked that the Jus-
tice Courts of Virginia were the best courts in the world,
because they decided every case upon the naked facts, and
upon its own merits, without complicating a correct view
of the case with a multipUcity of legal principles and
conflicting precedents, that often perplex and confuse the
best judicial acumen.
The idle and vagrant condition of a large number of col-
ored people in every section of the country, is a proUfic
source of evil, and should not be tolerated. It is a well
recognized fact, that a man at simple or unskilled labor, can-
not support himself (much less a family), on an average of
one or two days' work out of the week. There should be a
rigid and well-defined vagrant act, that will reach those
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 31
cases that make work the exception rather than the rule
of daily life. Superior Court Judges should be required to
urge the law of vagrancy with point and emphasis, in their
accustomed charges to grand juries. It has always been
difficult to enforce vagrant laws, and they have remained
almost a dead letter upon our statute books, but public
sentiment should be toned up to the point where it shall
demand their enforcement, as necessary to advance the
moral as well as material interests of the State.
Adultery and bigamy are pronounced crimes by our
penal statutes, yet they are practiced to an extent by the
colored race that precludes the idea of virtuous and cor-
rect life among them. Our courts rarely take cognizance
of such violations of law, owing doubtless to the general
prevalence of the crime, the time it would necessarily con-
sume in the trial of such cases, the heavy burden of cost,
without perhaps any compensating good in the end. As
the negro forms a part of our body politic, if not an ele-
ment of society, it seems that he should be brought to an
observance of the rules of law that are deemed necessary
to government of civilized communities. It might be said,
by way of extenuation of the laches on the part of the
courts in not punishing this class of offenses, that they
only affect the negro race, and that no direct injury can
result to society fro;n its toleration. If it was the interest
of society that he should remain in a state of semi-barbar-
ism, and was it not desirable to raise the degraded charac-
ter of the negro race to a higher standard of morality and
general worth, then we might with reason say, let him
follow the brutal instincts of his nature. As slaves, they
were not considered as an integral part of Southern society,
but in state of freedom, with equal rights and [privileges
accorded them, they, by force of circumstances, become
an element of society. The commission of crime on their
part is published in the daily press — enters into statistical
reports — becomes a part of the history of the State, and
reflects in the aggregate upon its civilization.
32 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
Man's better nature may be appealed to, and incited to
virtuous and praiseworthy endeavors, yet we find in him
an element of weakness and depravity that must be ope-
rated upon by the fear of punishment, before he makes
any real advance towards the goal of a better life. This
proposition' is very probably true of the negro as well as
of the white man, although the mental and moral qualities
of the two exist in a marked disproportion. Education
and religious instruction may be auxiliaries in improving
the state of the negro, if there is an element of good in
him, but in his present condition there is no argument
more forcible and effective in checking his tendency to
evil, than that which appeals to the physical man in the
form of legal punis^ent for the wrong he may do.
EDUCATION OF THE NEGRO.
Upon the subject of educating the negro, in affording
him equal advantages and facilities w'th th it of the white
race, there is great diversity of opinion among intelligent
thinking men at the South. Their views are very probably
formed in the main by the supposed effect it would have
upon the negro character, the extent it would influence
him to change the occupations requiring physical labor to
others of less utility to society at large, and the means or
agency by which his education may be accompished.
The fact that so large an element of Southern population
are in a sta*-e of abject ignorance, incapable of exercising
intelligent thought upon any subject that may present it-
self, even in the daily practical concerns of life, to say
nothing of the more complex duties of citizenship, which
have been thrust upon them without any preparation, are
sutificient to direct earnest attention to the deplorable con-
dition of the negro, and to awaken apprehension of its ef-
fect upon the interest and well being of the white race.
These are perplexing questions connected with the edu-
cation of the negro that cannot be satisfactorily solved
without patient and gradual experiment. If there was any
thing like general education diffused among them, it
THE NEGRO PROBLEM, 33
might bring a class of influences to bear upon them, that
would tend to mar the peace and become hurtful to the
interests of both races. It cannot yet be seen what effect
it would have in stimulating their pride and aspirations to
a recognition of perfect equality with the white race. No
claim of this kind will ever be accorded by the whites, no
matter what might be the culture and attainments ot the
negro. We already see the cheap, trashy, catch-pen ny
publications of the Northern newspaper press, such as
teach a grievous and leveling doctrine in general, are find-
ing their way to the reading class of negroes, and will very
probably furnish their literary pabulum in the future. If
the negro should not manifest a stronger identity with the
section in which he lives, and continues to follow the ad-
vice and teachings of those who are inimical to every in-
terest of the South, then the Southern people would be
absolved from obligations of any kind to aid in his en-
lightenment.
What has been accomplished by the negro in the North-
ern States since his emancipation there, running back in
some of the States that first adopted it (Massachusetts and
Pennsylvania) nearly a century, affords us, perhaps, the
best illustration of the progress that he is ca^:able of mak-
ing, under conditions more favorable than are to be found
elsewhere. There, am'ple provision is made un^^er the sys-
tem of free schools for the education of the negro as well
as the white race, and both occupy the same level, not
only in educational advantages, but every other means of
culture that may be necessary to their moral and intellr-ct-
ual elevation. If we are to form an estimate of the value
of education upon the negro race, by what thorough and
systematic efforts at the North have accomplished for him
there, we fear no very encouraging view can be taken in
the cause of education for the Southern negro. The slow
progress made by the free black? at the North, or rather
the absence of all improvement in industry, general intel-
ligence and morality, under the most favorable conditions
3
34 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
possible, warrants the opinion that his aspirations and ca-
pabilities are of such order as to keep him on a very low-
plane of civiliz:ition.
It is reasonably certain that the negro population at the
South, taken as a whole, are likely to remain in a state of
poverty and dependence for an indefinite period in the fu-
ture. His want of thrift, foresight, and an intelligent ap-
preciation of the value of his labor, will cause him to ignore
the methods by which property is accumulated, and re-
mand him to a state of perpetual poverty. There will, no
doubt, be some exceptions, and it cannot be seen of indi-
viduals, but it is foreseen of the great mass of this race ; and
it is for the mass, not for the exception, that the institu-
tions of society are to provide. With this view, warranted
by ethnological law, and historical fact, in the case of the ne-
gro, is it not better that the character and intellect of the
individual should be suited to the staticn which he is to oc-
cupy? So far as the mere laborer has the pride, the knowl-
edge or the aspirations of an intelligent man, he is unfitted
for his situation, and must more keenly feel its infelicity.
If there are sordid services and laborious offices to be per-
formed, is it not better that there should be sordid, servile
and laborious beings to perform them ? Would n; t the in-
terest of society be served, and would not some sort of fit-
ness seem to require that they should be selected for the
the inferior and servile offices ? And if this race be gene-
rally marked by such inferiority, is it not better that they
should fill them ?
Upon the other hand, we are confronted with the fact that
ignorance and crime " go hand in hand," and with the mind
and moral faculties uncultivated, the individual has no proper
conceptions of right, duty, and the obligations he owes to
society, and, following the bent of an evil nature and per-
verse will, is apt to inflict wrong and violence upon his fel-
low being. Hence, where the individual is not obedient to
law from moral convictions, the State must exercise guard-
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 3..)
ianship over him, in the strict enforcement of law, for the
protection of society.
The advocates of a free school system claim for it, as a
direct advantage, while it compensates for the money ex-
pended by the State in free tuition, the saving of the Cost
of criminal prosecutions, the additional protection extended
to life and property in the diminution of crime, to say noth-
ing of moral benefits resulting to society in a multipHed
form. 1 he Southern States, in their present impoverished
condition, with enormous public debt hanging over them,
are not in a condition to carry on a system of free schools
like the rich and prosperous States of the North, however
politic and desirable it may otherwise be. If our popula-
tion were of one race, entirely homogeneous, the common
school system would assert its claims with more plausibihty
and force than it can possibly do under the existing status
of things. The impracticability of teaching white and col-
ored children in the same school, and the necessity of pro-
viding separate schools for each, necessarily enhances the
cost of free schools in the Southern States, and, as a mere
question of tconomy, places the argument against them.
Though not germain to our subject, we cannot forego an
expression of opinion, that the plan of public schools, as at
present conducted in Georgia, hmited to three months in
the year, with an inadequate fund to maintain them even
that length of time, requiring patrons to supplement the
pay of teachers, is very unsatisfactory in its workings, and,
in its present shape, clearly contravenes the educational in-
terests of the State.
Upon the supposition that the negro is to remain
among us, and that he is permanently invested with the
right of suffrage by which he wields a power in shaping
the legislation of the State, and in the control of civil
affairs, it would seem, in that event, the policy of the
white race to aid, to some extent, the education of the
negro, so far as it may be compatible with the general in-
terests of the State.
36 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
As we purpose to discuss briefly the question of coloni-
zation, and that of universal suffrage more at length, in
the subsequent pages of this paper, we shall not more than
incidently allude to it in this connection. We cannot an-
ticipate, with any degree of certainty, the revolutions of
public sentiment, or the political action that may control
any given subject in the future, but as to the negro re-
maining among us, undisturbed by a governmental scheme
of colonization, or that of voluntary emigration, we believe
to be among the very probable events of the future.
In view of ail the surroundings, it is the duty as well as
interest of the Southern people to make a fair and
thorough test of the negro's adaptability to the demands
of our industrial system, and in this experiment will be
tested his capability for any development and his fitness
for a sphere of civilization. There should certainly be no
obstacles interposed to prevent or hinder him m a couise
of self instruction and improvement. This would not only
be gross injustice, but opposed by every liberal and intelli-
gent sentiment that actuates a generous and humane peo-
ple.
The present adult negro population cannot be brought
under any system of mental improvement, from the fact
that they are dependent upon their daily labor for means
of subsistance, nor could they be spared from the various
fields of labor in which they are employed. It is doubt-
less the duty of the white people to encourage, to some
extent, the education of the negro children that are grow-
ing up in the country. If farmers or neighborhoods would
donate sites for colored school houses, and manifest an in-
terest in getting up schools for the freedmen, to be kept
up even for two or three months in the year, it would enable
their children to obtain the rudiments of an education, and
with any faculty for self improvement, would enable them
to make such further attainments as their ambition or ca-
pacity might lead to ; such action on the part of land
owners would inure to their own benefit in securing labor
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 37
for the cultivation of their farms, and render it more effi-
cient and permanent by attaching the freedman to locah'-
ties that afford such facilities.
THE NEGRO AS A LABORER.
Whatever may be said of the nature, habits of life and
order of intelligence that is presented in the history of the
negro race, in his native land, or in those countries where
he has existed in the tvvo conditions of slavery and free*
dom — the most practical and important question that can
present itself to the Southern people is : Can he be made ser-
viceable in his present relation, and an efficient co-worlcer
in promoting the material interests of the South ? While
the negro race, in all the British provinces where slavery
formerly existed have declined in an industrial and moral
point of view, and may be drifting slowly back to savage
life, it would not be z fair and just conclusion to say that
under more favorable circumstances he might not render
valuable service in promoting the industrial interests of the
country in which he exists as a freedman. The negroes of
the South present rather a favorable contrast, at the present
time, to the West India negroes at the time of their liber-
ation. The negroes in those islands were in a state of
semi barbarism when they were freed. The landed pro-
prietors there were generally men of vast wealth, owned
large estates and cou.ited their slaves by the hundred,
which were kept under military rule, never allowed the
privileges of Southern slaves in visiting among themselves
or commg in constant contact with white men. No mis-
sionary efforts for their religious instruction were directed
in their behalf, and being placed under such unfavorable
opportunities for any improvement, were not elevated so
much above their primitive state as the Southern negro.
In all those countries, with the exception of the United
States, where the negro has passed from a state of slavery
to that of freedom, we find them to be tropical countries —
furnishing to the inhabitants food without labor, iii the
abundant resources of vegetable and animal life, la hose
38 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
countries he has been left to himself for the most part,
without the example and influence of the white man, and
without wise and wholesome laws to restrain his vicious
propensities, to compel him to work, and secure to him
the fruits of his labor. The climate of all tropical coun-
tries, too, has an enervating and depressing effect upon the
physical man — relaxing his energies of mind and body.
Hence we find all races of men there, whatever may be the
stimulus to industry and exertion, rebpsing into a state
of indolence and inaction, that confines labor and the field
of industrial enterprise to the bare acquisition of the prime
necessaries of life.
In a'l the South American States, with the exception of
Brazil, where slavery still exists with a monarchical gov-
ernment, there has been but little progress in the elements
of civilization since the overthrow of Spanish rule, fifty
years ago. These petty republics are a burlesque upon
free government, given over to a state of chronic revolu-
tion, and present no very favorable contrast in growth and
material development to their neighboring negro commu-
nities of the West India Islands.
But it may be asked: Why has the negro not done more
for himself, esta'^lished a better character as a laborer, and
arisen in the scale of private and public worth at the
North, where climate,educational advantages, public law rind
political institutions gave him a fair field for development?
It cannot be denied that there is a great discount upon the
negro as a laborer there, that he has long since been driv-
en out as a competitor in the field of active labor — is rarely
found in the agricultural, manufacturing or mining interest
of that busy section, but in the more m nial occupations,
as porter, stevedore, hotel waiter and boot- black, where the
labor performed is menial and low, and the compensation
does not invite active competition. While this is true,and
forms a strong argument against the worth of the negro as
a laborer, it should be viewed in its proper light, and the
necessary allowance made to the credit of the negro, There^
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 39
more than at the South, the race feeling has operated to
the disadvantage of the negro. Men in need of labor
would give the white laborer preference, owing to the pre-
dilections of race, though the negro might perform the
task as well. The industrial system of the North is carried
on by day labor, or by contract for a short term of service.
The white man, in his physical organization, is endowed
with more activity and nervous energy, and performs his
allotted task quicker than the negro. Hence, as a day-
laborer, is preferable, and will aUvr.ys supercede the negro
in that kind of service.
The negro, too, has keenly felt the prejudice of race at
the North by the refusal of the white laborer to work side
by side with him in the field or workshop, and has often
t'een driven out by threats and violence, until, by force
of circumstances, he has been compelled to withdraw from
the field of competitive labor with the white man.
In the Southern States the four and a half millions of ne-
groes are scattered over an area of five hundred thousand
square miles, living upon the lands of an intelligent and en-
terprising white race, who will bring to bear every encour-'
agement to voluntary labor, and if need be, legislative ac-
tion will be invoked, to render him an active and profitable
worker in that department of labor where he is wanted, and
for which he is fitted by nature. The experiment with free
labor at the South since the emancipation of the slave.while
it has not been very satisfactory, yet, under the manage-
ment of those who have any capacity for controlling free
labor, has proven far more efficient and valuable than was to
be hoped for when the experiment was first essayed. Much
might be said by way of apology for remissness or failure
of the negro to meet the demands of Southern industry.
He was, by a stern and arbitrary edict that consulted
neither his interest or that of his master, forced from the
patriarchial institution of slavery that provided for his phys-
ical needs, and relieved him from all care, into a state of
freedom, without any appreciation of the value of labor, or
40 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
any preparation for the duties and responsibilities that rest
upon free people. Northern ereiissaries, under the guise of
friendship for the negro, and in the interest of a corrupt po-
litical faction, sought him out, and filled his weak and cred-
ulous mind with agrarian stories that made the corn and
cotton field less attractive, in view of the more tempting and
ea>i'y won prizes just ahead.
If we should examine the question of free negro labor in
the light of actual results — ascertain to what extent he has
contributed, annually, for the last ten years to the sum of
production, and his direct agency in upholding the indus-
try of the South, we would, doubtless, see a more liberal
and just estimate placed upon his worth as a laborer, and
less talk of ridding the South of the negro and filling his
place with European and Northern labor. It is, doubtless,
the concurrent opinion of a large majority of Southern far-
mers that there has been a gradual and steady improve-
ment in the quality of colored labor each succeeding year
since emancipation. This improvement, too, in the char-
acter of his labor has been in the face of difficulties and dis-
• couragement that the proprietors of the soil have, in a large
measure, been responsible for. The impolitic course pur-
sued by a majority of planters, in neglecting provision
crops and stimulating the production of cotton beyond the
healthy and legitimate demands of the trade, so as to bring
the price of her raw material below the cost of production,
has made labor unremunerative, and taken away its strong-
est incentive. Under such discouragements we have
seen the white man become restive and unsettled — often-
times abandoning his vocation as a tiller of the soil, and
seeking other classes of business more promising of satis-
factory results— while the negro, sharing largely in the
losses occasioned by an unwise direction of his labor, re-
turning each successive year with steady and unflinching
purpose ot his task. The cotton product, taken in the ag-
gregate for the last five years, exceeds that of any five
years during the period of slavery. This large and in-
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. ' 41
creased yield of the great staple of the South has not only
gone beyond the calculations of the planting interest ten
years ago, but has greatly surprised the best economists of
the day, who carefully examine every factor that enters
into the present and future condition of trade and fi-
nance, or that has a bearing upon the general production
of all cIasse~of industries. While it is true that the increased
amount of cotton raised during the last five years is not to
be claimed as the sole product of negro labor, that better
systems of culture of the soil, and the use of fertilizers, has
contributed to it largely, yet it proves that we have labor
suiticient, both as to quality and amount, if more wisely
and properly directed, to buHd up the South, and, in the
course of time, make it rich and prosperous again.
The increase of production in cotton is accounted for by
many in depreciation of negro labor, in asserting that the
laboring force in the cotton field has been largely augmented
by the increased number of white people who labor in the
farm since the war. While we are free to admit that num-
bers of our people who were raised in wealth, and unused
to toil, have, with commendable spirit, joined the produc-
tive force of the country, we cannot but claim, in the light
of actual facts, that the negro constitutes the chief element
in the laboring force of the country. Our young men
rai .ed in the country have flocked to the t<)wns to engage
in pursuits more congenial to their taste, and more in ac-
cordance with the mistaken notions of gentility, and the
number of mercantile houses in almost every town has
doubled since the close of the war, while numbers of small
farmers, who owned no slaves before the war, are now
working the negro in their employ, and give their time
more in superintending than in actual work. One of the
chief causes of dissatisfaction with the labor of the Ireed-
men is attributable to the fact that our people were long
habituated to the control ot slave labor, and inexperienced
in that of free labor. In our mana ement of the negro, as
a slave, we were accustomed to exacting an implicit obedi-
42 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
ence to our commands, and if the task assigned was not
performed, the master had the right to administer sucH cor-
rection as he thought proper. The force of habit in con-
trolling the negro, as a slave, made it difficult to adjust our
thought and feeling to the altered condition of things.
Hence we find that the older class of -outhern farmers have
found more trouble, and been less successful in con lucting
their farming operations, than younger men, who have
adapted themselves with more ease to a change in the labor
system of the South.
We doubt not that there exists a better understanding
and a more amicable relation between the white proprietor
and negro laborer at t\v: South than there is to be found in
the same relation of capital and labor at the North, or any
European country. The Northern farmer will tell you
that he experiences much anxiety and frequent loss on ac-
count of the unreliability of the white laborer that he has
to deal with. Farm laborers at the North, whi e they
have not organized themselves into labor unions as the
mechanics, miners and other trades, have, at the same
time, imbibed the spirit that pervades these organiz itions,
and are lestless, uncertain and exacting in their demands.
The poor man and laborer at the North receivnig a free
education in the public schools, is, to some extent, an in-
telligent thinking man, and reads the newspaper, by v^hich
his mind is brought in contact with a thousand exciting
influences, and these tend to distract him, and prevents
him from sticking to steady employment. The boundless
extent of new country and cheap lands opening to settle-
ment in the great West, holds out its attractions to him
that unsettles his local attachments, hence he is here to-
day and there to morrow, ever shifting and moving in the
direction of the great El Dorado of the West.
Repeated experiments have been made by Southern
planters with emigrant labor, within the last few years,
which have been almost uniformly unsatisfactory, and in
some instances attended with considerable loss, in money
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 43
advanced to pay the passage from Europe, and for clothing
and supplies, before the laborer had earned anything. The
European laborer that may be brought here is, from his
training and habits, unsuited to the requirements of South-
ern agriculture. He is willing to contract only for a short
term of service, and must have intervals of holiday, with
his accustomed diversions, before setting into work again.
This kind of labor may suit the North, or the grain and
hay producing States of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennes-
see, but will be found almost worthless in the cotton region
— requiring steady and constant labor the year round. The
emigrant that may come as a laborer is not content to oc-
cupy the cheap houses and eat the plain food that satisfies
the negro, but more costly houses must be erected for his
precarious occupancy, and a variety of food cooked to his
liking, and served with sugar and coffee, before he is will-
ing to enter the field, and then kind words and some def-
erence to him are necessary to keep him there.
While the industrial interest of the South would not be
subserved by introducing foreign emigrant labor, there are
good reasons for the opinion, that the effect upon our so-
cial and political institutions would not be salutary or
beneficial. The class that has already corne, and would
likely come in the future, as to the moral status and gene-
ral worth of character, are of the lowest order, are gene-
rally infidels in religion, and partaking largely of the Com-
munistic spirit that pervades the lower classes in Europs,
would, in the course of time, form here an element of
turbulence and agitation, that would prove an unmitigated
curse to the countrj .
Many persons, in considering the causes that have ope-
rated against the material interest of the South since the
late war, have, from a superficial and somewhat prejudiced
view, attributed them to the character of our labor, whilst a
more careful examination would show that it has had but
a secondary and partial effect. It is a fact generally con-
ceded, that land owners have exercised a controlling in-
44 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
fluence in the division, or as we say in farmers' parlance,
"pitching the crop," and for the most part have their
views carried out in the method of culture and in general
plantation economy. And we doubt not that most farmers,
from experience and observation, are convinced that all
field crops, where proper interest and attention are mani-
fested by the employer, are cultivated as well and gathered
as promptly as was done by slave labor. If this be the
case, we must look toother causes than that of inefficiency
of the present laboring force, for any failure on the part of
the farming interest, in contributing its due share towards
restoring the industrial prosperity of the South.
The question here involved is one of vital importance to
the Southern people, and though its discussion may appear
to involve a class of facts not germain to fhe subject of
negro labor, vet they have a connection and bearing that
must be considered in forming any intelligent and correct
opinion on the industrial situation of the South.
The subject of labor has been but little studied and but
partially understood by our people, as a question of politi-
cal economy. This, we think, has not been owing to ar.y
indisposition to investigate it as a practical or economic
question, but attributable rather lo the fact, that those who
formerly controlled the labor of the South had a proprie-
tary interest in it — were entitled to all the profits arising
from its employment, after furnishing the laborer with food
and clothing. Hence, there being no division of profits
arising from the employment of labor, the land-owner
looked to other causes for the increase or curtailment of
wealth, such as the state of the seasons, the degree of fer-
tility of his lands, the price of cotton, etc. But since a
system of free labor has obtained, and the margin of profits
narrowed down by a remuneration for the labor expended,
it behooves us to study the question of labor in its eco-
nomical aspects, if we expect to succeed in any department
we may employ it. The great blunder on the part of the
land-holder at the South in the past, was a failure to rec-
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 45
o^nhe his lands as capital. His aim and effort was
to increase his labor at the expense of his landed interest
— a plan that ignored all improvements of the soil, and
tended rapidly to waste and exhaustion. Hence we find a
large per cent, of the cultivated lands at the South in.pov-
erished to a degree that barely pays for the labor expended
— attributable solely to the injudicious direction of labor.
It was hoped that the great revolution that has swept
over our country, subverting our system of labor, and pro-
ducing such marked changes in our social and political re-
lations, would have brought about a corresponding change
in our industrial system, but we fear that a repetition of
the impolicy and errors of the past are likely to impede
our progress for years to come.
It has been said by an eminent writer on political econ-
omy, that labor is the only source of wealth. The more
carefully we examine the proposition, the more thoroughly
we are convinced of its force and soundness. Labor is the
agency .hat not only supplies the immediate and pressing
wants of mankind in food, clothing and the comforts of
life, but, when properly directed, is continually creating
new values in excess of consumption, that go to augment
the wealth of communities and nations. How important
that this great productive force we call labor, should not
only be active and ef^cient, but controlled by intelligence
and skill, that will enable us to achieve the highest and
best results.
In viewing the industrial history of the South, we find
that while she had an active and well organized system of
labor, she created by it but little permanent wealth, and
continued as a mere tributary and feeder to outside cap-
ital. It has been said that the kind and quality of labor-
that obtained under the old tegime was, per se, mainly
strumental in shaping the industrial policy of the past, and
that no better results could have been obtained by any
change in its application or direction. Had the Southern
people directed even a modicum of their surplus capital and
46 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
labor to the manufacturing interest in its different branches
forthe last quarter of a century preceding the war, there
would have been a diffusion of capital, not of an ephem-
eral nature, to be swept away by emancipation proclama-
tions, but which would have remained as permanent and un-
failing sources of wealth to the South. At present, we
find in our towns and cities nearly all the capital and en-
terprise confined to mercantile pursuits — overcrowded in
every branch by a competition that produces a plethora of
stock, and a consequent diminution of profits that must
result unfortunately to this large class of our business men.
Mercantile pursuits, while they are highly advantageous
and indispensable in affecting an exchange of commodities,
yet contribute but little, in comparison with agricultural
and manufacturing interests, in building up and enric^iing a
people.
The profi's on the former are made up from the sur-
rounding country, and amount merely to an exchange,
while the latter create new and permanent values that add
to the wealth of a State. We will state, in this connection,
that we allude to manufactures incidentally, it not being
our purpose to present any facts or statistics to show iheir
utility in an industrial point of view, but to notice more es-
pecially the necessity for division of labor upon the farm.
It would be no difficult task to show that the South had
gained very little in material prosperity for the last twenty
years preceding the war. There was, it is true, a vast
amount of values created in the production of cotton, su-
gar, rice, etc., but the former (her chief staple) being pietty
much all exported in the raw state, the South thereby lost
a large per cent, upon the real value of its product, while
the annual returns from its sale went for supplies that were
manufactured, or furnished from beyond the limits of our
section. But the magnitude of the error consisted in stim-
ulating the production of cotton in excess of the legitimate
demands of the trade, paying no attention whatever to the
economic law of supply and demand, until her vast system
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 4<
of labor was employed in a way that brought but little
remuneration or profit to increase her capital. It is true
that the excessive supply of cotton was annually consumed
by converting a considerable portion into the coarser fab-
rics and articles, besides clothing, that should have been
manufactured of hemp (the cost of production being much
less); but cotton, on account of the liberal supply, became
cheaper than hemp, and substituted this material, while the
cost of production was at least thirty-three per cent, more
than the latter. Under such a system the South was fast
reaching a point where all progress would have been
checked, and began the retrograde movement. The pres-
ent impoverished condition of the soil, the absence of all
branches of manufiicturing interest, and capital generally,
are convincing proofs of its impolicy.
There is no greater error in political economy than to
concentrate all the labor of a country, in a measure upon a
single product, or upon a single branch of industry. This
has certainly been strongly exemplified before the Southern
people in the results of the last six years farming opera-
tions and is still more forcibly illustrated in the compara-
tive results of farm industry in the Northern and Southern
Slates. We will take for the illustration of the latter pro-
position the farm statistics presented by the census reports
of I860, as the Southern States did not have their indus-
tries and wealth disturbed and devastated at that date, as
has since been done by war. The cotton crop of Georgia,
for example, in 1860 was 701,840 bales, yielding little
more than $30,000,000, while the butter of New York, one
of the several products of the dairy, was estimated at ;^60,-
000,000; and yet the census gives to New York 370,914
farm laborers, and to Georgia, including white farm labor-
ers, and the males of the slave, 316,478 persons engaged
in agriculture. Besides the other dairy products, the prin-
cipal crops — corn, wheat, potatoes and oats — (not counting
the minor cereal products of gardens and orchards, or mis-
cellaneous products,) the currency value of the agricultural
48 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
productions of the sins:Tle State of New York was eight
times greater than that of Georgia, with about the same
amouut of labor, and more than the money returns of any-
cotton crop ever produced in the Southern States,
And to carry the illustration farther, we will take another
Southern State, (instead of the State of New York,)' where
both States have suffered alike in the loss of capital, repre-
sented by slave property, and have had their labor system
subverted by the emancipation of the slave. We take the
last census report (1870.) and will premise the statement
cf the statistical data, by saying that Kentucky (the State
we have selected for comparison with that of Georgia) has
carried on a mixed husbandry, embracing as crops — corn,
the smaller cereals, hay, hemp, etc., the latter as a market
crop exclusively, and selling each year any surplus of the
other farm products mentioned. Her system of fanning
includes the rearing of horses, mules, Cc ttle and hogs, which
form the chief item of her exchangeable products, and con-
stitutes the main feature in her industrial system. For the
sake of brevity, we use the tabular form:
Tiie census for 1870 gives the number :
Fiirm lahor<ers in Gee gia 33o 487
'' " " Kentucky 2o',.588
No. o{ acres in farms in G<».-rgi,i ..... .23 (i47,941
" Kentucky IS.IJUO, 106
Value of farm products in Georgia $80 890,238
" Kentucky $87.477,:}74
Aggregate value of .farms in^ Georgia $9l,5-)9,403
" Keniucky |all,-2:^8,916
Live stock in money value in Gi^orgia $".0,1."»6,817
" " " " " Kentucky $0(3,287.343
A>'er:ige size of farms in Georjiia (acres) 338
" " Kentucky " 158
From this brief statistical view, we see the vast dispro-
portion between the employment of laborso as to diversify
the products of the farm, against the concentration of it upon
one grand division of productive industry. However profi-
tablethe rearing of any given product may be at a time, it can
only remain so as loner as the supply comes within the limits
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 49
of a healthy demand. Governed by this principle, the plar.
ter should study the cotton interest in its economic aspects ;
not only should he estimate the cost of production, but as-
certain from the best sources of information, the present
and prospective supply at home and abroad, and the
commercial and monetary situation in its bearing upon the
cotton trade, with the view of settling in his own mind
the amount of profits likely to accrue from the effort ex-
pended. Improved methods of culture and the judicious
use of fertilizers are objective points in the farmer's plans,
but should be made to subserve the important end of
limiting the cost rather than increasing the amount of pro-
duction.
There are those that figure in our agricultural conven-
tions, who tell us that increased production is the policy,
and by that means we shall break down the cotton interest
in other countries, and enjoy the monopoly we had before
the war. Such men are false guides, and show their ig-
norance of facts that are too obvious to be controverted.
The pressure of the cotton famine brought to bear upon
the manufacturing interest of England during our late war,
has aroused her to the importance of developing cotton
production in her East India provinces, so as not to jeopar-
dize her home interest by a like contingency again. We
have before us statistics prepared by the Secretary of the
Manchester Supply Association, showing the increased
production of India cotton in the last fifteen years. In 1860
the sum paid to India was ^17,500,000; in 1864, before
the close of the American war, it had increased to
;^190,000,000,and though the average annual amount remit-
ted from England for cotton during the last ten years has
fallen off, it still amounts to ^150,000,000. We ascer-
tain from these figures, that England is now consum-
ing about three times as much India cotton as she did
in 1860, notwithstanding the South has, by neglecting
food crops, stimulated her cotton supply to her full ca-
pacity. Cotton culture is every year receiving increased
4
50 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
attention in Egypt, Turkey, Brazil and other countries,
which a few years ago were scarcely thought of as sources
of supply.
These facts should be pondered by the Southern far-
mer, as they serve to show very clearly the changes
that have been produced within the last fifteen years,
and indicate no less clearly the course he should pur-
sue. The straitened condition of our people after the
sale of our four million bales of cotton, in an average
of the last four years, show us the folly of concentrat-
ing all labor and effort on this single product. The
climate, soil and products of Georgia give her people
advantages for mixed husbandry that no other section
or country surpasses. Let us not longer neglect or abuse
these advantages by continuing the errors of the past,
but appropriate them by a better system of agricultural
development — one that will not make other people the
beneficiaries of our toil, but secure to ourselves the fruits
of a well 'directed industry.
We are essentially an agricultural people, and we must
look to this great interest as the basis upon which to
build up the permanent welfare of our coimtry. To do
this we must use all the means which experience, aided
by science, has placed at our disposal. The sun, in his
d-ily circuit, shines upon no country that possesess greater
advantages than the belt included within the 30th and
35th parallels of latitude, embracing Georgia and the
States lying directly west, to the Rio Grande. Though
this country has been torn and blasted by war, and
sustained losses in property, in an amount unparalleled
in modern times, yet we have resources, if developed
by a wise policy, that would in a few years transform
our impoverished and depressed land into one blooming
with plenty, prosperity and gladness. If by concert of
action among the planting interest, the production of
cotton was limitted to two and a half millions of bales
per year, (England must have and will have that amount
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 51
of American cotton at any price,) and Southern farmers
would turn the surplus of labor and capital in excess of
what is necessary to produce that amount to the im-
provement of lands, and to the wise economy of a mixed
husbandry, they would become in the next quarter of a
century the richest agricultural people on the globe.
This desideratum is not likely to be obtained, and it
may be considered chimerical to expend thought upon
it, yet if our agricultural conventions, aided by the public
press, should continue to agitate this line of agricultural
policy, and impress it constantly upon the minds of the
people, much might be done towards its accomplishment.
Our labor system, though not properly organized, and
not as available and efficient as it might be, yet the negro
is undoubtedly better fitted by his long training, his men-
tal habitudes, his physical configuration and his adaptability
to all the diversities of our climate, to make a more effi-
cient laborer than any other. Our object should be to de-
velop to the utmost his capacity as a laborer. To do this,
time is requisite. He must be trained, adjusted and
adapted to the new order of things, as well as the former
master. We must exercise towards him great forbearance,
with firmness, kindness and candor; respect him for the
deference shown to us, and cultivate feelings of interest and
attachment, in all the proper relations that we may sus-
tain to him. But to create and maintain this desirable re-
lation, the white man must act towards them with strict
reference to their race peculiarities. He must treat them
as inferiors, not as equals, as they are not satisfied with
equahty, and will dispise the white man, and have a feeling
of contempt for him who attempts to raise one or more of
them to an equality with himself. There is no individual-
ity in the character of the negro, no inherent resources,
no power of self- direction and self-help- and consequent-
ly he needs government in everything.
He must be kindly taken under the patronage and pro-
tection of the white man, who can organize and plan, and
52 THE NEGRO PROBLEM,
with the necessary, oversight, leave the task to the negro,
who is endowed by nature with the physical power for its
execution. We must identify him in thought, feeling and
interest with the white people of the South, by arguments
that appeal to his senses and give him convincing proof of
our concern in his behalf. We must make him feel that
his interest is indissolubly bound up with ours ; that high
prices for our produce insures him a high price for his
labor, and that any unfortuitous circumstances, whether
resulting from natural causes or the evils of bad govern-
ment, which rest upon the white people of the South, fall
with equal force upon him. We must disabuse the
mind of the negro of any belief that he will ever be in dan-
ger of re-enslavement, as this has been a source of painful
anxiety to many of them, and very probably has a great
deal to do in forming their party affiliations and in the di-
rection of their votes. We should convince them that we
have no animosity towards them, but, on the other hand,
have the kindest feeling, engendered by early associations,
and old memories. As rights of person and property are
guaranteed by organic law, and conceded by all our peo-
ple, we should respect them as sacredly as we do the rights
of our white friend and neighbor. We should be scruplu-
lously just in all our transactions with him, as it is our
interest as well as our duty to do so. To practice a fraud or
swindle upon them, creates a mistrust of the white race,
encourages them to acts of theft, and demoralizes their
labor by taking away the just reward for service rendered
— the strongest incentive to labor. In a word, convince
him that we are his best if not his only friends, and when
we shall have done this, we shall not only have placed our
labor on a sound footing, and have in the negro popula-
tion the most valuable peasantry in the world, but we have
gained in the laborer, an ally that may be relied on in the
sterner exigencies, as well as in the more peaceful pur-
suits of life.
THE NEGRO IN POLITICS.
The late amendments to the Federal Constitution, fixing
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 53
the political status of the negro in the Southern States, in
vesting him with the rights and privileges of an American
citizen, was brought about by no direct agency upon the
part of the negro, but grew out of the animosities engen-
dered by the war, and the settled purpose of the dominant
party to secure a permanent hold upon the administration
of public affairs in the United States. They saw that the
war feeling at the North would soon subside and give place
to more amicable relations between the people of the sec-
tions, and hence a two-fold purpose would be accompHshed
by placing the ballot in the hands of the negro at once, to-
wit : the humiliation of Southern pride, and the bringing in
of the negro as a political ally, whose support they might
safely depend on in the future in their efforts to maintain
political supremacy.
The political history of no enlightened government in
modern times has been marked with such utter disregard
of just and rational principle, and the prostitution of the
power and functions of government to the base purposes of
malignity and revenge, as was so clearly evinced in the at
tempt of the Radical party to adjust the disturbed rela-
tions of Ihe two parties in the late unfortunate conflict. To
dwell upon the scenes of the fraud, falsehood and political
knavery which conceived and brought forth the reconstruc-
tion measures, and the arbitrary and oppressive manner in
which they were carried out — by giving loose reign to mili-
tary satraps, are too familiar and painfully impressed upon
the Southern mind for rehearsal.
The giving of the ballot to the Southern negro resulted,
in less than three years after it was done, in the accumula.
tion of more than one hundred millions of Southern State
liability beyond what an honest administration of these
State governments should have cost in that time. This vast
sum of public liabilities, incurred mainly in schemes of
fraud and plunder — resting upon States already devastated
and ruined by war — if its payment was guaranteed, would
tax the energies and resources of their people for genera-
54 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
tions to come. It is not our purpose to discuss the validity
of the pubHc debt imposed under Radical rule, the ability
of the Southern people to meet it, or the policy of repudi-
ating such obligations, but we simply refer to them as a
pregnant illustration of the evils of universal suffrage at the
South.
While the negro has been the instrument in the hands
of corrupt and unprincipled adventurers from the North of
inflicting an enormous load of pubHc debt upon the South-
ern State governments, he cannot, in any sense, be held
responsible for the evil he has wrought The carpet-bag-
ger, who has manipulated the negro in his own interest and
to his liking, brought the powerful incentives to bear upon
the weak and credulous mind of the colored voter — the one
an appeal to his fears in the false assertion that the for-
mer master would seek to re-enslave him, and that his only
way of escape from the clutches of slavery was in giving
political support to his new friend — the carpet-bagger — and
keeping him in permanent control of the State govern-
ments. The other incentive was brought to bear upon the
negroe's cupidity, in holding out to him, a division of
Southern property, and that the negroe's share for faith-
ful allegiance to the Radical party would be " forty acres
and a mule," to set him up in life, and place him in an in-
dependent relation to the Southern whites. Under such
appeals to his fears and cupidity, we saw the negro so per-
fectly drilled and so thoroughly organized as to become a
mere automaton in the hands of a few miscreants, who
sought, through such agency, political stations for the pelf
and plunder that might be secured in the corrupt adminis-
tration of public office. In the quiet submission to the
miserable carpet-bag rule, the Southern people have ex-
hibited a spirit of forbearance, and degree of fortitude un-
der its infliction, that becomes difficult to reconcile with
the proud, chivalric spirit that has always characterized
them. It was not the fear of Federal bayonets, or the
power that wielded them, but due to that spirit of conser-
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 55
vatism love of law and order — that has been a traditional
and firmly fixed trait in the Southern character.
The brief political history of the negro at the South has
brought out two important facts that may be useful in the
future in solving the political problem that presents itself
in connection with this race. One of these facts is, that he
has no affinity for the white race in politxs, as well as in
social life and religion, and as soon as all extraneous force
is removed, he will become isolated, and independent, as
far as he can, of the control and contact of the white man.
The other important fact disclosed by his brief political
career is, that he, though possessed of a clanish spirit in a
high degree, is incapable of organization, and if left to him-
self, without the leadership and drilling tact of the white
man, must, irrespective of numerical power, yield political
control to the superior race.
We are not of that number who believe that the evil
day had past, and our political troubles ended, upon an
overthrow of the Radical party in Georgia. Its hold upon
our State Government was seen at its accession to
power, to be temporary and short-lived, could only be
propped up by external force, such as given to it by Fed-
eral bayonets, and with the removal of the latter, their
bogus government, or rather, base usurpation of power,
would crumble to pieces of its own weakness and rotten-
ness, and that legitimate power would be remanded to
those who would rightfully rule in the interest of peace,
order and enlightened government. If universal suffrage
is to be permanently engrafted upon our political institu-
tions and become the settled policy of the country, we
would prefer seeing parties divide in the color line, as a
choice of evils between the negro as forming an organized
Radical party, and that of the negro as a great mass of
floating voters. There are those who believe that, with
the disruption of the Radical party, and its complete dis-
memberment, as has been the case in Georgia, Tennessee
and Virginia, that parties in the future in these States, and
56 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
Others that may'establish complete Democratic ascendency,
will be divided on questions of public policy, solely, and
that political contests in the future will be between parties
equally honest and patriotic, and that it will be of little
consequence which party for the time may administer our
State governments. This assumption was applicable to
the status of parties as they existed previous to the adop-
tion of the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution,
but in view of the fact that the voting privilege has been
conferred by this provision of the Constitution, upon an
ignorant and degraded class of our population, nearly
equaling in many States that of the whites, and in a few
States outnumbering it, dispels such an assumption as
unworthy of serious argument.
We cannot forecast political events that belong to the
future, nor anticipate with certainty the issues that may
divide the people of Georgia in the near future. [But
while it is reasonable to assume that the Democratic party
of Georgia will maintain its integrity, so far as Federal
politics may be concerned, at least as long as the Radical
party forms one of the great'national parties, yet as to State
politics and the issues that will come before the people
of Georgia, it is equally probable that they will divide,
and that opposing parties will exist in our State. It may
be that the rights of property in some form may be as-
sailed, the public school question become an issue, or any
other question upon which the people may divide with the
more conservative, patriotic and better class of citizens
forming one party, and a class wanting in private worth
and public virtue forming the opposing party. In such an
event it could not be foreseen which party would prevail
and what would be the result, where a great mass of float-
ing voters of a different race held the balance of power.
It has been asserted by some, who have endeavored to
forecast the probable drift of the negro in politics, that he
will soon settle] down into a state of indifference as to
voting, and remain as a mere cypher in the body poHtic.
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 57
This would be very probably true in the absence of all
incentive to vote, and if left entirely to his own volition in
the matter. Under a free government like ours, Adhere
t.hc avenues to office are opened to every citizen, and offi-
cial positions, high and low, are eagerly sought after, and
since the morale of politics has been greatly lowered by
various agences at work since the war, it cannot be but
reasonable to suppose that the negro will be drawn out at
future elections by opposing candidates, and that the col-
ored vote will be the balance of power between those who
desire honest, faithful administration of public law, and
the mere trading politician who seeKS office for selfish and
corrupt purposes.
The power and purposes of venal office-seekers for mis-
chief, have been curtailed and kept under by the severe
discipline of the Democratic party for the last four years —
a discipline rendered necessary by the existence of the
Radical party, and the fear, it not the danger, of its ob-
taining control again of county and State offices ; while
now, having ceased to excite the^fear of again acceeding to
power, will relax the force of organization in the Demo-
cratic party of Georgia, and make the civil offices of the
State an easy prey to the mere place-hunter.
While there can be no w<ill-grounded fear of the politi-
cal action of the negro as an organized party, in any
of those States where the Radical party has been dis-
placed, or that our political institutions will receive an
direct injury in controlling the floating negro vote, yet the
immediate danger lies in the temptations it presents to
white office-seekers, and the corrupting influences it will
inevitably wield upon our elections. There are to be
found at all times and places, unscrupulous men passing in
the guise of respectability, who are in quest of office, not
from the prompting of honor and patriotism, but from the
desire of place and greed of gain, who will rally the negro,
obtain his vote by appeals to his cupidity, and low-born
pride, and secure their election to places of public trust,
58 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
in which the incumbent will be a degradation to the office,
and a counterfeit upon the authority that belongs to it*
Human nature is the same everywhere. It has too often
been the practice of men in political life under free gov-
ernments to avail themselves of every means to forward
schemes of interest and ambition, when favorable oppor-
tunities presented themselves. Certainly no age or country,
with free institutions, has presented a broader or more in-
viting field for the successful practice of the arts of political
trickery, an I official knavery, than is now offered in the
Southern States, with universal suffrage. In the State of
Georgia,' for instance, we have 80,000 negro voters — nearly
one-half the voting population of the State — who are not
only ignorant and degraded, but dependent upon their
daily exertions for the me uisof living. Is it reasonable to
suppose that a person, who would polish a gentleman's
boots, go on an errand, or any other menial service for a
dime, would not in like manner dispose of his vote for a
very trifling consideration? This element in our political
society must be regarded in the future as floating voters,
since their Radical drill-masters have abandoned their vo-
cation of marching them to the polls in the carpet-bag or
scalawag interest, and will hereafter be found at the po-
litical shambles, to be bought up by men who expect to
make tax-payers reimburse the bill of expenses.
It is a well known fact that a large per cent, of white
voters, who are not indifferent to filling the civil offices of
the State with honest and capable incumbents, yet cannot
be induced to take an active working interest in defeating
unworthy aspirants.
One of the greatest evils connected with American pol-
itics at the present time, is the enormous increase of
county and municipal indebtedness, occurring through the
political legerdemain of small-beer politicians. What will
it become, we might ask, when the ignorant negro, freed
from carpet-bag rule, becomes a great mass of flo-ting
voters — standing upon every street corner, waiting tor the
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 59
pabulum whi i -^ n in quest of office have in store for
him ? We have already seen outcroppings of this evil in
recent county and municipal elections in various sections
of the State, which give earnest of what it will become at
no distant day, despite the remonstrance and persistent
efforts of the more decent and patriotic portion of her cit-
izens. The disgusting scenes that would be enacted at
every recurring election around the negro in treating,
''honey-fuggling" and elbuwin ; him to the polls, would be
demoralizing, and leveling in the extreme, and soon bring
us on a par with the mongrel, semi-civilized states of Mex-
ico and Sjuih America.
In the State of Georgia, before the late war, it is well
known to those familiar with the history of party politics,
that there was a very small per cent, (not exceeding a few
thousand) ot what is known as floating voters in the State.
Yet this class of voters held the balance of power between
the two great parties of the country. The one that
manifested the more zeal and active efforts, generally
succeeded in winning the victory at the polls. The dis-
tinction of property and general impoverishment of our
peop'e by the war, with the leveling influences consequent
upon it, has doubtless trebled the floating vote in the ranks
of the white voters of Georgia. If such estimate be cor-
rect, we are confronted to-day with the stubborn fact that
more than one-half of the present voting population of the
State are in a condition to be controlled uy sinister means,
and that honest, faithful administration of public law is by
no means assured i the future.
Ignorance and poverty, two conditions of life most un-
favorable to the existence or growth of patriotism, would,
in the case of the negro, work a greater disqualification for
the exercise of the act of suffrage than among the whites
in similar conditions. Among the latter there would exist,
to some extent, a community of feeing and purpose, if not
of direct interest, with that of the intelligent property-hold-
ing class, which would tend naturally to give their power
at the ballot-box a conservative direction.
60 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
The ignorant white voter, if not utterly degraded and
devoid of patriotic feehng, will generally seek for light and
guidance from those who are competent to instruct him in
the matter of voting. The ignorant negro vote, on the other
hand, where he may have any convictions that will control
his vote, are generally made up of prejudice and race feel-
ing that negatives the ordinary influence that the better
class of white people have over him, when it comes to the
matter of voting. This feeling of mistrust and utter want
of confidence on the part of the negro, which shuts him out
from all correct sources of information, springs from the so-
cial distinctions that exist between the races, and will
rather increase than diminish in the future. The former
master, or present employer, whose judgment, integrity
and disinterested friendship he may confide in, and be in-
fluenced by, in all matters of ordinary interest, ceases to
operate at once when the domain of politics is reached.
The dirty scalawag, utterly bankrupt in character, whose
moral obliquities may be so apparent as to forfeit the re-
spect of the average negro, can, by intercourse, in which
social equality is recognized, get the entire confidence of
the negro, and command his following.
One serious hinderance to a proper control of the negro
vote, and directing it so as not to interfere with the inter-
est of good government, is the clanish spirit that prevails
among them. It has been, doubtless, noticed in every com-
munity where there is a large negro population, that a few
clever, well-meaning negroes have honestly sided with the
Democratic party, and, when voting, would support the
candidates of that part}:. For exercising this freedom of
opinion in voting, they have been uniformly prescribed —
placed under the ban of the colored race, and often become
the victims of infuriated and brutal vengeance. Having no
intelligence to guide them, and so easily leagued together
by 'the clanish spirit that pervades all the inferior races,they
yield at once to the leadership of one of their race, who
may possess the vanity or ambition to assume the role of
THE NEGRO PROBLEM, 61
leader, and become, in his hands, mere puppets, to be
moved at his will. This fact of itself makes the ballot in
the hands of the negro an instrument far more potent for
evil than if he stood in an isolated and independent rela-
tion. Their would-be party leaders are almost invariably
of a low order of character, have but little regard for the
well-being even of their own race, and when not wanting
office themselves, are in the market for any price that may
be set upon the performance of dirty work. Hence the
task of controlling the negro vote of a county, or city by
cliques and independent candidates that are obnoxious to
its better class of citizens, becomes less expensive and far
more easily accomplished than it would be in manipulating
the negro vote in detail. This line of argument need not
be pursued at length, as the thoughtful reader must readily
perceive,that through the instrumentality of the negro vote
nearly one-half the county and municipal offices in the
State of Georgia is within the reach of designing men, who
know their opportunity, and will not be slow in turning it
to account.
The power wielded by the negro voter in our elections,
under the most favorable circumstances that could possible
surround him, would be only negative, as he is utterly in-
capable of exercising the right of suffrage intelligibly, as the
unreasoning animal, that he may ride along the high way,
or follow behind the plow. He cannot have the remotest
conception of any question of public policy, or the issues
between parties, and just as incapable of forming any cor-
rect opinion of the fitness and qualifications of opposing
candidates for office. Nine-tenths of them, in returning
from an election, cannot tell what office their candidate
was offering for, and may frequently not even know the
name of the man they supported.
Universal suffrage, viewed from any standpoint, can only
be regarded as a positive evil at the South, whether meas-
ured by its results in the past or the better fruits it will
bear in the future. Its existence awakens constant anxiety
62 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
and apprehension in the public mind, weakening its faith
in the value of our poHtical institutions, anu repressing the
energies and activities of a people capable of the highest
attainments in human life. It will, most assuredly, prevent
the influx of immigration and capital, so necessary to build
up our section by withholding from these agents of pro-
gress the guarantees of peaceable, stable government,
which they demand as a condition precedent to their com-
ing. In the present condition of the great mass of South-
ern negroes, it cannot be of any benefit to them, but, on
the contrary, operate to their serious detriment. If the
negro, as well as the white race, '•• interested in whole-
some public law, and its honest, faithfu a ministration,
then, so far as he may hinder it, by wrong and misguided
exercise of the right to vote, he is to that extent wielding
a power to his own hurt. hile the ivegro, in his present
state of ignorance, cannot exercise suffrage so as to pro-
mote his own interest, or that of the State, he must, by
arraying himself in opposition to its intelligent opinion,
divest himself of the regard and sympathy of the white
race, and increase that spirit of antagonism that is so
easily aroused between races of such marked distinctions
It cannot be shown that universal suffrage in Georgia
where every department of the State Government is ex-
clusively in the hands of the ' emocratic party, is any
protection against an invasion of the rights and liberties of
the negro. The Democratic party in 1 .{ 1 i ; upon any
question affecting the peculiar rights of the negro, would
not be influenced by any motives of party policy, as no
action the negro could possibly take would effect a party
revolution, or impair its strength in the State.
It may be said that the adoption of a limited suffrage
by any of our Southern States, would, in effect, deny the
negro the right of representation under a government that
recognizes him as a citizen — imposes duties and burdens
upon him, and that he might become the subject of class
legislation, and be deprived of his civil as well as political
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 63
rights. Were it possible to adopt a course of legislation
by which he was denied any advantage or boon that the
white race enjoys, or that duties and burdens were imposed
that the whites were exempt from, then there might be
some truth in the allegation. Such legislation would con-
travene the 14th Amendment to the Federal Constitution,
and be declared a nullity by our State courts. The
course of legislation, and the proceedings in our State
courts, will doubtless show as strict regard for the rights of
the negro in Georgia as that of any Northern State. The
white people of the South, and especially the former slave-
holders, are the negroes' best friends, and are more likely
to guard his interests and advance his welfare in the future
than authors and supporters of Civil Rights Bills, or the
blatant apostles of negro equality, wherever they are to
be found. The ruling motives that actuate the white
people of Georgia in the enactment and in the administra-
tion of law, where the negro may be interested, are those
which are prompted by a sense of right, justice and duty-
which will be quickened and strengthened, if possible, in
withholding from the ignorant negro the political power
to inflict an injury upon himself and the country.
A deep and thorough conviction rests upon the South-
ern mind that the ignorant negro vote cannot be con-
trolled and made to promote the interest of good govern-
ment, in a way that is consistent with the self-respect and
moral proprieties of an enlightened Christian people. To
acquiesce in universal suffrage, and allow the blind, un-
reasoning mass of voters to be controlled by the worst
element in society, would debauch the ballot-box, corrupt
the fountains of political power, and bring shame and re-
proach upon the civilization of the South. In view of the
present state of political society at the South, and the
influences that will center upon the ignorant voter in the
future, and control him in the exercise of suffrage, it is but
reasonable to suppose that he will be an obstacle in the
path of progress, and seriously complicate the problem of
64 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
free, honest and enlightened government in the Southern
States.
The people of Georgia have acted wisely in postponing
the call of a Constitutional Convention until the time
should arrive when they could calmly consider the errors
and defects of the Constitution of '68, and embody into
their organic law such provisions as are necessary to pro-
tect the rights, guard the interests, and promote the gen-
eral welfare of all classes and conditions of her people.
The caUing of this Convention, the election of suitable rep-
resentative men, and the momentous questions that must
be considered and acted upon by this body, will awaken an
interest in the minds of the people that will invest the
assemblage with a gravity and importance rarely surpassed
in the history of our State. This body, representing the
intelligence, the true worth, and real manhood of Georgia,
would feel the grave responsibilities resting upon it, and
begin a ground work in excavating beneath the surface
and examining carefully the foundations upon which must
rest the solid framework of social order and good govern-
ment in the future.
In treating this divsion of the subject, we have brought
under review some of the more prominent evils of univer-
sal suffrage at the South on a line of argument that we
desired to be suggestive, rather than any effort at elabor-
ation. Nor would the prescribed hmits of this paper admit
of an extended discussion of the theories of representative
free government, but as the Federal Congress has estab-
lished universal suffrage, and declared it to be the policy
that shall govern the elective feature in the American
system of government, some examination of the principles
of repubhcau government in its representative form, as
well as the facts presented in the condition of Southern
population, becomes necessary in reaching correct con-
clusions upon the question of suffrage in the Southern
States.
The theory upon which democratic institutions rest, is that
the people are capable of self-government — that the masses
THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
e§
^re not only sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the form
and nature of free government, to understand the principles
which must pervade it and are necessary to give life,
strength and harmonious action to all its operations, but
some degree of that higher order of intelligence which
comes not by merely instructing the intellect, but the
heart and moral nature of man, that will enable him to im-
pose proper restraints upon his willful nature, to respect
the rights of others, to obey law, and fulfill the measure
of a just and upright citizen.
In portraying this brief outline of the qualifications for
citizenship under a free government, we are drawing no
ideal picture, as some of those contained in " Plato's Re-
public," but simply stating the individual requirement
necessary to form that condition of society that wiU main-
tain and perpetuate free institutions, and not make them
the creature of chance and circumstance.
The elective principle, which gives expression at the
ballot-box to the popular will, in the method and direction
it may be desired, whether it is to form a constitution, to
enact laws, or for the purposes of civi administration,
constitutes the main and vital element in all free govern-
ments. The proper regulation of this principle — the safe-
guards and restraints thrown around it to secure upon the
one hand the free and untrammelled exercise of the right
to vote, and upon the other hand to so guard it that those
entrusted with the franchise shall not wield it to the det-
riment of the State, is a subject that has occupied much
of the attention of the law-giver, and the success attained
may, to a certain degree, be considered a standard to
measure the degree of rational liberty any people enjoy.
This elective principle is, as it were, the conduit along
which is conveyed the embodied will of the people to
every department of the government ; giving life and
vigor when wisely directed, but when from any cause it is
perverted from the true and legitimate objects of govern-
ment, it brings confusion, disorder, misrule, and, ultimately,
5
66 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
the wreck of human Hberties. A principle so important,
and so essential in fixing the character, as well as maintain-
ing the very existence of free government itself, should be
well defined and wisely regulated by law, and sacredly re-
garded by a people as a muniment of their freedom. Under
the American system of government, from its inception
down to the date of the late constitutional amendments, the
question of suffrage was conceded to, and controlled by, the
States as one belonging exclusively to them.
The subversion of this right of the States to control the
question of suffrage, though it was done under semblance
of regular constitutional method, was a clear invasion of
the rights of the States — a bare usurpation — (or, call it by
what name we may) the results of which cannot at present
be seen, or properly estimated. In its ultimate consequen-
ces, if not in its present products, will be seen the realiza-
tion of the fond dream and fell purpose of those men at the
North, who, discarding the Constitution of the country, and
despising its institutions, its duties, its obligations and its
powers, devoted themselves to the radical overthrow of all,
without reference to consequences or crimes.
In the report of the Abolition Society of Boston for the
year 1852, it is said ; " The abolition of slavery presup-
poses a revolution. For it will radically overthrow and
reconstruct the institutions of the nation. It may be a
revolution fought out on Marston Moor or Bunker yHill,
or its victories may be won on logomachic fields of parlia-
mentary debate, and decided by aye and no, and not^by
bayonet and sword. ***** g^j.
come in what shape it may, it will be a revolution," (,, It
has not been twenty-five years since this utterance was
made. It was regarded at the time by the great ^mass of
the American people as the vagaries of distemperedj,minds
the dream of madmen, that had no soundness of reason
in it — as something beyond the range of probable.revents.
What interpretation can be given to-day to the state of
things that the people of this country find .themselves
THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
67
brought face to face with ? What, we may ask, can be the
state of forty-five millions of people twenty days after a
Presidential election, (the present writing,) where the ac-
tual resuh was known to all the people in less than three
days after it occurred, that there should be such con-
fusion—limning to and fro of prominent men of both
parties to the scene of trouble— the hurrying of armed
soldiery into peaceful States, upon no ground that can be
justified by constitutional authority, or that of law, prece-
dent or reason ? If the public press expresses the popular
feehng, we are justified in saying that there is at this day,
throughout the United States, (excepting the authors of all
this mischief) a sentiment of public danger, a sen^e of in-
security, a dread of the future, a gloomy and sorrowful
retrospect of the past, a craving desire for the replacing of
ancient landmarks, that betoken something more than an
apprehension that their institutions have been radically
overthrown, and that reconstruction does not promise the
ancient order, tranquility and concord. It cannot be de-
nied by any candid, right-thinking man, who has read the
history of current events for the last ten years, and is
capable of analyzing them, that the reconstruction meas-
ures of the Republican Congress, and the constitutional
amendments as an inseperable adjunct, have brought about
a complete political revolution in our country— a revolu-
tion as manifest in effect, if not so marked in its consequen-
ces, as that which resulted in the overthrow of the Stuarts
in England, the French revolution of 1789, or that of the
English colonies in America in 1776.
The late war between the sections did not in itself ac-
complish it, nor did the overthrow of slavery at the South
necessarily produce it. If the policy of pacification brought
forward by President Johnson had been carried out, not-
withstanding it required a surrender of the institution of
slavery, which would have, in any event, produced a great
shock to the industrial system of the South, yet |the po-
litical institutions of the country would have remained
88 trie NEGRO PROBLEM.
intact, and as soon as the former constitutional relations
could have been adjusted, there would have been, in fact,
and ,in theory, a constitutional restoration, without a
subversion and reconstruction of the American system of
government. The late constitutional amendments, ac-
cording to the construction and practice of the Radical
party, changed the relation of the citizen to the State and
the Union, in providing for an oversight of State legislation,
in all that concerns life, liberty, privilege and protection,
under the law. These amendments altered the basis of
Congressional representation, and made it dependent upon
suffrage, instead of population, for the exercise of choice
on the part of any State, between universal and restricted
suffrage. Under authority of the amendments, Congress
has passed force bills, civil rights bills, kuklux bills, elec-
tion supervising bills, (designed to debauch, instead of
protecting the purity of the ballot-box,) and under the
authority of " appropriate legislation," may do whatever
else the SociaHst,Red Republican, or Communist, or Infidel,
or politico-religionist may suggest.
A brief examination of some of the more prominent
features of the reconstruction measures of Congress, and
the circumstances that attended their execution — particu-
larly that of imposing negro suffrage upon the South, with
the view of showing the animus and purpose of the domi-
nant party of the North in bringing it forward, would not
be out of place at this time. The Southern States, by the
terms imposed in the reconstruction measures of Congress,
were placed in an attitude of forced acquiescence to a plan
of settlement that they saw was fraught with unmixed evil,
and which they must accept, as a dreaded alternative of
defiance and resistance to the Federal power. These
proposed amendments were not spurned. They were
treated with no contempt. There was no expression of
disdain. They were proposed, or ought to have been
proposed, to the States, for their free dehberation and for
the exercise of candid judgment. If they were States in
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 69
the Union, and had the right to pass upon the amend-
ments, they certainly were entitled to the choice of accept-
ing or rejecting them. Any menace or coercion on the
part of Congress was itself a violation of the Constitution.
The Southern State legislatures that acted upon these
amendments, were acting for themselves, for their poster-
ity, and also for the other States of the Union. They
would have dishonored themselves, and been recreant to
their trust, if they had consented to them otherwise than
upon the dictate of an honest and conscientious judge'
ment.
If we revert to the free-soil movement at the North, be-
fore the war, it can be clearly shown that it was not its
purpose to accomplish anything more than the liberation
of the slave from the rule of the master. The idea that
the negro was "a man and a brother," with any real
claims to equality and fraternity, had its lodgement only
in the brain of a few ranting fanatics of the sham-philan-
thropic class, while the great mass of those who favored
an emancipation policy regarded him as inferior, by nature.
to the white race, and unfitted, under favorable circum-
stances, for the grave responsibilities of citizenship. This
view was held by Lincoln, Greeley, Morton, Trumbull,
Fessenden, and nearly all the prominent leaders of the
Republican party, excepting Sumner, Seward, and, per-
haps, Chase. Just before, and at the close of the late war,
Mr. Lincoln, in his exposition at the Cooper Institute,
just before his inauguration, simply advocated the free-soil
doctrine excluding slavery from the territories, and if he
had any advanced ideas towards a recognition of the " man
and brother " theory, afterwards, it was not known down
South.
The New York Tribune, in the terse and emphatic lan-
guage of Greeley, in noticing the movements of the col-
ored people of New York to secure equal suffrage, a short
while before the war, thus gives utterance to his views of
70 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
their claims and their condition: "One negro, on a farm
which he has cleared or bought, patiently hewing out a
modest, toilsome independence, is worth more to the cause
of equal suffrage than three in an Ethiopian (or any other)
Convention, clamoring against white oppression with all
the fire of a Spartacus. They will never win it as white
men's barbers, waiters, ostlers and bootblacks ; that is to
say, the tardy and ungracious concession of the right of
suffrage, which they may ultimately wrench from a reluct-
ant community, will leave them still the political as well
as social inferiors of the whites — excluded from all honor-
able office, and admitted to white men's tables only as
waiters, and plate-washers — unless they shall, meantime,
have wrought out, through toil, privation and suffering,
an intellectual and essential enfranchisement,"
Senator Morton, the acknowledged leader of the Re-
publican party in Congress for the last eight years, and
during that time among the foremost in his advocacy of all
measures of resentment and oppression against the
white people of the South, made a speech at Indianapolis,
in 1865, just before entering upon his Senatorial term, in
which he opposed the policy of conferring the elective
franchise upon the colored race at the South, and favored
(to use his own language) "the postponement of their po-
litical rights for ten, fifteen or twenty years, at which
time," he argued, "the Southern States would have been
so completely filled with immigration from the North and
Europe, that the negroes would be in a permanent minor-
ity." He further argued in his speech, at great length, to
show the extreme hazard that the Southern States would
be subjected to, with the negro as a part of their voting
populatio|%^
If Northern men, who had entered with earnestness
and zeal, into the fierce political contest that raged with un-
abated fury for ten years preceding emancipation, and had
their sympathy and regard for the negro, strengthened
by a quasi alliance during the war, should afterwards view
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 71
with misgivings and alarm, the expediency of confering po-
htical rights upon the colored race, what, we may ask,
would be the feelings of Southern men, who must bear
the shock and reap the bitter fruits of such a measure ?
We have already stated the unmistakable purpose of the
Radical party, in forcing negro suffrage upon the South, to
be two-fold — that of gratifying a spirit of revenge, and the
bringing in the negro as a political ally in the future.
The disagreement between President Johnson and the
Radical majority of the 39th Congress, upon the policy of
reconstruction, culminated in the impeachment of the
former, and is memorable for being the most insane and
bitter partisan attempt ever made by one department of
the Federal Government to destroy a co-ordinate branch.
This Radical Congress, foiled in its attempt to drag down
and degrade the Chief Magistrate of the Nation, whose
only crime was that of differing with it upon the proper
plan, and the authority for reconstruction, returned with
increased venom to the task of insulting and degrading a
prostrate and defenceless people. It was not seriously
claimed by Congress in bringing forward these measures,
with the odious suffrage feature, that the Southern negro
was, in any sense, fit for its exercise, or that it was needed
to protect and preserve his newly acquired freedom. The
main point made and urged in the advocacy of the Con-
gressional plan of reconstruction, was that the Southern
whites were disloyal to the Constitution, and still rebel-
lious against the Government of the United States, and
that Republican Governments in the late seceded States
could not be organized and guaranteed by Congress, with
their people in such an attitude to the National Govern-
ment. It could not be resonably asserted that the South-
ern negro had manifested any spirit of loyalty, much less
acts of loyalty to the United States Government, only in
a negative sense. Nine-tenths of the colored population
had remained true to their owners during the whole period
of the war — giving "aid and comfort" to the Confederate
72 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
cause, by remaining faithfully at work, and producing food
supplies for its armies as well as the people.
The negroes that were enlisted in the Federal army
were generally decoyed from their masters, induced to
leave under misrepresentations, or, falling within the Fed-
eral lines, were taken up and forced into ranks, where they
exhibited but little stomach for the fight, especially when
their courage was not given additional tension by the
proximity of bayonets in the rear. The nearest approach to
loyalty that the colored race made, and which, doubtless,
convinced the Radical party of his superserviceable loyalty,
was in walking up to "de buro" and drawing suppHes,
after that beneficent institution had spread its pavilion over
the land, encouraging the negro to abandon the farm,
where he might earn an honest living, to take shelter under
its patronizing folds.
The Southern situation at this time, with the intelligent
ruHng classes disloyal, as the radicals alleged, and the ne-
groes known to be too ignorant and obtuse to have any'
ideas of government, would seem to place a dilemma be-
fore Congress in its work of guaranteeing republican State
governments at the South, that would vex state-craft of no
mean order. In such a case, with these facts clearly de-
veloped, English statesmen, if called to the task, would
hare doubtless managed it by keeping the late seceded
States under provisional governments, until time, social
intercourse, business relations, and other moral influences
brought to bear upon the alienated sections, could have
brought in an era of good feeling, which, in effect, would
have re-adjusted the disturbed relations (civil and political)
as by natural processes. But it was not in keeping with
Radical politics, which drew its inspirations, and received
its subsequent teachings, from sources that were poisoned
with sectional hate, to raise itself to the level of duty and
statesmanship, and deal with the question before it in a
spirit of libj^ral and enlightened patriotism.
Machiavelli, the famous Florentine Secretary, has ever
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 73
been regarded with detestation, as the author and teacher
of an infamous line of policy. ( called, from him, Machia-
velHsm,) intended to enable despotism to perpetuate its
existence by fraud and violence. His biographer says of
him: "He sought the cure of Italy ; yet her state ap-
peared to him so desperate that he was bold enough to
prescribe poison." If he had lived to witness that period
in American history in which the body politic took on that
foul disease — radicalism — he would doubtless have been
gratified at finding so many disciples of his school, ready
to administer the fatal draught that kills the State, in order
to cure her ills. To characterize their work in remodehng
Southern State governments as Machiavellian, would be
scarcely doing justice to the great master of political in-
trigue of the 15th century, for, where he advocated the use
of means the most despicable and unwarrantable, it was
supposed to serve, in the end, the good of the State, while
his imitators in America were no less scrupulous in the
employment of means to accomplish, not the good of the
State, but to preserve the rule of the most venal and
wicked party faction that has figured in the history of free
governments. The language of the 14th Amendment to
the Federal Constitution, conferring citizenship upon the
negro, and providing for a new apportionment of repre-
sentatives upon the basis of enlarged, or, more properly,
universal citizenship, and adopted but a short time before
that of the 15th Amendment, and in contemplation of the
latter following immediately upon it, provides: "That
when the right to vote at any election for the choice of
Electors for President and Vice-President of the United
States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Ju-
dicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legisla-
ture thereof, is denied to any of the male members of
such State, being twenty- one years, and citizens of the
United States, are in any way abridged, except for parti-
cipation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of represen-
tation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the
74 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole num-
ber of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such
State." Taking the scope and meaning of the 14th and
15th Amendments together, it is no unwarrantable as-
sumption in saying that the framers of those amendments
had in contemplation the time when universal suffrage
would become such a grievance at the South, and its evils
so manifest, that its people would be compelled to elim-
inate it from their State Constitutions, as the only alterna-
tive of corrupt rule, social disorder, and utter ruin. It
was evidently the purpose of the Radical party, in its
policy of reconstruction, with bayonet ruie, and with the
odious feature of negro suffrage fastened upon the South
by constitutional rivet, to hold those States permanently
under their party rule. And in case any State should as
a matter of choice, and with a view of promoting the wel-
fare of her people, adopt limited suffrage, then her repre-
sentation in Congress should be curtailed, and in either
event the South would be shorn of its strenth in the
Union, and made to feel the humiliation that her enemies
had in store for her.
It was but little concern to these malignants, what
might be the resulting mischief in the future unfolding of
the race problem, (after compHcating it by introducing all
the devices that would antagonize and alienate the races,)
whether the negro, banded together in solid party phalanx
on the color line, would enter upon a contest for supre-
macy, incurring all the hazard that such a course would
bring upon him, or, abandoning race organization, would
become a great mass of floating voters to be controlled by
the worst elements in the white race.
The altered basis of representation in Congress, pro-
vided for in the 2nd clause of the 14th Amendment, in case
any State should adopt limited suffrage, is a piece of polit-
ical legerdemain, the maladroitness of which must be ap-
parent even to minds that are not trained to legal analysis.
This clause of the 14th Amendment, while it does not di-
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 75
rectly prohibit or deny to the States the right to limit or
regulate, in any way, the question of suffrage, yet it holds
over the States a menace for so doing — a kind of moral co-
ercion. And the very act of enforcing the provision con-
tained in the 2nd clause of this Amendment, by curtailing
the representation of any State, if not an actual penalty, is
certainly in the nature of a. penalty, and the whole thing
contrary to the genius that pervades, and the tradition and
practice that has obtained in all^^confederated systems of
free government. Constitutions and States are non-existent
under such conditions. A Congress composed of members,
where some of the States had a full representation, upon
the basis of population in such States, and others with a
curtailed representation, fixed upon a mixed basis of suf-
frage and population, would be gross inequality, and pre-
sent a rare anomaly in a legislative body, representing the
people in fact and in theory, requiring, as an essential fea-
ture, a uniform basis of representation.
We have not seen any exposition or enlarged discussion of
the clauses contained in the I4th amendment. We do not
think the legal mind of the country regards the question
of suffrage as settled by this amendment. Mr. Chas. A.
Dana, of the New York Sun, who is regarded as an inde-
pendent thinker, a profound logician, and one of the best
informed and most brilliant political writers of the age, has
very recently expressed the opinion* in an editorial, that
the right to control the question of suffrage still belongs
to the States. Several of the Northern States, we think,
still retain the provision for abridged suffrage in their
Constitutions.
We propose the query : Will the second clause of the
14th Amendment be enforced in Congress, in the event
any Southern State should adopt hmited suffrage?
But, conceding the point that this clause of the 14th
Amendment will be enforced, it remains to consider the
expediency of adopting restricted suffrage as the only
measure of relief from the evils of universal suffrage, that
76 THE NEGBIO PROBLEM.
is practicable and within the reach of the people of Geor-
gia. The question of expediency, in the opinion of l^ie
writer, is governed by considerations of tlwee dis-
tinct classes : 1st. The manner it will be received at the
North, and the resulting influence it would have upon
Federal politics. 2d. The effect upon those excluded by it
from the elective privilege. 3d. The effect it would have
upon Georgia and other Southern States that might adopt
it, in diminishing their representation in Congress, "as pro-
vided in the 14th Amendment.
We shall not attempt to argue these several considera-
tions at length, but simply state propositions, the logical
sequence of which, we hope, can be readily drawn with-
out effort on the part of the reader. The first considera-
tion stated as bearing upon the question of expediency,
receives its significance, not from any intrinsic worth or
force, but from the rather delicate relations existing be-
tween the sections — a proneness to misconception at the
North of any action by the South upon measures con-
nected with the adjustment of our late pohtical troubles,
and a sensitiveness of our Southern people to being
charged with a want of fidelity to the terms acquiesced in
as a a basis of settlement. While we are free to admit it
to be the part of duty and patriotism, incumbent upon every
Southern man, to carefully avoid giving any occasion of
offense to what may be called Northern sentiment upon all
questions — especially those that do not involve a vital prin-
ciple — so that the issues of the late war, so far as the
Southern people may be concerned, may pass out of the
range of American politics, yet duty and manhood forbid
the tame acquiescence in policies where their practical re-
cognition must serve as a dead weight upon the energies
of the people, and an obstruction to their progress.
The Northern people can form no just conception of the
negro problem in the South, in any of its phases, from
what is presented in the case of the negro in their own
section as proper data and criterion to form opinion and
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. Il
Conclusions upon. In those States ai^ the North having
the largest negro population, tor instance, Pennsylvania
and Ohio, (numbering about 30,000 in each of these
States,) compared to the white population as to numbers,
would be in the ratio of about one to forty — scarcely re-
garded as forming one of the constituent elements that
make up the political society of a State. In these States
the small negro population is scattered over large areas,
and so isolated in relation as to render it difficult and im-
practicable to agitate any question among themselves, or
co-operate upon any measure having distinctly marked
race features. The negroes there are at least partially ed-
ucated, and being too isolated for race agitiation in any
respect, are brought under the more direct influence of the
white people, and are controlled in the matter of voting
just as any other class in a similar condition. The right
of representation in Northern States legislatures is never
claimed by the negro there, or if such was asserted, it
would be treated with contempt, even by those who have
so loudly proclaimed their interest in the cause of negro
equality at the South.
Outside of a few well-informed politicians and others
who have traveled South, and sought sources of correct
information, the Southern negro question is viewed at the
North as an abstraction, in which is detached from all
their conception those facts and circumstances that invest
it with peculiar hazard and interest to the Southern white
people. What they have seen and know of the negro
among them, is so widely differing in the most important re-
spects from the Southern negro, that it really unfits them
to reach sensible conclusions at all. Nor can we expect
the Northern mind to be any better informed upon South-
ern affairs, in the main, in the near future, however desir-
able it may be to us to have them view our poHtical and
S9cial life in the light of calm, dispassionate truth. Reason,
and the instincts of self-preservation, teach us that it will
not do to subordinate the peace and welfare of the State
7S THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
to what might be considered the good will of disinterested
people, or to the fear of inviting adverse criticism, how-
ever bitter and relentless it may be. If we should allow the
basis of suffrage to remain unaltered for the next ten years,
and, in the meantime, it should work to the disadvantage
and hindrance of good government, as it doubtless will in
the way and manner already indicated, there will be no
source from whence we would receive more detraction for
the folly of tolerating it than that which would be poured
upon us through the Northern press.
The regulation of suffrage in any way that does not
contravene the provisions of the Federal Constitution, is
not only a clear question of State right and authority, but
one of peculiar policy and interest, that must be shaped
and controlled in accordance with proper conceptions of
the latter, irrespective of outside opinion.
It would certainly seem that the rational, considerate
mind of the North, viewing the subject of negro politics
at the South for the last ten years, in its ruinous acts, and
disgusting details, and especially in view of the present po-
litical embroglio growing out of the Presidential race, for
which universal suffrage must be regarded, by every candid
mind in the country, as the sole cause — the '-'■causa causus*'
— would now pause, reflect, and in the experience of
better reason, demand a removal of this dangerous, dis-
turbing element from the theatre of American politics,
that is hurryingf us down the broad and beaten road to
political perdition.
Dr. Redfield, the correspondent of the Cincinnati Com-
mercial, who was in South Carolina during the late cam-
paign, and saw the "true inwardness" of radical politics
there, and in his utter disgust, as an honest man, with the
ignorant, weak and lawless character of the negro, and
the manner in which he has been manipulated there, ex-
presses the opinion that Northern sentiment will demand
the removal of the ballot from the hands of the negro in ad-
vance of any such movement at the South. If the '*Com-
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 79
nterciaV correspondent had his mind's eye on the Radical
party, as the one Hkely to take the initiative in the move-
ment indicated, he is very probably mistaken. It is not
the party to reform abuses, to go back upon its own record
and correct the evils that it has been wholly instrumental
in inflicting upon the country. But, upon the theory
that evils sometimes work their own cure, we may reason-
ably expect, after the present troubles have passed, that
there will be a new awakening at the North to a sense of
the danger that environs their institutions, and that there
will be a re-action, deep, earnest and permanent, against
the disintegrating and destructive influences that are surely
undermining the foundations of the American govern-
ment.
The people of Georgia have earnestly desired a change
in the Administration of the Federal Government, from
the hands of a party which has pursued a course of insult
and oppression towirds them, to one more just and liberal,
and one that would allow them to pursue a career of self-
development, without arbitrary interference. And what-
ever the result may be in the pending contest, it should
not hold in abeyance any question of State policy that
needs revision and incorporation into our organic law.
The next consideration to be noticed as entering into
the question of expediency, in adopting abridged suffrage
in Georgia, is that of the rights of those persons who
would be excluded from the elective franchise, and the
manner in which it would be received by the disfranchised
class. A discussion here of the abstract right of every
citizen under a free government to be clothed with the
elective franchise — based, as such claims are, upon the
natural rights of man — would require greater compass
than the limits of this paper would admit. There is no
subject, perhaps, in the whole range of human inquiry
'that has engaged so much speculative thought, and is so
much obscured by metaphysical reasoning as that of the
natural rights of man. Blackstone defines civil liberty to
80 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
be, "That of a member of society, and is no other thail
natural liberty, so far restrained by human laws, ( and no
farther), as is necessary and expedient for the general ad-
vantage of the public." Burke, in referring to this defini-
tion of the great expounder of the common law, suggested
the pertinent inquiry: "If we may be required to surren-
der a portion of our natural rights, why not all?" If we
sacrifice a portion of our rights, does not the amount so
sacrificed cease to be a question of principle, and the
whole argument in defense of natural rights, as a founda-
tion for any claim to the exercise of political power, is
surrendered — merged into the paramount interest of so-
ciety. However plausible political theories about the
natural rights of man may appear, and how well supported
by argument, which seems, by any logical test, to be ra-
tional and conclusive, yet the chief difificulty in giving
them practical application so as to recognize them as
great cardinal principles in government, lies in finding that
state of society to which they are adapted and will ope-
rate so as to promote liberty, law and order.
If the great body of political society is homogeneous,
identified in interests, feeling, and in every essential fact,
then the laws of unity and harmony will prevail, the
interests of all be promoted, and the great object and end
of government secured.
There can be no controversy about the proposition, in-
deed, it is a truism, that civil government is instituted to se-
cure the governed in the enjoyment of their rights. If we
assume, with the Red Republicans of France or the Amer-
ican Radicals, that all men have the same or equal rights,
it necessarily follows that it is impossible to organize so-
ciety, or to establish public order, without a surrender or
sacrifice of some of these rights. But, then, all men men
have not the same or equal rights. One man, for example,
who has the capacity to take care of his own interest, and
to govern himself in all the proper relations of Ufe, has the
right to do so. Hence it would be an act of oppression
THE NEGI*0 PROBLEM. 81
to place him, or his interest, under the control of another.
On the other hand, the child, or the man who has not the
capacity to take care of himgelf, or his interest, has a high
claim, if not a sacred right, to the guidance and control of
those who are wiser, and better and stronger than himself.
If this proposition is sound and true, in its application to
the rights and interest of man, in the mere social or pri-
vate relations of life, a fortiori, it becomes applicable in his
political relations. There can be no agency or influence
more disorganizing and destructive of the vital principles
of government, than the introduction of the communistic
theory that "All men have equal rights," It is the pre-
cursor of strife, the synonym of disorder, the counterpart
of revolution, and tt;e very genius of anarchy.
In the State of Georgia there are two separate and dis-
tinct races of men — thjs very antipodes of each ether — dif-
fering in the marked characteristics of color, origin, in-
stinct, habit, education, and in diversity of wants and con-
dition. One of these races is the owner of the soil, the
descendants and heirs of the men who obtained the origi-
nal charter from the crown of England, and who fought
afterwards to secure the autonomy of local rule. They
have established government, and founded all the institu-
tions that an intelligent and progressive people need, in a
career of civilization.
The other race were brought here as slaves, in conform-
ity with the recognized sentiment of the time. They were
sunk in abject ignorance, and degraded to the very lowest
scale of human existence ; had to be trained to proper
modes of subsistence by a forced abstinence from the
loathsome and savage practice of eating reptiles, mush-
rooms, and the raw herbs of the forest. They were raised
by slavery from this primitive state, and made to fill a
sphere of usefulness in the industrial department of the
State. Though emancipated from the rule of the master,
they are still children, in mental attainment, and moral dis.
82 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
cipline — the proper subjects for pupilage, control, guidance
support and instruction.
It would seem that a proper solution of the problem
before our people, is to continue these two populations
under the same repubhcan form of government, so that the
essential conditions of social order, obedience to law, the
security of person, respect for property, the remuneration
of labor, and the regularity of civil transactions, may be
reasonably assured. And we believe that the intelligent,
thinking mind of Georgia rests under the conviction that
this desirable end cannot be attained with universal suf-
frage.
In re-adjusting the basis of suffrage in Georgia (if the
Constitutional Convention to be holden in the near future
should deem such a measure politic), there is some diffi-
culty in determining the more preferable mode : whether
to fix it upon the basis of intelligence or property, or
quahfications embracing both of these features. In the
present condition of our voting population — with such a
large element of ignorance, it becomes essentially necessary
to require some degree of fitness for its exercise, evidenced
by the ability of the voter to " read and write the Consti -
tution of the State " (as the suffrage clause in the Constitu-
tion of Massachusetts has it, and we might adopt New
England ideas very safely in this direction, and to that
extent). This feature should be embraced, whether we go
beyond it or not. In the eighty five or ninety thousand
negro voters in the State, we perhaps would not be far
wrong (the opinion, however, is merely conjectural, in the
absence of any statement in the census reports, showing
the number of negro voters Avho cannot read and WTite) in
estimating the number that can read at 5,000. This rela-
tively small number exercising suffrage, would, in the
event they did not identify themselves with the great body
of patriotic white voters, by keeping on the color line, or
nearly all of them "floaters," be deprived of the power of
doing harm. The number of colored youths reaching
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. ^ S3
their majority, who have learned to read, would not prob-
ably exceed 2,500 year. This number, in addition to the
5,000 who are already supposed to meet the suffrage re-
quirement, would, we might say, in ten years,(counting the
increased number of youths reaching their majority annu-
ally, to make up the death rate and loss by emigration of
the original voters,) make the number of 30,000 voters.
By that time it would be probably ascertained what effect
negro voting to that extent would have upon public inter-
est — whether detrimental or otherwise — and the indications
could be met in the future with such remedies as the exi-
gencies demanded.
If a property quahfication was required, fixed at the sum
of ^200.00, in addition to that of an educational basis, it
would very probably reduce the number of colored voters
to one-half the number above stated, and would, in effect,
prevent the increase of the negro vote, by young negroes
reaching their majority, who could vote under an educa-
tional requirement.
The effect likely to be produced upon the negro popula-
tion disfranchised by one or both of these limitations upon
suffrage, would be passive and temporary. It was thrust
upon them unsohcited, and without the least effort upon
their part to gain it. They have not since cherished it as
a boon of any great value, in the sense of gratifying their
pride, stimulating their ambition, or elevating their man-
hood. The negro is only conscious of his sovereign right
when waked up from his usual lethargy by the news, to
him, of an impending election, with orders to be at the
polls on a certain day and hour, and if the necessary stim-
ulus has been brought to bear, he responds with alacrity —
enters the role of a suffrage slinger with all the abandon with
which he formerly went to a corn husking. The more in-
telligent and well-to-do class of negroes, who might be vo-
ters under either limitation, would view it with a feehng of
indifference, if not direct approval, as it would, in effect,
elevate their importance in comparison, and create a feeling
S4 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
somewhat of caste, gratifying to their pride of character.
It remains to be seen what would be the effect of limited
suffrage upon the class of white voters who would be exclu-
ded from the ballot-box by it. And herein lies the main diffi-
culty in extracting the poisoned arrows sent by radical dia-
blery into the body politic of the South. A constitutional
provision, or principle of law, may, in certain conditions of
society, be judicious and wholesome in its operations,
when, under a change of conditions, by new elements in-
troduced, differing in kind and nature, it may become alto-
gether inapplicable and impolitic. In the absence of the
late Constitutional Amendments, with the question of
suffrage untouched, there would have been no element in
the voting population of Georgia, that would, per se, have
rendered limited suffrage an imperative necessity. The
people of 'Georgia were entirely homogeneous — as thor-
oughly identified in sentiment and interest, as the political
society of a State could, in the nature of things, be. The
ignorant and poorer population, usually denominated the
lower class, have in no country manifested such qualities
of virtue, self-respect and manhood, as has been exhibited
by this class at the South. The institution of slavery,
which our abolition friends endeavored to make us believe
to be "the sum of all villainy," formed the substratum of
our society, and was tributary, in a measure, to that supe-
rior type of the lower classes at the South, than was to be
elsewhere found. Here the man of ignorance and pen-
ury, however severe the struggle with adverse fortune, and
however low.it might sink him in the depths of wretched-
ness, still felt there was an element below him whose
level he must not reach, and from which he must recoil.
The very thought rekindled his pride, and nerved him for
the conflicts of life. There are not a few at the present
time among the illiterate class, who are men of real worth,
have, by persevering industry, accumulated property, and
are esteemed in the sphere of their acquaintance as public
spirited and valued citizens. To withhold from such men.
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 85
who are independent in thought and action, the ballot,
would be difficult to reconcile with a sense of justice, and
could only be done in discharge of a paramount duty to
the State. To impose a property qualification would in
like manner, withhold the ballot from another class equally
worthy, and very probably with higher claims to the exer-
cise of such right.
The constitutional act of limiting suffi-age in Georgia,
upon either basis stated, would doubtless meet with oppo-
sition from the disfranchised class. It could not be reason-
ably expected that men would readily surrender a long-
exercised privilege, which they had been taught to regard
as "the badge of freemen," without some feeling of hu-
miliation. Its deprivation under existing circumstances,
would carry with it no individual debasement ; no mark of
dishonor, to blur the name or compromise the true worth
of character. It would rather be in the nature of those
sacrifices which patriotism and high sense of duty call
men to make, and whether it be to do, to forbear, or to
suffer, it is in the same line of honorable action, and will
always claim the meed of praise due to him that makes
the offering.
If it should be the matured and solemnly declared opin-
ion of the people of Georgia — spoken in a Constitutional
Convention of fairly-chosen representative men — that
abridged suffrage is imperiously demanded as a shield and
safeguard in the future, it will doubtless be acquiesced in
by all classes and conditions of our people.
The third consideration that enters into the expediency
of incorporating Hmited suffrage into the Constitution of
Georgia, as stated in the previous classification, is the
effect produced in diminishing the representation of Geor-
gia in Congress, as provided by the Fourteenth Amend-
ment.
Arguments that enter into the discussion of this branch
of the question of expediency, are to be drawn, for the
most part, by contrasting the interest the people of Geor-
86 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
gia have in, and the benefits that accrue to them from, the
State and Federal Governments respectively. Or the
argument might be put more appositely and pointedly, in
estimating or weighing any probable disadvantage or loss
to the people of Georgia from a diminished representation
in' Congress, against the direct and tangible evils of uni-
versal suffrage. We have already brought under review
some of the more prominent evils of universal suffrage,
which the reader, will keep in mind, will obviate the neces-
sity of any farther reference or discussion. It is proper,
in the first place, to ascertain to what extent Georgia's
representation in the lower branch of Congress would be
diminished, in case she restricted suffrage, and in the event
the Fourteenth Amendment was enforced. This amend-
ment provides, in case any State should abridge the right
of suffrage, that "the basis of representation therein
shall be reduced in the proportion v/hich the number
of such male citizens (disfranchised) shall bear to the whole
number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such
State. It cannot be definitely ascertained what would be
the representation of Georgia in Congress upon a basis of
limited suffrage in the State, owing to the absence of any
statement in the census reports, giving the whole number
of males over twenty-one years of age. We can on^y
approximate it by taking the highest vote polled since the
last census. The aggregate vote polled at the presidential
election in 1872, (we have not seen a statement of the
consolidated vote of Georgia in the late October and No-
vember election,) was (if our memory is not at fault) about
187,000. We find in the census reports that there are
21,899 ilhterate white males over twenty-one years of age,
and 100,551 colored, making, in the aggregate, 122,450,
to be deducted from the whole number of males over
twenty-one years of age in the State. Upon calculations
made, in which the vote of Georgia furnishes partial and
incomplete data, we find that the Congressional represen-
tation of the State would be reduced to four members, or
THE NEGRO PROBLLM. 8^
a loss of mora than one-half of her present delectation in
Congress. This would be a great reduction in the Con-
gressional representation of the State, and the gross ine-
quality with other States would be manifest.
If we consider the functional relations of the Federal
Government to the people of the States, and its constitu-
tional relation to the States as a political body, we shall
find that the duties of the Federal Government to the peo-
ple directly, and to the States, are few and simple, and that
the benefits which accrue, with the exception of protection
against foreign aggression and domestic violence, (the
latter of little significance and of doubtful utility,) and that
of carrying the mails, are of but little practical and intrinsic
value. We would be understood as speaking of the posi-
tive interest measured by actual results, that the people
have in, or receive from, the State and Federal Govern-
ments in the dual relation. We would not underrate the
value and importance of the National Government as an
integral part of our political system. In the sphere of its
constitutional duties, and wisely and justly administered as
it was for the most part, previous to the late conflict, it
was truly "the best government the sun has ever shone
upon." It was modeled after a careful and profound study
of the best systems of government in the past, with new
and striking features introduced, that marked a turning
point — formed an epoch in the history of constitutional
government. The American system of government is
complex and pecuh'ar — differing in many important re-
spects from those that have obtained in the past or have an
existence at the present time. The distinguishable fea-
tures from that of other systems of free confederate gov-
ernments is the wise provision by its framers In the distri-
bution of power and duties between the Federal and State
Governments, and the judicious adjustment of the co-ordi-
nate branches of the Federal head — each with its separate
and distinct functions, moving in harmony in forwarding
measures of public policy, and each in turn serving as a
88 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
check upon the assumption of unauthorized power 'by the
other, in such way as to preserve the balance and maintain
the integrity of the whole. The checks and limitations
imposed upon majorities, in legislating upon public ques-
tions in which there may be conflicting interest, and in
which due regard should be shown to the rights of minor-
ities, have their foundation in the most just and enlightened
conceptions of political science.
The great cardinal principle that "all governments de-
rive their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
is the gist and substance of democratic institutions, and its
discovery and incorporation into our political system sheds
imperishable renown on "the Fathers of the Republic."
De Toqueville, in his " Democracy of America," charac-
terizes it as "a wholly novel theory, which may be con-
sidered as a great discovery in modern political science.'
Mr. Stephens, in his " Constitutional View of the War Be-
tween the States," in speaking cf it, says : " From this
simple discovery did indeed follow the most momentous
consequences. From it sprang that unparalleled career of
prosperity and greatness which marked our history under
its beneficent operations for more than three-quarters of a
century." But, alas ! that " three-quarters of a century "
should have marked a period in " the beneficent opera-
tion " of this great principle of civil liberty, and that
another era should have been inaugurated, in which the
hated dogma that " might makes right" became the dom-
inant idea.
The lessons of history, corroborated by our own bitter
experience, teach us that the best systems of govern-
ment, based upon the sanctity of constitutional law, and
administered for a time with wisdom and justice, may be
perverted in the madness of an hour, and become the worst
instrument of oppression. We have introduced this brief
generalization of some of the leading features of the Fed-
eral Government, not for the special purpose of elucida-
tion, or so much as an argument germain to the subject
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. S9
under notice, but rather with the view of pointing a
moral.
The great error of the South previous to the late sec-
tional war, and one that contributed indirectly and without
design, to bringing it on, was the absorbing interest felt
and manifested in Federal politics. This was due in a
measure to the constitution of Southern society. The dif-
fusion of wealth, and the leisure it afforded, the liberal
education of the better classes, the absence of diversified
industries to engage the thought and direct the energies of
a people, chivalrous by nature, and taught to command in
the mastery of an inferior race, were circumstances that
naturally required a broad field of interest and excitement,
and this was readily found in that of Federal politics, un
der our free institutions, with the road to political prefer-
ment open alike to all ; our young men who aspired to
distinction, turned readily to politics as more likely to se-
cure to them the rewards of ambition. Hence, every
recurring election was looked to as an occasion of deep
interest, the issues involved were magnified by the politi-
cians, the people took political excitement as by contagion,
party spirit ran high, and often the real issues before the
people were lost sight of in the zeal for party success.
Notwithstanding the South had accorded to her the palm
for eloquence and statesmanship in the National Legisla-
ture, and furnished the larger number of Presidents, yet
the North gathered the fruits of substantial victory in her
protective tariffs, improvement of harbors and rivers, and in
the general disbursements from the Federal treasury that
went to develop and enrich her section.
While this all-absorbing intererst in National politics
brought no substantial good to the South, it proved a seri-
ous loss in the diversion of her best talents, and its most
valuable service from purely State interest, where it was
most needed, and could have been most profitably ex-
pended.
The South need not expect to share more liberally in
90 THE NEGRO TROBLEM.
the favor and patronage of the General Government in
the future than in the past. Georgia, in particular, will
not be likely to receive any substantial aid in the direction
that it is needed, and in form that will benefit her people
at large. She has no rivers that are great channels of
commerce, that need the fostering aid of Congressional
appropriation. Her harbors upon the coast, where of any
commercial importance, become objects of national interest,
in the way of promoting the public revenue, and will re-
ceive the necessary aid from Congress whether our repre-
sentation is diminished or not. Any great measures of in-
terest to the States, like that of distributing the proceeds
from the sale of public lands, among the States, for school
purposes, as was begun a few years ago by donation of land
scrip — and again agitated in the last Congress respectively
for a like purpose — if adopted by that body as the policy that
shall govern that great interest in the future, will be dis-
tributed upon the basis of population or illiteracy in the
States, and Georgia, in such case, would receive her quota
irrespective of her numerical strength in Congress. As
slavery is out of the way, and there will probably be no
more constitutional tinkering on the negro question, we
may reasonably hope, so far as the South is concerned,
that sectional issues will be put to rest in the future. As the
war feeling dies out, considerations of interest will prompt
the North to be more just, if not generous. The intimate
commercial relations between the sections — the chief
market the South affords for Northern manufactures and
Western produce, and considerations growing out of the
public debt, will have a conservative influence in shaping
legislation in Congress, ard operate as moral advantages
to the South.
Georgia, in her impoverished condition, with her people
groaning under the weight of private and public indebted-
ness, with taxation necessarily high to meet her maturing
obhgations and current expenses, and with all her indus-
tries sharing their proportional part in the general financial
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 91
distress, certainly demands the highest endeavors and most
faithful Labor of every true son in her behalf.
The public press of Georgia, conducted, for the most
part, by men of ability, culture and public spirit, should
lend its potent aid in building up our languishing industries.
The best ability — combining practical thought with work-
ing capacity, and thorough identity with every interest in
the State — should be brought into our Legislature. Inter-
est in Federal politics should be subordinated to the para-
mount claims of Georgia's local interest. That class of
statesmanship which ignores local State interest, and
plumes itself for the arena of Federal politics, and seeks
a seat in the national legislature, as its chosen field of
duty and honor, should be placed at a discount in Georgia.
As unity, strength and internal peace are essential to
the prosperity and well-being of political communities,
our people should endeavor to make the political body
homogeneous, by removing from it that element that will
continue to be the author of confusion and discord. And
if a diminished representation in Congress, by which Geor-
gia will lose five of her members, be the price and penalty
for shielding her interest from the perils of universal suf-
frage, then let her pay the one and incur the other.
THE MORAL CONDITION OF THE SOUTHERN NEGRO.
The moral and religious aspect of the negro race at the
South, is not merely a matter of concern to the Christian
mind of our section, but invites the thoughtful attention
of all, who properly estimate the value of moral agencies,
in upholding the integrity of law, in the promotion of
public order, and in promoting the well-being of society.
The consciousness cannot be divested of a measure of ap-
prehension to our people, in knowing that there are four
and one-half millions of people of another race, intermin-
gled with them in a civil, political and industrial relation,
who are ignorant and depraved — under but little moral
restraint in any sense — and held to legal obedience, for
92 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
the most part, from the fear and dread of punishment the
law inflicts upon its violators.
Although the negro, by coming in contact with civilizing
influences, has been far removed from his primitive state of
barbarism, and made considerable advance towards the
goal of a better life, yet he has not reached that stage of
mental and moral development that would entitle him to
a place of equal rank among civilized communities. The
test which the enhghtened opinion of the present day im-
poses, when the claims of any people to civilization are
asserted, whether they form a separate political com-
munity, under a government of their own, or whether
they are segregated into a distinct class under an enlight-
ened government, are, for the most part, tests of a moral
character. There may be material development, evinced
in the acquisition of wealth and its proper use in securing
the conveniences, the comforts, and luxuries of life, and
farther evidenced by familiarity with art, literature, and
the refinements of social life ; yet, if the moral qualities
of truth, justice, and humanity — imparted by the teach-
ings of Christianity — are wanting, it falls far short of true
civiHzation. The acceptance of this proposition, as a pos-
tulate, at this day, obviates the necessity of its illustration
by instituting comparisons between the most enlightened
states of society in ancient times, with that of modern
European or American civiHzation.
If we separate the negro, by that wall of partition which
color and caste have made immovable, and insuperable,
and judge him as a distinct class, upon his attainments,
capabilities, and moral status, we will place him without
the pale of civilization.
In discussing the moral condition of the negro, it
is not our purpose to deal with that class of facts that
are simply conjectural, or of doubtful import, but those
which present themselves in clear and palpable outline,
whose force and significance are felt and seen by every
observant man at the South. The broad and unmistakable
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 93
facts that are presented in the statistics of crime in our
State, showing a steady increase every year — the daily
scenes that are enacted in our criminal courts, to say noth-
ing of the criminal practices in the way of petit larceny,
breach of the peace, adultery, and other evidences of de-
pravity, of which no legal cognizance is taken, go to make
up a record for the negro that is appalling to contemplate.
Those facts presenting themselves in the daily life of the
negro, and the main features that go to make up his his-
tory, are not merely phenomenal in their nature, or like the
outcropings of evil that is produced by disturbing the nor-
mal conditions of society, but have their origin in part in
the natural depravity of the negro, and are partly attribu-
table to the absence, or want, of proper moral and religious
instruction. The bread riots that sometimes occur in large
cities, the strikes among the labor class which often give
rise to a turbulent spirit, and at times accompanied with
violence and outrage, and the political and other disturb-
ances in society, in which reason is subordinate to passion,
and evil results follow, have an inciting cause that produce
them — are simply phenomenal in their character, and after
expending the energy it aroused, society again assumes its
normal condition.
The [case presented by the totally emancipated negro is
quite different. A large, per cent, of the wrong-doing and
evil which he inflicts upon society are attributable to motives
that are inherent in his nature — the bad impulses that flow
from a low state of morals. He may be quietly at work in
the field, or passing leisurely along the highway, free from
all mental or emotional excitement at the time, and yet, if
occasion presents itself, he may perpetrate (as the newspa-
per press is constantly testifying) the most revolting act in
the catalogue of crime. He may wake up from a quiet
sleep, with the demands of his nature satisfied, or ample
food at hand, and no immediate want pressing him, when
he will go out and commit a theft of something of trifling
value, and in many cases will prefer to pilfer a small article
94 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
when he knows the owner would give it to him by simply
asking for it. It is thought by many who have constant
dealing with the negro in a business way, that he has less
regard for truth now than when a slave, when, in that state
an untruth would oftentimes shield him from correction, and
seemingly make the temptation to evade truth stronger then
than the ordinary motives that may now actuate him.
If the statistics of crime, which usually afford the most
reliable data for judging the moral status of a people, are
to enter into any estimate we may make of that of the
Southern blacks at the present time, we are forced to infer
that he is retrograding, in this particular, the farther he re-
cedes from a state of slavery. The United States census
report, as yet, furnish no complete data upon this point, as it
only embraced the five years of the negro's history since his
civil relations have been changed. The next census report
will be looked to with profound interest by all those who
are watching the tendency of the colored race at the South
in his present state of freedom. W^e have seen estimates,
based upon the number of annual convictions for crime by
our State courts, which fix the rate of increase in criminal
convictions at ten per cent, for the last ten years.
The inquiry has doubtless suggested itself to every
thoughtful mind, why has the negro exhibited a moral
retrogression, under circumstances seemingly more favor-
able to his elevation in this point of view than those that
environed him in a state of slavery? And if slavery was
" the sum of all villainy," as the abolitionists characterized
it, certainly the converse is true, and that a liberation from
the shackels of slavery would bring with it ameliorating in-
fluences that would at once begin to lift the negro from the
depths of degradation, and make his ascent to a higher
standard of morals an assured fact. If we should examine
into the causes which have operated to the disadvantage
and detriment of the negro in a moral point of view, and
especially those influences that have changed for the worse
his mere moral conduct, we would doubtless find them to be
THE KEGRO PROBLEM. 95
such as should not go to the prejudice of the negro. The
change in his civil status, operating upon him in a way
that he could not understand, and bringing with it a new
order of discipline that was not remedial, and wholly v,i\-
suited to his nature, has, in effect, tended to give rein rather
than check his propensity to evil. Another cause of his
moral decline, and one that most probably has contributed
as much to it as the one just stated, is the great v/ant of
proper religious instruction to aid and direct him in pursuit
of a better life.
And we doubt not that a careful and proper examination
into the state of religion that obtains among the negroes
of the South, would open up to view the broadest field for
missionary effort that can be found under the canopy of
heaven. In the last twenty-five years of slavery there was
a deep interest manifested in the spiritual welfare of the
Southern slaves by the Christian people of the South, and
there were regular and systematic efforts expended in their
behalf by Southern churches, that not only absolved them
from any blame or reproach, (as was often the case in the
indiscriminate abuse of slavery by Northern fanatics,) for
not providing for the spiritual needs of the negro, but show
on the other hand (as we shall verify by statistics) schemes
of broadest philanthropy and religious enterprise which
have not been exceeded in the missionary labors of any
other people.
The following statement, made up from the annual re-
ports of the churches named, in the year 1859, shows the
extent to which the slave population of the South had been
brought under the influence of Christianity and led to em-
brace its truths :
Methodist Episcopal Church, South (colored members) 188,000
Missionary and Anti-Missionary Baptists (colored members) 175,000
Presbyterian Church (colored members) 38,000
Protestant Episcopal Church (colored members) 7,000
Christian Church (colored memcers) 10,000
All other denominations (estim'Ued) 35,000
Total 453.000
96 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
The remark was made in one of the reports quoted,
that the number of slaves brought into the Christian
church, as a consequence of the introduction of the Afri-
can race into the United States, exceeds all the converts
made throughout the heathen world by the whole mission-
ary force employed by Protestant Christendom. Statistics
compiled from authentic data in 1859, gives the whole
number of converts in the Prptest=int Christian missions in
Asia, Africa, Pacific Islands, West Indies, and North
American Indians at 250,000; thus showing that the
number of African converts in the Southern States was al-
most double the whole number of heathen converts. These
great results, showing the achievements of combined
Christian effort at the South for the negro, necessitated
the use of systematic and far-reaching plans — engaging the
services of a considerable [number of Christian men, and
a large expenditure of money. Those of our people who
were not connected with the church, and who owned slave
property, were generally actuated by humane and consid-
erate views upon the subject of religious instruction for
the slave. The extensive missionaryj^work, embracing al.
most the whole area of slave population, was largely sup-
plemented by the labors of Southern ministers in the reg-
ular pastoral work of the whites, in preaching to the blacks
whenever opportunity presented itself.
The slave population of the South in 1860 numbered
3,953,760; by calculation we find that 11| per cent, of the
aggregate, and more than 50 per cent, of the adult negro
population were members of the church. Massachusetts,
or any other Northern State, will not show in their church
statistics results so favorable to the success of Christian
effort as was here exhibited among the slaves of the
South.
We do not present this as any argument in defense of
the institution of slavery, but simply to show what was
done for the moral improvement of the negro in slavery,
by way of vindicating our people from the malignant and
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 9/
mendacious assaults of the fanatics of the North, who, now
merged into the Radical party, are still rehearsing the
stale slanders of injustice and inhumanity against the peo-
ple of the South. The extent to which the negro was
vindicated by the disinterested Christian efforts of the
Southern slaveholder, during his term of servitude, may
be inferred by contrasting the state of moral and religious
advancement attained at his manumission, with the be-
nighted condition of savage life in his native lands.
But when the Federal ukase was issued and put in force,
liberating the slave from the rule of the master, and con-
ferring shortly afterward, civil and political rights upon
the manumitted blacks, have begun at once an utter un-
doing and complete obliteration of all that had been ac-
complished for the spiritual good of the negro in the past,
and has, during his decade of freedom, been drifting back-
wards, and if not arrested and put under better influences,
will very probably have reached such a demoralized and
corrupt state in religion, within the next ten years, as to
make his entrance upon the practice of pagan rites no
improbable event.
It may be thought by some that this view is prejudicial
and even unjust, that there is really nothing in the present
religious state of the negro'to warrant the assumption that
he has deteriorated in the practice of Christian virtues, or
shown weakening of religious principle to such an extent as
to justify such conclusions. We are told that the negroes are
a church-going people, nearly all of them are members of
some religious society, and manifest a devotional spirit,
and seem, above all other people, to enter into the enjoy-
ment of religious worship. This very fact, coupled with
their bad system of morals, and the perversion of the true
spirit of Christianity in their worship, forms the worst
feature in the negroes' case. If there was an abatement
of religious fervor, and the falling back of individual mem-
bers into a state of spiritual coldness conesponding with
the state of morals, and always guaged by it, as honest
7
98 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
people do who have an enlightened conscience, and follow
religion as a matter of principle, there would be far more
hope for the negro, and justify the belief that he could
work out the problem of his spiritual good, unaided by
the kind offices and oversight of the white people.
The race-feeling that manifests itself in the instinctive
desire to cut loose from all association with other people,
and form a homogeneous society of their own, as the infe-
rior races always do, when left to their natural bent, was
exhibited by the Southern negroes in their religion before
developing itself in any other form. The first year of their
emancipation was marked by an earnest purpose to sever
their church relations with those denominations at the
South, that had manifested the deepest interest in their reli-
gious welfare, without waiting for any manifestation on
the part of the whites, that a retention of their colored
membership was not desirable, but in many instances ab-
solved the connection against the counsels and entreaty of
the paternal church. It .was seen at once that any op-
position to the wisk of the negroes to sever their church
relations, would be futile and unavailing, and that he must,
for a time, be left to the fearful experiment of his own
spiritual guidance, with all his inherent depravity and un-
reason operating to increase the hazard he was undergo-
ing.
Immediately upon the close of the war, the Northern
Methodist Church entered upon the execution of plans
that had already been devised, and cherished with the
most ardent expectations — that of incorporating the whole
negro population of the South into its folds. With all the
zeal and unwisdom of the iconoclast, they entered upon
the appointed mission, self-assured that all obstacles to its
consummation would be removed — if necessary, by physi-
cal force — and that the most signal success would crown
the effort. The purpose was evidently two-fold — political
and ecclesiastical ; the first to strengthen and consolidate
the power of the Radical party and " secure the fruits of
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 99
the war," and the second was to swell the numerical
strength of their church by adding another million of
members, and make it the grandest and most glorious
epoch in its history. It selected men with especial fitness
and adaptation for the work in hand — men whose intellects,
education and training if it had made them gentlemen, had
not given them any very clear conceptions of the duties of
Christian gentlemen. They came with the idea that military
conquest of the South by the Federal forces implied a
complete surrender of every right, civil, political and re-
ligious, and, as their church was pre-eminently the one of
"moral ideas" and religious progress, it was its preroga-
tive to come in and take possession of the Southern Meth-
odist Church property, (the legal title to which had been
an controversy twenty years before, and settled" by the
highest judicial tribunal in the country,) with the purpose
and intent of appropriating it for the use of the negroes^
and such whites as they might proselyte, and bring into
their organization.
They established church papers as one of the instru-
ments of their propaganda, which were designed to circulate
among the ignorant negroes and low classes of white peo-
ple, not for the purpose of imparting scriptural truth to
their benighted minds, but to inflame their prejudices and
passions by falsehood and defamation. Money, which
was recognized by them as the sinews of other contests
than that of war, was freely drawn from their ple-
thoric treasury, and offered as a subsidy to impecunious
ministers at the South, whose services might be available
in the plan of "disintegration and absorption." But the
Southern negro, with all his obtuseness and gullibility, was
not to be caught in the gospel net of Northern Methodists
that had been spread with such earnest expectation. In
the very overtures of the Northern Methodists, to the
Southern negro, there seems to be a repellant force
brought into play. The coldness, cant and hypocracy of
puritanical philanthropy was instinctively felt by the un-
100 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
suspecting negro, and like the negative forces under the
laws of affinity, no effect was produced, leaving the matter
upon which they were acting undisturbed.
The cause of such a signal failure was, doubtless, partly
due to the organization of what is known as the African M.
E. Church, which possesed a peculiarly attractive feature
to the negro at this time, on account of its formation and
entire government, being independent of any dictation or
control of the white race. The springing up of this inde-
pendent negro church, just at this juncture, although it
possessed but little inherent soundness or element of good
for the negro, was, if not providential, at least, a stroke
of good fortune for the South. And though it was a
poh'tico-religious affair, it was purely in the interest of
the negro, and was not made, we think, the vehicle in
carrying forward Ihe dirty schemes of the carpet-bag class
of radical politicians. Conducted purely on the color-
line in religion and in pohtics, it doubtless had a good deal
to do in securing the political coalition between " Blifil
and Black George," a combination of the puritan and the
negro, making, in this compound, a political vampire that
was fast sapping the life-blood of the South. If the
Methodists of the North had met with any considerable
degree of success, in bringing the negroes of the South into
their church, it would, at that time, have been the cause
of unmixed evil to the peace and welfare of both races
at the South. The conditions of success, as they thought
and as their actions confirmed, were to play upon the pre-
judices of the negro, so as to alienate him from his then
existing church relations, and to have kept him perma-
nently in their society, which would have necessitated the
continuance of the iniquitous policy that had brought him in.
It would be no easy task to mark out the devious and
uncertain path the Southern negro has traveled during
the last ten years of his religious history, and equally
as diflicult to define his present state. With his severance
from the Southern churches, he no longer desired the
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 101
instructions and spiritual oversight of their ministers,
but sought out and obtained, without difficulty, spir-
itual guides among his own race, who have generally
" darkened counsel," and led him into error and untruth,
more hurtful and damaging than would have been the
absence of all privilege and religious effort. There seems
to be among them a penchant for preaching. Their
ambition and aspirations seem to lead them in that way.
It is not unfrequently the case, that the most ignorant
and immoral among them, whose total unfitness for the
sacred ofiice is manifest to all of them, are called to
ministerial functions, and enter upon them without any ap-
parent change in moral conduct, yet wholly acceptable
to the flock they may serve. Nearly all the colored
politicians, if not engaged in preaching before their ad-
vent into politics, soon become preachers, and are doubt-
less prompted to do so from seeing the influence wielded
by those who exercise the latter office, and thus com-
bine the two to increase their popularity and add to their
personal aggrandisement. Out of the number of an half
dozen within our acquaintance, we do not know more than
one who bears an unexceptional moral character. If the
sources of information that come to us through their own
people are trust-worthy, we are led by it to the belief that
their preachers are very often the worst men among them
— below the moral level of the average negro — to which
must be added the greater sin of sacrilege. The better
class of their preachers, who are no doubt sincere and
honest in their calling, rarely evince any ability or disposition
to inculcate a moral principle or fix a religious truth in the
minds and hearts of their hearers. Their preachers being
ignorant men, who know nothing of analyzing a principle
or illustrating a scriptural truth, address their people in pas-
sionate utterances, with vehemence of manner, until both
preacher and audience are wrought up to the highest pitch
of excitement, which, in cooling down, leaves no ingrafting
of the Word, to take hold upon the heart and moral nature,
102 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
and strengthen them for the trials and temptations that
come afterwards. To attend or pass near one of their re-
ligious meetings, one cannot be otherwise than impressed,
when their feeUngs are fully wrought upon, with the deep
earnestness that characterizes their worship. The kind of
services that are quiet and undemonstrative, seem to impress
them but little, and they will remain listless and very fre-
quently go to sleep, if the order is not changed. Singing
in the loud stentorian tenor that they usually render it in,
seems to raise them to the pathetic and rapturous state
of feeling at once, and then, after napping over the
sermon, they will rise with the song and enjoy an ecstacy of
feeling, that is given vent to in the wildest and most
labored vociferatioon.
If we consider the character of their worship, the spirit
that pervades it, and the blind and incompetent leaders
who are called to their religious instruction and over-
sight, we are not surprised to find them retrograding,
and tending in a course that will lead them away from
the true worship into error and superstition of the grossest
kind. Those of our people who have taken any pains
to look into the present religious state of the negro,
cannot but see that the true spirit of worship is being
perverted and corrupted to an extent already, that is
really alarming to those who can feel any interest in
their well-being. With nearly the whole adult popula
tion in the church, with a punctuality in attendance upon
religious service exceeding that of the white members
of the church, and with seemingly the highest state of
religious enjoyment, yet we see no improvement in moral
conduct, no diminution of crime, no sense of the degra-
dation it should bring to the race, to give hope that
ameliorating agencies were at work to raise them to the
plane of a better life. We have already referred to the
depravity that led them to acts of wrong-doing when
free from any exciting cause, and it is no less true that
this uncontrollable tendency to evil deeds supervenes so
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 1C3
closely upon their religious excitement, as to divest the
latter of any moral effect whatever. It is said, and the
often repetition gives it claims to credulity, that these
people, in returning from church, with their feelings
scarcely cooled down from the fervor and glow of reli-
gious excitement, will descend to the low and debasing
practice of the sexual sin, which their incontinent nature
leads them to commit. The moral faculty we call con-
science, seems to be held in a state of abeyance, if not
one of utter extinction. There is, no doubt, in their
moral nature the germ of a conscience, but it has been so
little cultivated and improved upon, and so often abused,
in that class of vices particularly, that have an origin in
mere animal instincts, that it is rarely quickened into life
so as to offer any restraint upon the practice of their
besetting sins. And herein lies the difficulty of intro-
ducing any wholesome and permanent reformation upon
the moral and religious character of the negro race.
The instincts of his animal nature are so strong as to de-
stroy anything like an equilibrium between it and the
moral sense, and hence the will-power, which asserts itself
in the white race and gives them ability to determine and
act, whether right or wrong, is so weak in the negro's
nature, as to rarely assert itself in shaping and determining
a moral action.
It is evident that the negro is corrupting the form, as
well as perverting the true spirit, of worship, by introdu-
cing secular elem.ents that must soon weaken and destroy
his respect and regard for the church as a sacred institu-
tion. Soon after his investment with political rights, he
began to mingle politics and religion at the church — ma-
king a hobby of first one and then the other — often so
confounding the two as to be in doubt which had the
higher claim upon his homage. Their churches (particu-
larly in the country) have been, during political campaigns,
a sort of conclave, where they met for the purpose of party
drill, and arrange for carrying out the designs of their
104 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
party leaders. If they are free from political excitement,
some other secular interest, or caprice, that engages their
attention collectively, takes its place, and is brought for-
ward as a matter belonging to the church, and considered
with the same gravity as if it was in reality a religious duty.
It appears that the disciphne which obtains in their churches,
amounts almost to a nullity, owing to their lax and imper-
fect ideas of moral principles, and total v/ant of adminis-
trative capacity.
The inconsistencies that are so glaring and palpable in
the profession and practice of religion, are, we think, not
so much a thing of design and purpose, as it is a want: of
moral perception, and the positive virtue of moral courage.
The whole race seems to view religion as something apart
from, and independent of, moral principle, and the Deca-
logue itself as an obsolete code or unmeaning something,
of no more efficacy or binding force than the ceremonial
law of the Mosaic period is to the people of the Christian
era. Hypocrisy, that very often seeks to veil the moral
obligations of religious people, in a sphere above the
negro, and where it may be practiced with so much art
and skill as to "deceive the very elect," is not the beset-
ting sin of the negro. In his religion, as in his vices, he
is true to nature and follows her promptings. The negro,
even of mature years, needs moral training and discipline
like the child, in a way that he can understand. Simple
moral truths, such as are taught in the child's catechism,
(though it need not be in that form,) should be presented
to him in the way of preaching, lecturing, or other form
that will impress them upon his understanding, and form
the basis of a moral character upon vviiich may be founded
a religion of substance and reality.
In portraying the state of morals, and that of religion,
that exists among the negroes at the South, we have en-
deavored to avoid anything like suppositions or exaggera-
ted statements, founding the views expressed upon facts
that came to us from what we deemed trustv/orthy sources,
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 105
and, for the most part, that class of facts that come within
the knowledge of every Southern man, who has give"
any thought to the subject, and has had opportunity for
observation. Christianity, we are taught, is a primary
element of progress, and if the state of religion that ob-
tains among our Southern negro population is likely to be-
come so perverted, and so utterly demoralized, as to deprive
it of its inherent force and vitality, it then becomes a seri-
ous question for the religious mind of the South, whether
missionary effort should not be directed in its behalf.
Laying aside the promptings of Christian philanthropy,
and viewing the condition of the negro in a cold, abstract
sense, we might say that we are not responsible for his
morals, or his condition, nor should have any concern for
his proper religious training, or his destiny beyond the
present life. The negro, it is true, desires those of his
own race to be his spiritual advisers, and has withdrawn
and stands aloof in religion, as well as in politics, from
the contact and teachings of the white man. But this
may be said of any race or people who have a religion of
their own, or who desire teachers and leaders of the kin-
dred race. To apply this argument in a general sense,
would, in effect, stop all missionary effort, and suspend
the aggressive forces of Christianity. If missionary labor
in behalf of the Southern blacks were needful and benefi-
cial before their m.anumission, (as we have already shown
that they were liberally expended, with the most encoura-
ging results,) certainly the demand is as great, and the
field as inviting, now as then. The chief difficulties that
seem to present themselves in the way of our Southern
churches, in resuming their former relation to the negro
race, and the work it involved, are: First, the indisposi-
tion, on 'the part of the negroes, to accept such gratuitous
labors in their behalf; and, secondly, the want of means
to carry on such enterprises. These obstacles, if properly
examined, will be found to be apparent rather than real.
The first, we suppose, is always encountered in missionary
lOG THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
labors in foreign lands, where a new system of religion is
to be planted upon the uprooting and removal of an old
one. In the case of the Southern negro, the trouble does
not arise from any conflict of religious opinion, but merely
supposed prejudice against the source from which mission-
ary labors in his interest would come. The negro is docile
and submissive in disposition, is not very tenacious in his
opinion, and his race feeling will very probably yield, to
some extent, and far enough to accept the kind and un-
selfish offers of religious aid from Southern churches.
The second difficulty stated, is that of a want of means to
carry on anything like an organized and systematic reli-
gious work among the blacks of the South. It is true
that our Southern churches, as to monied resources, but
reflect the condition of our people, are straitened in cir-
cumstances, and not more than able to support their min-
istry, and carry on the missionary and other enterprises
they have in hand. While we do not deem it proper to
discuss, in this paper, the ways and means by which our
people may inaugurate and carry on schemes for the moral
and religious improvement of the colored race in their
midst, yet we can state, with some degree of assurance,
that if the Christian mind of the South is convinced of
the fact that these people, in their present isolated and
somewhat neglected condition, are drifting away from the
moorings of Christianity,^ that liberal and energetic plans
will be devised, commensurate with the task to be accom-
plished. Any other supposition upon the probable course
our people may take, in a matter of such deep concern,
would do violence to that liberal and enlightened Christian
sentiment that so thoroughly pervades them. These peo-
ple, though of a different race, and socially ostracised from
us, and though they have justly incurred our displeasure
in an alliance with our political foe in his efforts to impov-
erish, insult and degrade us, still they are endeared to us
by strong ties in the past ; for willing obedience, for faith-
ful service, for tender and loyal attachment as long as the
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 107
relation of master and servant existed. They have been
temporarily alienated from us, by appeal and argument
presented to them in such way that we could not reasona-
bly expect them to resist it. They are still — the great
mass of them — homeless and dependent, upon our lands,
at our doors, and around our firesides, as laborers and
household servants. They are not only near us, but as
entirely dependent upon us now as they were in a state of
slavery. As to all means of securing within themselves
proper religious instruction, and as to energy and self-di-
recting power, they are but children, and must find the
needed aid elsewhere, or suffer its deprivation. From our
relation to them in the present, as well as past, arises an
obligation at once imperative, and, to us, of solemn and
momentous significance, to make provision for their moral
advancement, to the extent that we are able, even if it
should require the abandonment of foreign missionary
fields. The question we are discussing in this connection,
is entirely new, not having been raised in the religious
press, or noticed elsewhere, as we have seen, but it will
very probably, at an early day, assume shape and propor-
tion that will bring it into prominence as one of real, if
not of vital importance.
If it should be found upon survey, and a careful exami-
nation of the field, that there are real and urgent grounds
for interposing religious effort by our Southern Christian
people, in behalf of the negro, then the work should begin
in earnest, else efforts by other people will be aimed in that
direction. The Methodist church, (North,) though foiled
and discomfitted in a measure, has not, we opine, aban-
doned its long-cherished object of absorbing the Southern
negro in its organization. The meagre success attained at
a few points, gives it encouragement to hold them, and
will doubtless in the future prosecute their work of evan-
gelizing the Southern blacks with more zealous efforts than
in the past. If the past and present animus of this church
was such as to give assurance that the Christian labors it
108 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
might expend in the South in the future would be free from
the contaminating influence of pohtics, and the more odi-
ous doctrine of social equality, we could welcome them
in our midst, and bid them good speed ; but we can have
no guaranty whatever that such will be the case. If this
church should establish a permanent hold in the South,
v*ith extensive ramifications in its work of evangelizing the
colored race, though the effort might be attended witli but
little success, yet the opportunity for operating upon the
prejudice of the negro, and fermenting discord, would be
too inviting for that pragmatic and busy people to neglect.
It has been repeatedly stated within the last year or two,
in the newspaper press, that the Catholics have designs
upon the Southern negroes, and are maturing plans that
are not merely tentative, or experimental, but systematic
and far-reaching — leaving out of calculation for success no
factor that would be considered necessary to attain it. The
preparation for this special work at the South is said to em-
brace, as the first step, the education of fifty young colored
men in the Papal collegts at'Rome, with special training in
the Jesuitical orders, who, operating with their own color at
the South, having peculiar advantages of access, and
sympathy of race, as well as fitness for the task, wo'uld
constitute a working force that Avould seem to give, upon
the very threshold of the movement, the most favorable
augery of success. Whatever may be alleged against the
Roman church in the propagation of its doctrine and tenets
in the past, it cannot be denied that the same earnestness
and fixedness of purpose actuates it to-day that it did in
any period of its eventful history in the past. The fiery
zeal, the assertion and use of temporal power, the terrible
inquisition with its instruments of torture — the rack, the
thumb-screw, and the stake — as means to subserve its ends,
have, under the better influences of modern civilization, as
well as lessons of wisdom taught it by the logic of events,
been abandoned for more peaceful, but no less effective
agencies. It is establishing colleges and asylums, we see,
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 109
in almost every State in the Union, is carrying on a benefi-
cent and commendable work in educating orphan and pau-
per children wherever it can gather them up, and is, doubt-
less, doing as much, if not more, charitable and philanthropic
labor in the interest of suffering humanity in the United
States than the Protestant churches combined. The liberal
and enlightened policy pursued by this church in our own
country, with its constantly widening field of charitable
work, is fast removing the prejudices and the traditional
animosity that formerly existed in the minds of Protestants,
and we find to-day a feeling of tolerance, if not of appro-
bation, towards its seeming progressive course in the United
States.
If our Protestant churches in the South, upon a careful
survey of the field, shall not deem it expedient, or desira-
ble to enter upon the work of re-establishing thc'r former
relation to the Southern blacks, either partially, in an
advisory capacity, or wholly, by incorporating them into
their churches and furnishing them ministerial aid, then
the next best service that could be rendered to the negro
would be an acquiescence in, if not an encouragement of,
his absorption into the Catholic Church.
It may be asked what good would result from an incor-
poration of the Southern negro into the Catholic Church,
either to the negro himself or to society at large. We
would answer by saying that it is the form of worship best
suited to the negro, though it may be in the greatest de-
gree objectionable, as a religion suitable and adapted to a.
highly intelligent and reasoning people. The splendid ritual
of the Catholic Church, with its imposing ceremonies, its
pomp and pageantry, and the impressive devotional feature
in the worship, would strike the negro with force, inspire
him with awe, and awaken in his mind a reverence for sa-
cred things, that no other form of worship, in his present
mental and moral condition, could do. We have always felt
doubt about the capacity of the great mass of the negro race
to comprehend the plan of salvation, as it has been usually
110 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
taught them. We never heard a negro preacher explain it in
such way as to lead us to believe that he had any proper
conceptions of it himself, much less the gift to impart cor-
rect ideas of it to others. The emotional part of the negro's
nature seems to be powerfully wrought up, in the act of
worship, while other faculties remain comparatively dor-
mant — but little acted upon in the worship itself, or as
evidenced by any marked effect afterwards. We can place
no high estimate upon that kind of religion that acts
merely upon the emotional part of man's nature, that does
not take hold upon the intellect in convincing reason, in
subduing the will, and bringing the whole man in captivity
to its rule. If the negro, either by his natural endowment
or state of ignorance, cannot receive the most profit by
forms of worship or systems of religion as usually taught
to more rational and intelligent people, as suited to their
nature and understanding, then would it not seem more
in accordance with the fitness of things that the great and
essential truths of divinity should be imparted to him in a
more simple form ?
It has been alleged as a ground of objection to the
Catholic Church, that it encourages in a measure, if it does
not directly practice, a species of idolatry in presenting
conspicuously in their churches pictures, statuary and
relics of sacred personages, which leads to object worship,
rather than the true spiritual worship that should alone
engage the thought and inspire the homage of Christian
people. We would not here be understood as attempting
any defense of the Catholic religion, or appear as an
apologist for the objectionable feature just stated, yet
when viewed under particular circumstances, as a question
of ecclesiastical policy, it is supported by reasons that
seem cogent and conclusive. There is, and always has
been, outside of the clergy, a large element of ignorance
in the Catholic Church, and doubtless the visible repre-
sentation by art of truth to be imparted, especially to the
ignorant and unreasoning class, would, if not greatly aided
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. Ill
by such associations, at least, tend to awaken a deeper
reverence for sacred things, and produce a feeling in har-
mony with devotional exercise. How the images in their
sacred books, the statues upon their altars, and other art
illustrations of the Divine idea are to represent it to the
senses of the worshipper, has, we believe, never been de-
clared, ex cathedra, or explained by Catholic writers, that
we have seen.' If any people who are the subjects of re-
ligious teachings cannot embrace truth in the abstract,
when it is necessary to be received by them as the foun-
dation of a belief in Christianity, and as a basis of moral
and religious character, and which is further necessary to
fit them for a reception into religious society, then the sim-
pler forms of imparting such truths, if they are to receive
it at all, must be resorted to. And again, if the great
truths of the gospel necessary for the negro to embrace,
as the initial point of all moral improvement, or any ad-
vance in religious life, cannot be grasped by reason, where
his reasoning /acuity, from any cause, cannot perform the
necessary office, then systematic representation of such
truths, if it will aid him in their acquisition, would seem,
to that extent, allowable, even by those who hold to anti-
Catholic views on this particular subject.
While the Papal system of religion, with its forms of
worship, is well adapted to the negro's nature and condition
in life, it would, in the second place, retain him more securely
within its organization, and more effectually control him, not
only in matters of religion, but in his civil relations, than
any other religious organization. There seems to be a con-
servative power inherent in the Catholic Church that is
alone peculiar to it, and has preserved it for fifteen centu-
ries from discord, schism and internal weakness, that has
so often been the bane of other systems of religion. This,
doubtless, springs from its peculiar organization as an eccle-
siastical body, the implicit obedience it exacts to its man-
dates, and the sublime faith which in some mysterious way
it inspires its members with in the truth and power of its
112 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
mission as a church. Its temporal policy in the matter of
discipline does not^ recognize expulsion from the church
as a proper method of dealing with immoral members, as
long as they may be true to the CathoHc faith. It main-
tains that the communicant cannot be alienated from the
church only upon grounds of heresy, and that it is the
appropriate work of the church to carry on the process of
reformation in the life and character of its members, how-
ever^deeply stained with sin that of any offending member
may be. And by holding the negro securely in its folds,
it would not only begin a work of reformation upon him,
but one of charity, and not only philanthropy, in his behalf,
that is greatly needed at,times and places where he is often
neglected, even by his own race. If it did not impart a
growth in morals, and put him on a line of religious pro-
gression, it would arrest at least a farther decline, and pre-
vent his drifting back to pagan rites, as he is prone to do,
when left to his own spiritual guidance.
While we of the South have been correctly taught that
religion is something too sacred to be connected with the
policies of civil government, or to be controlled in any way
by secular considerations, yet, in endeavoring to work out
the problem that presents itself to the Southern people, in
connection with the negro race, no factor should be omitted
that could be considered necessary to its solution. Con-
temporaneous, or modern history, presents no parallel case,
with analogies that assimilate it in essential particulars, to
that which now exists at the South. The case of the Moors,
in Spain, where two distinct races, nearly equally divided
as to numbers, disputed for the supremacy of race for eight
centuries, resulting in the final overthrow and expulsion of
the Moors, approximates the situation in the South nearer
than any other, perhaps, in the whole range of history.
We state here, that we are very far from attempting to con-
tribute to anything like a sensational feeling upon this par-
ticular point, as the reader has, doubtless, observed that
we have dealt in a spirit of candor in our preceding remarks
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 113
upon every phase of the negro question that has presented
itself. It is by a statement of known facts, and a fair and
candid interpretation of them, following their necessary
logical sequence, that we can reach rational and satisfactory
conclusions upon any question that may be presented.
And every thoughtful man must see that the ten years of
freedom to the negroes in our midst, with the present gen-
eration- of them under the restraints of slavery, to the ex-
tent of yielding obedience and deference to the whites, by
force of habit, which will be completely obliterated in the
next fifteen or twenty years, serves but little now in indi-
cating the state of feeling and attitude that he may assume
towards the Southern whites at the close of that period.
It has been doubtless generally observed, that there ex-
ists between the boys of the two races a feeling of antag-
onism, growing more apparent every year, and which every
man now thirty years old recollects very distinctly as not
having existed in the intercourse between white and negro
boys fifteen or twenty years ago. This fact has been re-
marked to us by prudent, clever, colored men, who express-
ed the belief that such feeling was not instilled by colored
parents in the minds of their children, and were at a loss
to account for it. This thing is not dependent upon the
training and discipline of the boys, but is governed by an
ethnological law which asserts itself in this particular, and
produces results as clearly and unmistakeably as does the
race law develop any other class of facts. We quote here
an utterance of Fred Douglass, made before the National
Colored Convention at Washington, in 1875, not for any
truth that it contains, but to show the spirit that, no
doubt, does, to some extent, pervade "the rising genera-
tion." He says : "The rising generation are as brave and
daring as are the white men. Already this spirit is taking
deep root in the minds of thousands, who have nothing
to lose in the contest, and who would rejoice to sacrifice
their Hves for their liberty." (He doubtless meant equal-
ity.)
114 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
There must be, in the nature of things, a degree of
social ostracism, that will keep the negro in his natural
and proper sphere. This separation, however, need not
obtain in matters of religion, to the same extent, or in the
same sense, that must necessarily occur in social and polit-
ical life. One of the chief dangers that we may appre-
hend in the future, arises from the continued segregation
of the negro race into religious society exclusively their
own, which would show to them their complete isolation^
where all the evil influences of mere race-feeling would
operate upon them to the fullest extent. An insuperable
caste on account of their origin, color, and physical for-
mation, will always separate them, socially, from the whites.
They will be excluded from public office, its honors and
emoluments ; and if religion, whose mission and office arc
to purify the heart of man, and fill it with peace, love and
charity towards all mankind, should fail to show any con-
necting link between the two races, then, indeed, the
negro would feel that he was a veritable " Pariah, " and
every white man's hand against him.
While the great mass of this race will very probably re-
main in a state of ignorance for successive generations, num-
bers will be educated, which will stimulate their pride and
aAvaken new aspirations, and, finding a superior, and the
ruling race above them, whose sphere cannot be attained,
on account of caste, will cause them to agitate foolish and
impracticable questions, which will beget a restive, jealous,
and dissatisfied spirit among the masses, that must make
society, in the future, more disorderly and insecure than
at present. For obvious reasons, therefore, the white
people should pursue a just, kind, and conciliatory course
toward the negro in the private relations of life, and in
those connections in which the negro can feel a sense of
public justice towards him, and interest in his behalf, such
as grow out of legislation, the administration of public
law, and in matters of religion, a conservative influence
may be wielded that would tend to allay much of the
trouble that might arise in the future.
THE NEGRO PROBLEM. 115
In this seeming digression from the subject that we were
discussing antecedently, we have enlarged upon the possi-
ble dangers that may arise in the future, in order to show
the necessity of putting into operation those moral in-
fluences that would redound to the well-being of the negro
race, and tend to a conservatism of peace, order, and the
best interest of Southern society. We have endeavored
to show that the Catholic Church, next to our Southern
Protestant Churches, was the best agency for the accom-
plishment of such desirable results.
There has been repeated attempts in the past, and are,
during the present year, to excite the fears and inflame
the prejudices of the American people against the Catho-
lic Church, upon the assumption that it would endeavor
to gain poh'tical power, and wield it, ultimately, to the
subversion of religious liberty in our country. We are
gratified in knowing that this spirit of intolerance has been
confined to Northern latitudes, and that our Southern peo-
ple, who take broad and catholic views of religious lib-
erty, have shared but to a very small extent in such spirit.
The course of the Catholic Church in the United States
has been eminently conservative, as every reading man
knows. It has not only abstained from all interference in
political affairs, but has seemed to be less agitated and
wrought upon by political excitement in the past, than
any other religious society in the country. Nearly all the
Protestant denominations at the North, at the beginning
of the late war, and we might say ten years preceding,
gave decided and emphatic expression upon the political is-
sues then dividing the country. Catholics,North and South,
engaged in the late war just as the people of other religious
denominations, and were no doubt just as loyal to their
respective governments as others, but we have yet to learn
that the Catholic Church was exercised by the bitter war
feeling that pervaded other churches to the close of hostilities.
The Catholics in the Southern States are fully identified
with the great body of Southern society, not only as to
116 THE NEGRO PROBLEM.
national interest, but upon those questions that have a
peculiar social and political significance. There can be no
real ground of apprehension, that if this Church should
espouse the cause of the negro, and embrace a considera-
ble portion of them in its organization, it w^ould wield an
influence inimical to society, but on the other hand we can
be reasonably assured that the whole moral power of this
Church would be brought to bear in controlling the negro
in the interest of peace. It would not tolerate, much less
favor, any pretensions to an equality of races, but treat the
negro simply as an object of religious instruction and im-
provement, as it has done in its mission fields upon the
coast of Africa, the West Indies and other places where the
African race has been the subject of its religious enterprise.
We repeat: It our Southern Protestant Churches, for any
reasons, should not engage in the religious work that seems
necessary to meet the exigencies in the case of the South-
ern negro, and if the two great evils that threaten him in
the future, to wit : his proclivity to drift from Christianity
to Paganism, and the no less evil of his attempted absorp-
tion into the Methodist E. Church (North), can be averted
by his incorporation into the Catholic Church, then it be-
comes a desideratum, that is sanctioned by Christian regard
for the negro, as well as supported by considerations of
public policy.
This book is due at the LOUIS R. WILSON LIBRARY on the
last date stamped under "Date Due " If not on hold it may be
renewed by bringing it to the library
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